[tw]

Basic concepts of radiation are forgetten when they are more interested in rights than in legal consistency. Previously, if you broadcast using conventional electronic transmissions, then anyone, including legal authorities, were well within their rights to intercept those transmissions. However if you made some extraordinary attempt to protect those transmissions, then your rights were protected.

For example, portable phone conversations are open to all to listen. If you transmit a conversation inside your house, everyone in the neighborhood is permitted to listen. However if you take extra precautions to protect that conversation - ie insulated wires or private encryption - then interception of that transmission is a legal violation; legal authorities are required a search warrant.

If you grow mariguana in your attic and someone transmits x-rays to detect it, then your rights are violated. But if you transmit infared from heat lamps in your attic, then anyone is open to receive and detect those IR transmissions.

Today, all these fundamental principals are lost in a society that is more interested in emotional privacy than is what does and does not constitute "actions that protect privacy".

If you leave your living room curtains open, then anyone has a right to photograph you. However if you cut off those transmissions (ie. curtains), then there is no public transmission to receive - your privacy is protected by legal concepts. If that reporter transmits waves into your house to detect you, then the reporter has violated your privacy. However if he takes pictures using infared film (because you installed inferior curtains), then the reporter is well within his rights.

You must take sufficient actions to protect your privacy - or else you don't have that privacy. Nothing new here. These are old and well established principals.