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"HACKERS SCAN AIRWAVES FOR CONVERSATIONS""Eavesdroppers tap into
Private Calls" by Mark Lewyn Aug 14, 1992 Washington Post

On the first day of the Soviet coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in
August 1991, Vice President Quayle placed a call to Sen. John
Danforth (R-Mo.) and assessed the tense, unfolding drama. It turned
out not to be a private conversation. At the time, Quayle was
aboard a government jet, flying to Washington from California. As
he passed over Amarillo, Tex., his conversation, transmitted from
the plane to Danforth's phone, was picked up by an eavesdropper
using electronic "scanning" gear that searches the airwaves for
radio or wireless telephone transmissions and then locks onto them.
The conversations contained no state secrets -- the vice president
observed that Gorbachev was all but irrelevant and Boris Yeltsin
had become the man to watch. But it remains a prized catch among
the many conversations overheard over many years by one of a
steadily growing fraternity of amateur electronics eavesdroppers
who listen in on all sorts of over-the-air transmissions, ranging
from Air Force One communications to cordless car-phone talk. One
such snoop overheard a March 1990 call placed by Peter Lynch, a
well-known mutual fund executive in Boston, discussing his
forthcoming resignation, an event that later startled financial
circles. Another electronic listener over- see heard the chairman
of Popeye's Fried Chicken disclose plans for a 1988 takeover bid
for rival Church's Fried Chicken. Calls by President Bush and a
number of Cabinet officers have been intercepted. The recording of
car-phone calls made by Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (D),
intercepted by a Virginia Beach restaurant owner and shared with
Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.), became a 'cause celebre' in Virginia
politics. Any uncoded call that travels via airwaves, rather than
wire, can be picked up, thus the possibilities have multiplied
steadily with the growth of cellular phones in cars and cordless
phones in homes and offices. About 41 percent of U.S. households
have cordless phones and the number is expected to grow by nearly
16 million this year, according to the Washington-based Electronics
Industry Association. There are 7.5 million cellular telephone
subscribers, a technology that passes phone calls over the air
through a city from one transmission "cell" to the next. About
1,500 commercial airliners now have air-to-ground phones --roughly
half the U.S. fleet. So fast-growing is this new form of electronic
hacking that has its own magazines, such as Monitoring Times. "The
bulk of the people doing this aren't doing it maliciously," said
the magazine's editor, Robert Grove, who said he has been
questioned several times by federal agents, curious about the
hackers' monitoring activities. But some experts fear the potential
for mischief. The threat to businesses from electronic
eavesdropping is "substantial," said Thomas S. Birney III,
president of Cellular Security Group, a Massachusetts-based
consulting group. Air Force One and other military and government
aircraft have secure satellite phone links for sensitive
conversations with the ground, but because these are expensive to
use and sometimes not operating, some calls travel over open
frequencies. Specific frequencies, such as those used by the
President's plane, are publicly available and are often listed in
"scanners" publications and computer bulletin boards. Bush, for
example, was accidentally overheard by a newspaper reporter in 1990
while talking about the buildup prior to the Persian Gulf War with
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). The reporter, from the Daily Times in
Gloucester, Mass., quickly began taking notes and the next day,
quoted Bush in his story under the headline, "Bush Graces City
Airspace." The vice president's chief of staff, William Kristol,
was overheard castigating one staff aide as a "jerk" for trying to
reach him at home. Some eavesdroppers may be stepping over the
legal line, particularly if they tape record such conversations.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act prohibits intentional
monitoring, taping or distribution of the content of most
electronic, wire or private oral communications. Cellular phone
calls are explicitly protected under this act. Local laws often
also prohibit such activity. However, some lawyers said that under
federal law, it is legal to intercept cordless telephone
conversations as well as conversations on an open radio channel.
The government rarely prosecutes such cases because such
eavesdroppers are difficult to catch. Not only that, it is hard to
win convictions against "listening Toms," lawyers said, because
prosecutors must prove the eavesdropping was intentional. "Unless
they prove intent they are not going to win," said Frank
Terranella, general counsel for the Association of North American
Radio Clubs in Clifton, N.J. "It's a very tough prosecution for
them." To help curb eavesdropping, the House has passed a measure
sponsored by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House telecommunications and finance subcommittee, that would require the
Federal Communications Commission to outlaw any scanner that could
receive cellular frequencies. The bill has been sent to the
Senate. But there are about 10 million scanners in use, industry
experts report, and this year sales of scanners and related
equipment such as antennas will top $100 million. Dedicated
scanners, who collect the phone calls of high-ranking government
officials the way kids collect baseball cards, assemble basements
full of electronic gear. In one sense, the electronic eavesdroppers
are advanced versions of the ambulance chasers who monitor police
and fire calls with simpler scanning equipment and then race to the
scene of blazes and accidents for a close look. But they also have
a kinship with the computer hackers who toil at breaking into
complex computer systems and rummaging around others' files and
software programs. One New England eavesdropper has four scanners,
each one connected to its own computer, with a variety of
scanners, each one connected to its own computer, with a variety of
frequencies programmed. When a conversation appears on a
pre-selected frequency, a computer automatically locks in on the
frequency to capture it. He also keeps a scanner in his car, for
entertainment along the road. He justifies his avocation with a
seemingly tortured logic. "I'm not going out and stealing these
signals." he said. "They're coming into my home, right through my
windows."


[End of the article. There was no identification of who "Mark Lewyn" is,
or who he works for, or his journalistic credentials. The only
thing for sure is that he is not a staff writer for the newspaper,
since the byline for the paper's own writers is "Washington Post
Staff Writer."]

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