US: Is it legal to jam radio/cell communications if entirely confined to your own private property? In the US, is it legal to jam radio/cell communications if such jamming is entirely confined to your own private property? And does it matter whether you are in a building or not? Imagine now that you have constructed a Faraday cage on your property so that external radio/cell signals cannot enter and internal radio/cell signals cannot exit. If you are inside the Faraday cage, is it legal or illegal to operate a radio/cell jammer? These questions are intended to ask about the legality of a private citizen doing this without knowledge or approval by any governmental authority. If the jurisdiction typically matters let's say New York, New York, USA.
Yes, if it works. FCC regulations allow operation of interfering equipment (for tests and experiment) provided the interference is fully contained in a Faraday cage. You must still "comply with the general prohibition against causing harmful interference to other spectrum users".
Yes you can, subject to your equipment meeting applicable FCC Part 15 regulations. Ricochet Wireless did exactly what you proposed, running a mobile data network at 900 MHz. Currently, carriers including Verizon run LTE in the 5 GHz Wi-Fi band. However, there's a potentially better choice, the Citizens Broadband Radio Service. This is a &quot;lightly&quot; licensed service, with cheaper and free licenses that are coordinated in shared spectrum. Companies run private CBRS LTE and you can buy small base stations like Wi-Fi access points. More importantly, many commercial handsets support this frequency band, like newer iPhones.
As is often the case with the recording statutes, the meaning of the law is refined by case law. Specifically, the consent requirement holds when the parties have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The statutory language limits the restriction to &quot;private communication&quot;: therefore, a person does not gain veto power over a public recording session simply by walking into the arena. Consent is implied when the fact of recording is self evident (you can see the operating recording device): by continuing to speak knowing that your speech is being recorded is implicit consent. Also, consent is only required for participants in the communication, and a person who happens to wander into the scene is not a participant in that communication. You may not want to test the edges of the law, in case a person wanders into the scene oblivious to their surroundings and talking on their cell phone. There might be a scenario where you're recording yourself but they are unaware of that fact, and they are having another private communication. The law does not prohibit accidentally overhearing someone else's private communication, it prohibits recording it. An unavoidable sign may aid you in your quest to not get sued.
united-states Is a personal text (like a diary), submitted without the consent of the author, admissible evidence? Usually, it is admissible evidence. There is no legal right to keep your diary private. Production of a diary may be compelled by subpoena and admitted into evidence subject only to general considerations regarding whether particular entries in the diary are inadmissible for some other reason (e.g. lack of relevance, they recite the contents of an otherwise privileged discussion, they contain hearsay, they recite the terms of a settlement offer, the recite inadmissible prior act evidence, etc.). If the diary revealed information that could place the diarist at risk of criminal prosecution, the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination could arguably be claimed even in a civil case, but at the risk of an adverse inference to be drawn from that decision in civil matters. I haven't ever seen how that issue is resolved legally.
No, the minor cannot be in violation either being on the property of residence or the sidewalk in front of that property. Montgomery County Curfew Law: Section 1-2 (Offenses): (a) A minor commits an offense if he remains in any public place or on the premises of any establishment within the unincorporated areas of the county during curfew hours. Section 1-3 (Defenses): (a) It is a defense to prosecution under Section 1-2 that the minor was: (1) Accompanied by the minor’s parent or guardian; (2) On an errand at the direction of the minor’s parent or guardian, without any detour or stop; (3) In a motor vehicle involved in interstate travel; (4) Engaged in an employment activity, or going to or returning home from an employment &gt;activity, without any detour or stop; (5) Involved in an emergency; (6) On the sidewalk abutting the minor’s residence or abutting the residence of a next-door neighbor if the neighbor did not complain to the police department about the minor’s presence; (7) Attending an official school, religious, or other recreational activity supervised by adults and sponsored by Montgomery County, a civic organization, or another similar entity that takes responsibility for the minor, or going to or returning home from, without any detour or stop, an official school, religious, or other recreational activity supervised by adults and sponsored by Montgomery County, a civic organization, or another similar entity that takes responsibility for the minor; (8) Exercising First Amendment rights protected by the United States Constitution, such &gt;as the free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, and the right of assembly; and (9) Married, had been married, or had disabilities of minority removed in accordance with Chapter 31 of the Texas Family Code. (b) It is a defense to prosecution under Section 1-2 (c) that the owner, operator, or employee of an establishment promptly notified the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department, or the appropriate Constable’s office, that a minor was present on the premises of the establishment during curfew hours and refused to leave. Your property is not public, so you cannot be in offense of this ordinance being on your private property. You also cannot be in violation being on your sidewalk (or a neighbors sidewalk if that neighbor has not called police on the offender).
