----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Graves" <graves_j at ins.com> To: <tcwug-list at tcwug.org>; <tcwug-list at tcwug.org> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2002 8:13 AM Subject: Re: [TCWUG] Wardriving and legalese of it all (Long post, great debate) > I think you're trying to reverse-engineer FCC rules a bit too much. > > When it comes to wireless scanning, I think the Electronic Communications > Privacy Act (ECPA) has much more relevance. That's the law that provides > Federal penalties to anyone who "intentionally intercepts, endeavors to > intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to > intercept, any wire, oral, or electronic communication." In other words, > the ECPA is the anti-eavesdropping law. > > I don't know if this has been tested with wardriving, and I'm no lawyer. I > also think there's a big logical difference between scanning for networks > and capturing packets -- but I don't know if the law sees a difference. > > In any event, if it ever came to trial, I doubt an argument about FCC part > 15 would hold water. There's a big difference between "accepting" > interference and decoding transmissions. > Good call. I had forgotten about that law. The big thing really is, who's going to really know what a wardriver is doing? I just say it's amatuer weather, and people believe me. ;) The capture of the packets is a big deal, yes, but if that functionality was to be disabled, or shut off, and kismet or netstumbler was then just used to "scan" frequencies, i wouldn't see much of a big deal. I think that part 15 would hold a lil water, but it'd leak, horribly. All because of the allowance to accept interference. I'm just letting the computer show me the "interference" that it is receiveing. (How else you going to debug why your linksys on channel 6 isn't working cause the neighbor down the street has the same thing? ;) ) Thanks for the input. -- Alex Hartman - goober at goobe.net PGP Key fingerprint = 26 41 19 56 19 81 E2 BC EE C8 1D F4 DB B8 ED B8 "Watch out for that bus!"