4 ms·

Oh I'm sure I am probably in the legal wrong. I think that if cable companies broadcast encrypted signals in through my house, I should legally be able to decr

• tptacek 13y ago
  You think it should be legal to steal people's phones and break them apart? Why?! Isn't that the "Finders Keepers Losers Weepers" doctrine?
  • jerrya 13y ago
    I said lose, not steal. I didn't say "steal" anyone's phones. And I didn't say it was ethical behavior. But yes, I think if you lose your trade secrets, your product, whether it's a phone or whether it's the formula for Coca Cola, or KFC, then yes it's lost, and it's your fault. "If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let 'em go, because man, they're gone" I don't really see too many laws enacted to ensure the stuff I lose gets back to me, and so because of that I don't understand why there are laws to protect an enormous corporation's property in ways that my property is not protected. If you can convince me my own personal property is protected in the same manner, I will be happy to change my mind.
    • tptacek 13y ago
      Picking up someone's phone that they left at a bar and doing a teardown on it is theft. Not in a "I think this is equivalent to theft" sense; it is theft in the legal "you can be charged with theft for doing it" sense. It is illegal to take things that other people use and appropriate them for yourself. If someone finds your phone on the street, they need to try to return it.
      • jerrya 13y ago
        Picking up someone's phone that they left at a bar and doing a teardown on it is theft. Not in a "I think this is equivalent to theft" sense; it is theft in the legal "you can be charged with theft for doing it" sense. I know this because I know this is what happened to Gawker. It is illegal to take things that other people use and appropriate them for yourself. If someone finds your phone on the street, they need to try to return it. I don't know this. That's what I've been saying. Can you point to laws that succinctly state that? Can you point to stories of law enforcement actually investigating such losses? You might be right, but I've never encountered anyone saying that they lost something and the law helped them get it back. With the exception of money I've never encountered anything in any class growing up detailing what the citizen's duty was when finding a lost article. And even with money, it's pretty clear the responsibilities of the authorities differ from location to location and much of it is on the order of "turn it in, if no one comes for it within 30 days, it's yours". Is there law that states that?
        • patio11 13y ago
          You can find similar laws in many states. Here is Florida's: 705.102 Reporting lost or abandoned property.— (1) Whenever any person finds any lost or abandoned property, such person shall report the description and location of the property to a law enforcement officer. ... (3) It is unlawful for any person who finds any lost or abandoned property to appropriate the same to his or her own use or to refuse to deliver the same when required. (4) Any person who unlawfully appropriates such lost or abandoned property to his or her own use or refuses to deliver such property when required commits theft as defined in s. 812.014, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.* Similar laws are on the books in many US jurisdictions. It is actually quite common to bring police into these matters. (P.S. You might reasonably think of e.g. an envelope with one paycheck worth of money as the upper bound on property likely to be found abandoned, but a lot of the legal cases for this sort of thing involve cash hordes or doing things like abandoning e.g. a building or very valuable capital machinery.) There's a locally famous case in my neck of Japan where a construction company, hired to break ground on a new building, discovered approximately $300,000 in cash buried in a tin can. It actually went before a magistrate, quite unusually for Japan, because it was very unclear who owned the money. The ruling was that the construction company received 25% (for having legal control of the work site) and the workers received 75% (for having actually found the money), while the land owner received 0%, because they had "no cognizable interest in property which they were unaware existed", and the (unknown) owner of the property had forfeited any interest in it by abandoning it in circumstances where they could not reasonably have precluded others from accessing it. The court might have been smiling as it said that, particularly to the land owner, because the "Everybody knows it and nobody is saying it" conclusion was that the only reason somebody buries $300k and refuses to acknowledge it when it is unearthed is because the money is dirty. (The rumor was "untaxed proceeds of mob operations.")
• rmc 13y ago
  I think that if I find a scanner for cell phone conversations and find cell phone conversations that are unencrypted, I should legally be able to listen to them. (But I am pretty sure it is currently illegal to do that.) No, I don't think that should be legal. Many places have data protection & privacy laws. If you get access to private information, you can't do what you want with it. I'm fine with that being the law and ethics.
  • jerrya 13y ago
    I think the airwaves are the public's airwaves. If you broadcast unencrypted information through them, Joe Average Public should not get in trouble for listening to them. But I'll go further to. I think my living room is mine. If you send your encrypted information through it, I should be able to listen to it. I was born. I didn't sign any data protection & privacy law agreement. Things that I can witness and observe in the privacy of my own home should be none of yours or anyone else's business. If that makes it hard for certain business models, I'm okay with that because the country is intended for the use of its citizens, not its corporations.
    • rmc 13y ago
      I didn't sign any data protection & privacy law agreement. That is not how laws work. You consent is not required. (Fun fact: There is some people who think that consent is required (and can be withdrawn) for laws to apply to them. It's called "freemen-on-the-land". It's like homeopathy but for laws. It's quite funny)
      • jerrya 13y ago
        I think you're missing the point. Broadcasting your radio signals unencrypted means there is no privacy. Making a law saying that it is private is like making a law the sun should come up at 5am. The sun will do what it wants and the communication will be overheard. If you broadcast signals that are encrypted, but that I can intercept without any kind of physical tampering or alteration or destruction of the signal, again laws are of no help to anyone. The communication will be decrypted and overheard. It's better to make laws that conform to reality than to make laws that tilt at windmills and are used arbitrarily against citizens.