Re: Encryption is now illegal? (Re: U.S. Secret Service shuts down NYC cellular disruption network)

[Jay Acuna via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2025 at 11:21 AM Rusty Dekema via NANOG
<nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 24, 2025 at 11:39 AM Kurtis Heimerl via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:
> > sorts of setups are not used for jamming or disrupting cell networks (you'd
> > just use a jammer), instead they are used for tunneling international VoIP
> > traffic onto national cellular lines, allowing for (admittedly illegal)
> > cheaper calls.
> Is that actually against the law in the US?

Wire fraud/theft of service, probably. Consumer cellular providers
don't authorize resale of their services.
Also US law forbids any type of willful or malicious interference
against licensed or authorized
radio communications.  - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/333

Presumably their investigation continues; As the news release is scant
on details.
That also means they can have seized gear finding extremely suspicious
circumstances,
but that they have not yet determined what exactly if any violations
were being committed.
Law enforcement simply has power to seize anything they want if their
belief is strong enough.
They could remove all servers in a large datacenter co-lo without
warning due to suspecting one
tenant of running a Tor node.  The only potential barrier is finding a
judge somewhere to
sign off on an oath "Upon my belief based on information Officer B,
told me that Officer C said that servers here contain evidence of a
conspiracy promoting the illegal download of such and such pirated
record albums"  Etc, etc.

Finding unauthorized radio signals coming from abandoned buildings is
also already evidence of a trespass.
So the law enforcement only has to have probable cause to suspect a
violation, which is a low bar,
then they can seize all potential evidence in order to investigate,
and figure out of there are actually
any violations  much later  after they've had time to disassemble all
equipment and analyze the
storage on its chips or disk drives for any past logs or configurations.

> -Rusty
--
-JA
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