Date: Fri, 19 Aug 1994 11:54:45 +0200 (METDST) Subject: 15 years! About the EFF Wiretap Bill: The bill makes it a crime to possess or use an altered telecommunications instrument (such as a cellular telephone or scanning receiver) to obtain unauthorized access to telecommunications services (Sec. 9). This provision is intended to prevent the illegal use of cellular and other wireless communications services. Violations under this section face imprisonment for up to 15 years and a fine of up to $50,000. I commented on this before but feel like repeating myself: So an alt.2600 tec-addict makes some hardware hacks on his cellular - and gets 15 years in the slammer for catching some airwaves. A punishment scale suggestive of a very repressive state! And why outlawing it in the first place? What is crypto for? I'm not defending a 15 year sentence; it's far too harsh. But I strongly disagree with ``why outlawing it in the first place? What is crypto for?'' By analogy, why outlaw burglary? After all, what are safes and alarms for? The purpose of a civilized society is precisely to avoid this sort of ``arms race'' between bandits and those who pay for services. Even libertarians generally agree that theft is wrong, and theft of service is just as wrong as theft of tangible objects; otherwise, there is no way to recover the cost of the capital investment necessary to provide the service. That is, the marginal cost -- the electricity, wear and tear on the ICs, etc., to make a cellular phone call -- is obviously very low. But someone had to pay for all the cellular switches out there, to say nothing of the R&D that went into them, and a large part of the charges for a call go towards repaying that investment. Now, a prudent service provider may wish to invest in crypto as a way to prevent fraud, just as many homeowners invest in alarm systems. But failure to do so doesn't make either sort of theft correct. --Steve Bellovin