Clay Olbon II writes:
The congressman (Boehner? from Ohio) whose cellphone was "eavesdropped" stated today that he was parked in the lot of a Waffle House in Lake City FL. The couple said that they just happened to be driving by when they overheard and began taping the conversation.
Interesting. In California, operating a scanner while driving is illegal. Of course it was probably the passenger running the scanner. I've always wanted to scan cell-phone callers while driving next to them on 101. Even in Silicon Valley it'd be pretty wierd to have a sinister looking guy in the car next to you pointing a black box with an antenna at you...
I have a problem with making it illegal to listen to parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Seems sort of unnatural.
I think that blowing your mouth off about what you've heard by scanning cellular traffic is what's illegal. Or more illegal than merely listening anyhow.
Maybe they will decide that people who can see the color green will go to jail next ;-) Technological solutions are much more elegant. Of course, they are not nearly as sexy as legal remedies (I can't wait to see if the congressman who gave it to the Times is indicted!)
Given that they've just pissed on some seriously powerful people I'd expect that the fools who made the tape and gave it to the Democratic congresscritter and then HAD A NEWS CONFERENCE about it are going to be in some deep shit. -- Eric Murray ericm@lne.com ericm@motorcycle.com http://www.lne.com/ericm PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03 92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF