How the Greek cellphone network was tapped.

[Steven M. Bellovin]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 04:46:51 -0700 (PDT)
bear <bear at sonic.net> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Thu, 19 Jul 2007, Charles Jackson wrote:
> 
> >An earlier post, talking about vulnerabilities and the lack of an
> >appropriate market response, said:
> >____________
> >We're talking about phone calls -- did all of the well-publicized
> >cellular eavesdropping (Prince Charles, Newt Gingrich (then a major
> >US politician), and more) prompt a change?  Well, there are now US
> >laws against that sort of phone eavesdropping gear -- a big help....
> 
> Halfway, I think.  ISTR there are laws against manufacture for sale,
> sale, purchase, or most usage of such gear - but no laws against
> manufacture without intent to sell, posession, or some exempted
> types of use of such gear.
> 
> Basically, owning such devices is not a crime, nor is using them
> provided the "target" has been duly notified that their call will be
> or is being intercepted.  So you can build the gear, and you can demo
> the gear you've built on a call made for purposes of demo-ing the
> gear.

Not as I read the statute (and of course I'm not a lawyer).  Have a
look at 18 USC 2512
(http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002512----000-.html)

	any person who intentionally ...

	manufactures, assembles, possesses, or sells any electronic,
	mechanical, or other device, knowing or having reason to know
that the design of such device renders it primarily useful for the
	purpose of the surreptitious interception of wire, oral, or
	electronic communications, and that such device or any component
	thereof has been or will be sent through the mail or transported
	in interstate or foreign commerce;

	...

So simple possession of a surreptitious interception device is illegal,
with exceptions for things like sale to law enforcement or
communications companies.

> 
> Consult a lawyer first, but I believe it may also be legal to monitor
> calls made in a given location provided you first put up a sign that
> says "all cell calls made on these premises will be monitored" etc.
> But you can't legally buy or sell the equipment to do it.

Probably -- that's not surreptitious.
> 
> > I think the most publicized cases of cellular interception,
> > including the two mentioned above, were interceptions of analog
> > calls.  Such interception was not too hard to do.  In some cases you
> > could pick up one side of such calls on old American TV sets (sets
> > that tuned above channel 69 on the UHF dial).
> 
> The technical requirement was for a TV with a UHF analog *tuner* as
> opposed to a digital channel-selection dial.  The channels that the
> cellular network used (still uses?  I don't know) were inbetween the
> channels that were assigned whole numbers in TV tuning.  So you could
> pick up some cell traffic if you tuned, for example, to UHF TV
> "channel" 78.44.  But not if you tuned to channel 78 or channel 79.

The specific law I had in mind when I posted that note was the
ban on scanners capable of picking up cellular bands, as well as
decoders to convert digital cellular signals to analog.  See
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3457/is_n17_v11/ai_13701996
and http://www.eff.org/Legislation/?f=bills_affect_online.notice.txt

There are other provisions in the law that bar interception of
encrypted or scrambled signals, but I haven't waded through the
verbiage enough to know if they apply here.



		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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