We all know that there have been legal blows to the monitoring hobby over the past 10-12 years, and the last 2 or 3 years have been especially bad, with the passage in the U.S. Congress of legislation that prohibits the FCC issuing type-acceptance for radios that receive certain frequency bands, notably the cellular telephone bands.
While these prohibitions were not surprising, the monitoring community was hit with a triple whammy in 1997. The first blow came in early 1997; following the illegal interception *and divulgence* of a cellular call involving Newt Gingrich, the Telecommunications Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Commerce Committee staged a rigged, rather theatrical hearing on wireless communications privacy, which in my opinion was a shameful performance on the part of "our" elected officials. This resulted in a great deal of unwelcome attention for the monitoring hobby, as well as more restictive "clarifications" of previous regulations issued by the FCC. Later in the year came the introduction of H.R. 1964, which if passed would have eliminated a great deal of spectrum from scanners, including much spectrum shared by public safety; fortunately, this bill had virtually no Congressional support, as it dealt primarily with control of the Internet, which is a political warm potato. The next and nastiest blow came in July, with the introduction of H.R. 2369. Touted as a measure to get tough on "electronic eavesdropping" of cellular and PCS calls, HR-2369 was severely flawed, being far too broad and effectively banning monitoring of most radio services. This bill was a real killer; if passed in it's original form, it would have essentially outlawed scanners altogether, and worse, would have totally outlawed monitoring any communications other than AM/FM/TV broadcast, ham radio, CB, maritime and aviation traffic.
Thanks to the American Radio Relay League, Uniden and Tandy, and many others including the fire service, H.R. 2369 was amended into a form that more narrowly took aim at illegal monitoring of telephone calls, while leaving monitoring of other services intact. It was thus far less unpleasant than it was in it's original form. Later that year, H.R. 2369 passed the House with only one dissenting vote, but was not acted upon by the Senate. It was reintroduced in early 1999 in the next Congress as H.R. 514; exactly the same as H.R. 2369, it passed the House with threee dissenting votes, but again was not acted upon by the Senate.
More unwelcome attention for the monitoring hobby: In May, 1999, an overly enthusiastic hobbyist in New York posted 90+ pages of MDT data to his web page, which naturally caused great consternation in the law enforcement community. He was arrested and charged with divulging the communications, as well as other charges. Even worse, Bill Cheek and his wife Cindy were arrested at the same time and chaged with providing an interface used for decoding MDT transmissions. All were released on their own recognizance.
The overly enthusiastic individual in New York later entered a guilty plea for divulging the information (in violation of Section 705 of the Communications Act), was fined and sentenced to community service. Bill Cheek unfortunately passed away later that summer, and the charges against Cindy were dropped. As far as I can tell from reading the law, Bill and Cindy committed no crime (that's just my opinion, and I'm not a lawyer). The whole situation for the Cheeks was ludicrous in the extreme, since the common interface they sold is useful for monitoring many types of data signals which are perfectly legitimate monitoring targets (it can also be used for monitoring some modes clearly protected by Federal law, but that's up to the end user).
This incident points out again the foolishness of divulging communications you have received, especially those communications which are considered sensitive by the law enforcement community.
In Ohio, there are are no state statues prohibiting the use of monitoring devices. However, there are a few local ordinances:
City of Newark - prohibits the use of mobile or portable scanners; however, this ordinance has apparently never been enforced.
City of Parma - existence of an ordinance prohibiting the use of scanners is unknown. However, the Parma Police Department apparently takes a rather dim view of scanners, having allegedly removed scanner antennas from unattended private vehicles.
If you know of any other local ordinances in Ohio prohibiting the use of monitoring devices, send the information along to me (send to wa8pyr at yahoo dot com), and I'll include it here!