Welcome Legal Geekery readers I am Christopher Wright (@ckwright) your newest LG blogger.  My biography isn’t up yet, but if it was you would know that back in my college days I used to work at my college’s radio station which began it’s life as a pirate radio station in the 70s (though I promise it’s been a fully legal noncommercial radio station for many years).  Ever since then I’ve had a curiosity about the subject, so thus I give you: How Radio Pirates are Going to Make the FCC Crack Down On Your Wifi.

There be Radio Pirates in These Waters

For those of you who don’t know Pirate Radio (also know as free radio or bootleg radio) is a term that is generally used to describe underground radio stations that hijack a radio spectrum (usually by overpowering the signal in a small local area).  For years it was easy enough to catch radio pirates because all law enforcement had to do was track down the physical transmitter.  Physically moving the transmitter around was a strategy that was popular for a long time but with advances in technology this cat and mouse game between the law and the pirates usually ended up being won by the law.  Nowadays however pirate radio is a another beast altogether thanks to a little invention called the internet.  Thanks to the internet and other advances in technology finding and catching radio pirates is a little more difficult.

Now you may be wondering how all of this talk of radio pirates relates to Legal Geekery, well it’s simple, the FCC.  Since the late 90s the FCC has been cracking down on pirate radio stations and in doing so they have claimed they have the right to conduct warrantless searches.  The FCC claim that the the Communications Act of 1934 gives them the right to inspect any RF device that could be causing interference.  What does this mean for you or I?  Well do you have a wifi router?  A cordless phone?  An ipod fm transmitter?  Well if you answered yes to any of these questions you may qualify for your very own FCC raid.

Now  the FCC is probably not going to go after anyone for owning basic consumer electronics, but such a possibility does exist.  Interesting enough the FCC can even fine you if you refuse to let them into your property to inspect such equipment.  In this case (FCC DA 07-3927) they charged a man $7000 for refusing to let an officer inspect his CB radio.  Now the man was rebroadcasting an AM station through the radio at the time and fine was later dropped to $225 due to financial hardships, but still such cases set a dangerous precedent.  The FCC has had a de facto power like this for years, but the only people they ever went after were pirate radio stations.  However, now that they have opened up the possibility of going after Joe Q. Public it is only a matter of time before someone challenges the constitutionality of the FCC actions.  Warrantless searches usually make people nervous i.e. President Bush’s wire tapping program, so I’m going to guess that it’s going to be sooner rather than later.

If your interested in further reading this Wired article discusses everything I’ve talked about nicely and this article from the New Sceientest talks about how the internet is making finding radio pirates more difficult.

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