Forbidden Colors

Suppose that there were a color that you weren't allowed to see. Imagine that the government decided to reserve a particular color for use in printing documents or posting messages, and that prescription glasses or over-the-counter sunglasses were legally required to filter out this color. Only government-authorized purchasers would be allowed to buy "unblocked" glasses that let them see these legally protected (but otherwise unconcealed) communications. Does this sound perfectly outrageous, not to mention really stupid? Anyone who really wanted to read the protected material could certainly grind a set of lenses without the required filtering effect. It would be even easier to take off your glasses and squint. This law could never be passed.

But you can't just squint to see radio waves. You need a radio receiver to detect and interpret the signals, and that's why the government has succeeded in passing intrusive and outrageous laws that prevent you from "seeing" certain radio frequencies. Colors of light and frequencies of radio waves are just two different ways of talking about the same thing. Light and radio are just different portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Light waves are very, very, very short radio waves, and most people come equipped at birth with highly directional "receivers" for those waves. We call those receivers "eyes."

The radio spectrum is just as public as the sunlight that shines around you, or the starlight that comes from trillions of miles away. Unlike light waves, though, radio waves are longer and therefore need larger antennas to focus them as sharply as the lens in your eye focuses light. Most radio antennas of practical size send energy in all directions. It's therefore necessary to decide who gets to use which portions of the spectrum. We would have to license the use of colors if your eye couldn't focus clear images, easily telling the difference between a red traffic light and a red Pizza Hut roof. By contrast, most radio users must agree to license particular "bands" of radio for different purposes.

This is where things get silly. Members of Congress think that cellular phones are like regular telephones, which give the user a reasonable expectation of privacy because of their direct-wired electrical connections. It takes special equipment and access to homes, offices, or phone-company switching centers to tap ordinary phone calls. Cellular phones, though, are really radios, and any ordinary radio receiver can pick up cellular-phone signals if tuned to the proper frequency. Outraged congresspeople were shocked to realize that their "phone" calls weren't confidential, and in a breathtaking display of selfish ignorance they decided to take by legislation what Nature would otherwise deny them.

Specifically, Congress passed laws making it unlawful to sell a radio that could receive the frequencies currently used by cellular telephones, or to sell a radio that could easily be modified to receive those frequencies, or to offer a commercial service of performing such modifications. Unlawful, that is, unless the buyer is a government agency or a telecommunications provider. You don't see the government depriving itself of the right to snoop on your "private" conversations.

Now, a law before Congress called the "Wireless Privacy Enhancement Act of 1997" would ban the sale of radios that can receive any of the frequencies allocated to any Commercial Mobile Radio Service. In addition to cellular telephones, this broad term also covers paging services, commercial air-to-ground services, offshore radiotelephone, personal communication services, and specialized mobile radio services. Unlike past laws that only prohibited publication of overheard signals, the new law (HR 2369) would even prohibit the mere reception of such signals (under penalty of fines).

Does this sound as silly as declaring "Federal Red" a government-only color? Are you angered by the needless complication of legitimate efforts in radio experimentation, radio astronomy, and volunteer public service activities that comes from these arbitrary laws? Do you think it outrageous that a loosely defined label such as Commercial Mobile Radio Service should prevent you from detecting any signal that's going over your head (or even through your own home) and finding out what that signal contains?

If HR 2369 passes, or even if it fails while current laws remain on the books, then the government is exercising an extraordinary power to block your view of a slice of the world around you. If people don't object to this, the government will rightly conclude that only a handful of hobbyists actually care.

It's not pleasant to think about where things might go from there. If it's illegal to listen to the radio, only criminals will know what's going on.