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The underlying problem is that the people that wrote the law weren't technologically sophisticated enough to properly define what the law was meant to apply to.

The underlying problem is that the people that wrote the law weren't technologically sophisticated enough to properly define what the law was meant to apply to. 'Radio communication' is incredibly ambiguous. They probably meant any data transmitted using electromagnetic waves as the physical data carrier, but we can never be sure, because 'radio communication' is also a specific application of that class of technologies.

guptaneil 15y ago
Laws are usually meant to be ambiguous so that they can be interpreted by courts on a case-by-case basis and be somewhat future-proof. If politicians wrote more specific laws, then we would have to create new laws for every scenario. Sure, eventually the laws should still be rewritten once they've been sufficiently outdated, but until that happens, courts have some leeway in applying existing laws to new situations.
- prayag 15y ago
  Not true. Law-makers never intend the law to be ambiguous. In fact, it makes the jobs of the court much harder since the interpretation of courts constitutes a precedence and guides the future decisions of the courts. In fact the criticism of ECPA is that it is a very vague law and that is precisely why the court is struggling with the interpreting it.
  - guptaneil 15y ago
    I would argue that there's a subtle difference between being ambiguous and being vague. Being vague implies that the intended meaning cannot be discerned, while being ambiguous implies that the law can be interpreted and applied to multiple scenarios, even those that did not exist at the time of its writing. IANAL nor have I read the ECPA itself, but from my understanding of the case, the judge fully understood the intention of the law and applied it appropriately to this case. Had the law been less ambiguous and more specifically defined "radio technologies," then we may have ended up with a situation where wiretapping encrypted wifi might actually be considered legal. See mattmanser's explanation above (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2721831 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2721831) Of course, there is a fine line between being too vague and being too specific.

guptaneil 15y ago

Laws are usually meant to be ambiguous so that they can be interpreted by courts on a case-by-case basis and be somewhat future-proof. If politicians wrote more specific laws, then we would have to create new laws for every scenario. Sure, eventually the laws should still be rewritten once they've been sufficiently outdated, but until that happens, courts have some leeway in applying existing laws to new situations.

prayag 15y ago
Not true. Law-makers never intend the law to be ambiguous. In fact, it makes the jobs of the court much harder since the interpretation of courts constitutes a precedence and guides the future decisions of the courts. In fact the criticism of ECPA is that it is a very vague law and that is precisely why the court is struggling with the interpreting it.
- guptaneil 15y ago
  I would argue that there's a subtle difference between being ambiguous and being vague. Being vague implies that the intended meaning cannot be discerned, while being ambiguous implies that the law can be interpreted and applied to multiple scenarios, even those that did not exist at the time of its writing. IANAL nor have I read the ECPA itself, but from my understanding of the case, the judge fully understood the intention of the law and applied it appropriately to this case. Had the law been less ambiguous and more specifically defined "radio technologies," then we may have ended up with a situation where wiretapping encrypted wifi might actually be considered legal. See mattmanser's explanation above (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2721831 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2721831) Of course, there is a fine line between being too vague and being too specific.