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Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
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Author:  Rich [ Tue Oct 26, 2010 8:15 am ]
Post subject:  Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
A number of years ago a commercial website was created with an apparent business plan of charging people money for programming scanners and selling frequency/talkgroup information to scanner manufacturers.

Since its inception, this website has published and resold copyrighted data stolen from the Intercept website. I am guessing this was done because it was easier to steal data from us rather than find it on their own. Regardless, a recent incident has been brought to my attention that I feel obligated to make public.

Steve Scott, KD7KDC, has published stolen and copyrighted data from Intercept into a database where the information will be illegally resold to the general public and to scanner manufacturers. Despite being informed that the information was stolen, Mr. Scott has taken no action to remove the stolen information. This leads me to believe that either (a) Mr. Scott stole the information himself, or (b) Mr. Scott thinks its ok to break the law and steal from our website.

How do we know the information was stolen ? That's easy. As with the prior incidents, they copied down our typos too. That made it quite obvious.

You might want to take these events into consideration before using this other website or having any dealings with Steve Scott, KD7KDC. I'm also hoping that Uniden will stop illegally using our data in their products.
Author:  Wilrobnson [ Tue Oct 26, 2010 11:56 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
Speaking as a "Global Moderator", I approve this message. I was the person who originally acquired the information in question, and supplied to another member who duly entered it into our database.

The information contained several sensitive items that were redacted primarily due to officer safety concerns. As a former police officer and current federal officer, I can both understand and appreciate this. We will not enter into the encryption argument here. Had the data in question been acquired via the same means I used, the website and admin in question would have undoubtedly been published. This other site has a long history, and stated policy, of publishing sensitive radio-related information.

The data, as entered, also contained several small, inadvertent typographical errors. These were reproduced on the other website in the exact same erroneous format.

Speaking as an individual who invested my personal time and money in the pursuit of accurate and up-to-date information to further the reliability of the database here, I find it disturbing that a large, nationally-aimed site allows it's admins to stoop to this level. This has happened more than once, and the end result is just bad blood, bad tempers, and degradation of the hobie as a whole.
Author:  Atomic Taco [ Tue Oct 26, 2010 12:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
Speaking as a relative newcomer compared to a vast majority of the members here, I'd like to add that the information contained in our database is protected by United States copyright. Anyone redistributing information off this site is in direct violation of 17 U.S.C. ยง 501.

This does not apply to our many members that access the database to program their radios, and we welcome and encourage any members that would like to browse, amend, or add to our database.

I find it unbelievable that any person would take the time to collect any information provide it here and pass it off as their own. The fact that there are are individuals that knowingly run websites with this information is downright despicable.
Author:  Madhatter [ Tue Oct 26, 2010 9:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
Anyone taking this to the other site for possible legal action?
Author:  Rich [ Wed Oct 27, 2010 6:54 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
Its always an option and well within our means to do so. For now I think public awareness is more important.

By not removing the infringing material they will continue to reap what they sow with the public embarrassment and further lack of credibility. Some people have privately expressed that this is more than sufficient recourse.
Author:  SpudGunMan [ Wed Oct 27, 2010 11:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
you contacted uniden about it? what about concepts of having the database locked to registered members with post count +10 or something, I know little will happen as its a bit of a large giant to try and stomp on, but cant hurt to talk to them

edit: haha, what if we just load up some fun info into a public database and if your a upstanding member you get a bogus filter.
Author:  Madhatter [ Wed Oct 27, 2010 5:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
SpudGunMan wrote:
you contacted uniden about it? what about concepts of having the database locked to registered members with post count +10 or something, I know little will happen as its a bit of a large giant to try and stomp on, but cant hurt to talk to them

edit: haha, what if we just load up some fun info into a public database and if your a upstanding member you get a bogus filter.


That would be awesome... I think that GRE/RS/Uniden would drop that other site for being complete inaccurate pretty quickly from stealing bad info...
Author:  Rich [ Wed Oct 27, 2010 6:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
We have a few "landmines" in our database and sure enough they showed up on that other site. That's how we know this has been going on for years.
Author:  Madhatter [ Wed Oct 27, 2010 7:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
Rich wrote:
We have a few "landmines" in our database and sure enough they showed up on that other site. That's how we know this has been going on for years.


