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Comment by Eisenstein | Hacker News Reader

> Because of how you seem to be approaching this, you've made no effort to explain why things should be the way you want them to be. You appear to simply treat it as axiomatic, i.e. a god-given right.

You are approaching this as if you broadcast something into the common airwaves it is yours and your secret, while I maintain it is no different than yelling that thing out your open windows and then claiming no one can listen to you. Just because it requires a trivial bit of technology to 'listen' to a radio broadcast doesn't make it any different than blasting sound or light waves. This is your issue -- you think that radio waves are somehow distinct from sound or light, when it is just another version of such things.

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You have simply disregarded everything that has been said so far and returned to merely repeating the "god-given right"-opinion.

> Just because it requires a trivial bit of technology to 'listen' to a radio broadcast doesn't make it any different than blasting sound or light waves

In many cases it would be illegal to use a fancy (or not fancy) microphone to listen to your neighbours through a wall, and why should it not be?

It's one thing to accidentally overhear something, and another to deliberately go out of your way to spy on others. Even most(?) US states have wiretapping laws which prohibit such activities.

This is not at all like setting up a special microphone to eavesdrop on someone. A person with a baby monitor would be broadcasting a signal onto public airspace with an amplified radio transmitter. If it comes into my airspace why can I not receive it using the same technology? Why does one person get to use publicly allocated radio frequencies and other does not? Is this fair? If the baby monitor broadcast on non-public frequencies it would be doing something much more illegal than me receiving them.

You are criminalizing receiving but not transmitting. I contend this is no different to yelling out of your window and criminalizing people hearing you. if you cannot come up with something other than 'it is wiretapping and private' to argue against broadcasting unencrypted radio into public airspace with a radio transmitter being by definition a public broadcast then I ask you not to respond because there is no answer to something like that, just as there is no answer to someone contending that listening to something people yell out of windows is a violation of privacy.

>I contend this is no different to yelling out of your window and criminalizing people hearing you.

You are deeply wrong. Humans can not listen to radio transmissions without special equipment.

Listening to your neighbours baby monitor generally requires specific efforts on your part. Same is obviously not true of your completely ridiculous example.

A direct comparison would be listening to your neighbour using some special long range directional mic or a thru-wall mic.

>just as there is no answer to someone contending that listening to something people yell out of windows is a violation of privacy.

You are being deliberately dishonest at this point.

Humans also cannot transmit radio signals without special equipment either, so your point means nothing. Anyway, you start calling names means you are out of ideas.

You can call me wrong all you want, but these are public airwaves, and the laws disagree with you. That Finnish law you quoted makes exceptions for public channels, so you are wrong about that as well. You can stand on your misguided principles and technological fetishism thinking that radio receivers mean that the airwaves are somehow different than those same exact airwaves with a different spectrum of EMF.

> That Finnish law you quoted makes exceptions for public channels, so you are wrong about that as well

What am I wrong about? It obviously makes an exemption for CB radio which is intended for random people to socialize on.

"public calling channels" refers to a variety of specific channels such as 8.1 for PMR446 or 71,100 MHz VHF/RHA68.

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