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The ECPA makes it illegal to eavesdrop on all phone calls, it’s the 1992 amendment to the Federal Communications Act of 1934 that allows the FCC to restrict the

The ECPA makes it illegal to eavesdrop on all phone calls, it’s the 1992 amendment to the Federal Communications Act of 1934 that allows the FCC to restrict the part 15 authorization of anything that can receive cellular calls: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-106/pdf/STATUTE-106-Pg4181.pdf#page=15 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-106/pdf/STATUTE-... SEC. 403. INTERCEPTION OF CELLULAR TELECOMMUNICATIONS. […] “(d)(1) Within 180 days after the date of enactment of this subsection, the Commission shall prescribe and make effective regulations denying equipment authorization (under part 15 of title 47, Code of Federal Regulations, or any other part of that title) for any scanning receiver that is capable of— "(A) receiving transmissions in the frequencies allocated to the domestic cellular radio telecommunications service, "(B) readily being altered by the user to receive trans- missions in such frequencies, or “(C) being equipped with decoders that convert digital cellular transmissions to analog voice audio.

RF_Savage 4y ago
Which is why wideband SDR's like hackRF are licenced as laboratory equipment. So the regulatory regime is the one for spectrum analyzers and signal generators. I have always wondered if people in the old days used the FM demodulation option to listen in on phone calls.
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  That was what was so stupid about the mandatory cellular-blocking legislation. You didn't need test equipment or even a scanner to spy on AMPS phones... you just needed an old TV with a UHF tuner. The upper end of the UHF TV band overlapped the 800 MHz AMPS band nicely, and NTSC TV audio was FM, just like cellular (albeit WBFM rather than NBFM.) It's probably lucky that no one ever brought a case to court (or testified in Congress) regarding 'civilian' use of a spectrum analyzer for cellular eavesdropping. Otherwise we'd be unable to buy anything even remotely resembling today's SDRs. They'd be driven out of the market like pirate radio transmitters were. The law should be brought up to date, but who wants to open that can of Pandora's worms?

RF_Savage 4y ago

Which is why wideband SDR's like hackRF are licenced as laboratory equipment. So the regulatory regime is the one for spectrum analyzers and signal generators. I have always wondered if people in the old days used the FM demodulation option to listen in on phone calls.

CamperBob2 4y ago
That was what was so stupid about the mandatory cellular-blocking legislation. You didn't need test equipment or even a scanner to spy on AMPS phones... you just needed an old TV with a UHF tuner. The upper end of the UHF TV band overlapped the 800 MHz AMPS band nicely, and NTSC TV audio was FM, just like cellular (albeit WBFM rather than NBFM.) It's probably lucky that no one ever brought a case to court (or testified in Congress) regarding 'civilian' use of a spectrum analyzer for cellular eavesdropping. Otherwise we'd be unable to buy anything even remotely resembling today's SDRs. They'd be driven out of the market like pirate radio transmitters were. The law should be brought up to date, but who wants to open that can of Pandora's worms?