ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, February 6, 1997             TAG: 9702060057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press

SOLDERING IRON MAKES HIS POINT SCANNERS MAKE CELL PHONES PARTY LINES

All it took was a minute, a 2-inch piece of wire and a soldering gun for Rep. Billy Tauzin to convert a legal radio scanner into one that picks up cellular phone calls.

Most experts agree it's illegal to do this but enforcement is difficult.

Tauzin, R-La., chairman of the House Commerce Committee's telecommunication subcommittee, who rigged the scanner at a hearing Wednesday, is considering legislation to toughen laws against altering listening equipment.

Cellular telephone intercepts by scanner caught the public eye after a Florida couple using a police scanner taped a conference call among Republican leaders, one on a cell phone, discussing House Speaker Newt Gingrich's ethics case. Parts of the tape were subsequently printed in The New York Times.

Of 10 million legal scanners sold in the United States, it's estimated that a ``few hundred thousand'' have been modified to pick up cellular frequencies, testified Bob Grove, whose North Carolina company offers such alteration services. New digital cellular technology is supposed to make such eavesdropping more difficult.

Tauzin, standing at one side of the large hearing room, used an off-the-shelf police scanner he altered to pick up a conversation between two willing participants, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., on a cellular phone and Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., on a regular phone.

Eshoo was at the opposite end of the room and Markey was between them. Suddenly, static could be heard from the speaker on Tauzin's scanner, then a crackly but comprehendible pickup of the conversation between Markey and Eshoo.

Grove insists he operates within the bounds of the law. Markey, who wrote a 1992 law designed to protect cellular callers' privacy, disagreed.

``It's illegal to modify,'' Markey declared, vowing to rewrite the law to clearly block the sale of modified devices.

Markey's law, which took effect in 1994, made illegal the import, manufacture and sale in the United States of scanners that work on cellular frequencies. It also required that new scanners cannot be ``readily altered'' to pick up cellular calls.

LENGTH: Short :   48 lines