CTIA, ECPA, and Billy Tauzin.
Laws Governing Radio Monitoring in New York StateElectronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA)The ECPA says you can't listen to cellphone calls, even though cellphones are teeny, tiny, little radio stations. Back in the 1980w, they weren't so teeny tiny, but you know what I'm saying.
Radio scanners had their ability to monitor such frequencies "denatured," so to speak. Still, it was possible to remove the blocking circuitry and listen to cellphone calls anyway.
The infamous Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 is found in Title 18 of the United States Code, Sections 2510 through 2520. It is an amendment to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and became Public Law 99-508, 100 Stat. 1848 on October 20, 1986.
The Cellular Telephone Industries Association was not satisfied with the passage of ECPA. It was obvious to most people, including hobbyists and Justice Department officials, that enforcement of such a law would be, at best, very difficult. Some said that it would be unenforceable. Little interest was expressed by Federal officials in actually developing a way to consistently and effectively enforce ECPA.
This did not sit well with CTIA, the members of which are involved in the manufacturing and sale of cellular radio telephones. They wanted to be able to continue telling their customers that cellular radio telephone calls were totally private and impossible to overhear. The only way that they could continue to make such false claims was to have legislation in place that would make it so, regardless of the laws of physics or common sense.
In 1991, a provision was attached to the FCC Reauthorization Act that would require FCC to deny Part 15 certification to any receiver that was capable of receiving signals in the cellular radio phone frequency bands. This would make it illegal to buy, sell or import such receivers. It would apply to any scanner that could be easily modified by the user to receive that range. Most interestingly, it would have applied retroactively to existing receiver models that were already on the market.
The FCC Reauthorization Act was never acted upon by the full Congress. Near the end of the 102nd Congress it became clear that the bill would die from inaction. The CTIA was busy on this and quietly persuaded Congress to move the anti-scanner provisions to another bill that was ready to be passed into law. On October 8, 1992, Congress passed the Telecommunications Disclosure & Dispute Resolution Act with the anti-cellular-receiver provisions attached. Nobody in the scanning community or hobby press was even aware of this maneuver until it was too late.
The newest anti-scanner law is part of Public Law 102-556. It amends Section 302 of the Communications Act of 1934 to deny certification to cellular-capable scanners, and to ban the importation and manufacture of such scanners. The FCC released its Report and Order number 93-201 in April, 1993. This rulemaking carried out the Congressional mandate by amending Sections 2 and 15 of the Communications Act.
After April, 1994, existing scanners with cellular capability may be sold or offered for sale, but no new cellular-capable scanners may be manufactured or imported. The US Government has made statements to the effect that this import prohibition will also apply to scanners purchased from overseas by private individuals for their own use! The same goes for external frequency converters designed to be used with scanners.
The article goes on to discuss
Boehner v. McDermott.
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