Thats outstanding :D
Author:  maj0rrager [ Thu Feb 09, 2012 6:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
This appalls me, but doesn't surprise me. It must be nice to have a personal army of data harvesters that report back to you so that you can in turn sell their stolen info at a profit! After initially using the site in question then finding Intercept, well let me just say it's been night and day. Initially I discovered them for their database, but after doing some exploring I found that a lot of info was bad/out of date/or directly (and blatantly) stolen from somewhere else. A lot of members on the forum are very rude and I've been insulted many times for attempting to provide support or offering my opinion. Everyone on Intercept has been very welcoming and helpful. Lastly, in my humble opinion, I believe their live feeds are the worst thing to happen to the scanner hobby besides encryption (The former potentially adding/causing the latter) I also love this:"The radio website that puts military & officer safety ahead of profits." That's like a giant middle finger to the other guys :twisted:
/rant

Also, I haven't got to formally thank everyone for all the help you've been! It's nice to see members of this site on various yahoo groups too.

Off topic:Is the "military" in "The radio website that puts military & officer safety ahead of profits." new? I'd never noticed that before but it's a good addition.
Author:  KE7JFF [ Thu Feb 09, 2012 6:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
I don't want to be that guy, but I was under the impression that you can't exactly copyright frequency information?
Author:  icom1020 [ Thu Feb 09, 2012 7:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
My take on this: If I have a string of data that matches your string and if by chance you copied the typos in a continuous manner, that matches my typos, regardless of a licensed FCC freq, it becomes a publishing issue over the text. If you look at what's left of scanner books, they do the same thing. It is easier to go after an individual for violation of this, much like the record companies go after people for illegal downloads, one at a time. It's still intellectual property.
Author:  Wilrobnson [ Thu Feb 09, 2012 9:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
bballjh wrote:
That's like a giant middle finger to the other guys


It's more of a giant middle finger to those who have no compunctions posting every damn thing they find, never stopping to think about the consequences. We've seen some great examples in the past, such as:

-people posting about a real-time SWAT event or the like, with updates every time someone transmits;
-people hearing an unlicensed (but allowed under FCC rules) LE tactical channel and blabbing it all over the web, only to find it silent within days;
-people posting PII they may hear over the air (i.e. SSNs, addresses, medical info, etc); and
-people posting little-known federal things that soon go silent as a result.

Hobbyists aren't the only ones perusing these boards, and hobbyists aren't the only ones looking for specific information about an agency.

Example: I hear XYZ County Sheriff using an abnormal, and unlicensed freq for close-quarters tactical ops, i.e. surveillance, SWAT, etc. I throw it out on the web. A deputy, radio tech, administrator or someone else is randomly Googling along looking for hits about XYZ County SO. Lo and behold, up pop my excited delirium ravings about hearing all this cool stuff. A phone call or two later, and XYZ Sheriff's SWAT (or whatever) is now using cellphones, AES encryption, FRS radios, semaphore or what-have-you for these ops.

Whoops.

Wait, don't laugh. I can cite two examples of this to date. I could also tell you about a buddy that did something a lot like this and ended up getting fired from a PD close to you as a result...If it goes on the web, it's forever there.

Folks, just use common sense. Ask yourself "Is posting this going to see it go away?" "Will it endanger someone?"

No, not every hostage-taker, terrorist, robber or burglar is going to be looking for here for info about the SWAT team moving into position outside their house, and decide it's a good day to die....But what if one does? Just one?
Author:  Wilrobnson [ Thu Feb 09, 2012 9:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
KE7JFF wrote:
I don't want to be that guy, but I was under the impression that you can't exactly copyright frequency information?

I don't think so either (IANAL). Anyone can look up a frequency in the FCC database. The issue comes when someone LISTENS to and IDENTIFIES the use of said frequency, posts about it or adds it to the database, and it gets copied and pasted to another website exactly the same. The frequency is public info. The added notations (PL tone, use notes, etc) are, AFAIK, intellectual property.
Author:  Atomic Taco [ Thu Feb 09, 2012 10:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Information stolen from Intercept / bad ham report
KE7JFF wrote:
I don't want to be that guy, but I was under the impression that you can't exactly copyright frequency information?
Can you copyright 155.340? No. But "155.340 100.0 S HOS WA King Renton VALLEY MEDICAL CENTER KUI520" is game.

Wilrobnson wrote:
Ask yourself "Is posting this going to see it go away?" "Will it endanger someone?"
And I've seen that happen with private business stuff too. No idea if it came from here or they just decided to reprogram their radios.
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