Can you be trespassing on public property for no reason at all? Yes. When the government owns property, it can direct you to leave for any reason (even a legally invalid reason), and you are trespassing if you don't leave. When you are present on land you don't own with permission, but without a lease, you have a &quot;license&quot; to be there which is a contract-like right and is not a property right. A license doesn't give you the right to stay on the property over the objections of the owner or an agent of the owner. You might be able to receive money damages for an improper termination of your license to be present at the property (e.g. if you are told for no reason to leave a movie after paying for a ticket), but you don't have the right to simply stay there. If you stay there over the objections of the owner or the owner's agent, you are trespassing. The law applicable to government property owners and private property owners is basically the same in this regard. Realistically, on government property, furthermore, the standard by which the government employee may legally terminate your license to be there and exclude you from the property is low. Basically, it must merely not violate any constitutional right you may have, and you do not have a constitutional right to be present on government owned property, except in a quite narrow subset of cases (e.g. the &quot;town square&quot;). More exactly, you do not have a right to be on government property per se, but you can't be excluded from it for a constitutionally impermissible reason. The government gets to decide what parts of property it owns are available to the general public and for what content-neutral purposes. Thus, the right to be present on government owned &quot;public&quot; property (which doesn't include private areas of government owned property) can be subjected to reasonable and content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions. For example, a town could legally decide that the town square is closed from midnight to eight a.m. every day. The quoted material from the case Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 53-54 (1999) cited in the answer by bdb484 is narrower than a plain reading out of context would suggest. In that quotation, the term &quot;public place&quot; is being used in a sense much more restrictive than in the broader sense of property that is merely government owned. It is referring to places where the government has expressly or implicitly allowed members of the general public to be present on land that it owns (as opposed, for example, to a government office area of a building, or a maintenance facility in a government owned park, or a conservation area in a government owned park). This narrow sense of the word resolves what would otherwise seem to be a contradiction in the law. But, the government has the authority to make something that once was a public place into a non-public place going forward. For example, historically, the Civic Center park in front of the capitol in Denver, Colorado has been a public place. But, the government can and did close it off to the public for many months for maintenance and out of public health concerns when heavy use of it by homeless people and drug dealers caused the premises to be seriously damaged and created a public health risk from it being used to dispose of dirty, used, injection-drug syringes, and for people to defecate. A Hypothetical Suppose that Chris is the sole librarian in one of the towns of College Corner, which is on the Ohio-Indiana border, which are in different time zones. In that capacity, Chris has the authority to set library policies including the hours of the library and the rules for its use without the approval of anyone else. Chris has a hot date at 5:30 p.m. But, at lunch time, Chris learned that the hot date was at 5:30 p.m. in Ohio and not an hour later at 5:30 p.m. in Indiana, but the library's official closing time is 5 p.m. in Indiana, because Ohio was observing daylight savings time, but Indian was not, at the time when this happened. Chris, as the sole government official in charge of the library, decides to close the library before its posted closing time at 4:00 p.m. Indiana time (5 p.m. Ohio time) in order to be able to make it to the hot date. Chris quietly asks everyone left in the library to leave at 4 p.m. Indiana time, and everyone but you does. But you, who are homeless, really want to stay the extra hour before getting out in the cold and finding a bridge to sleep under, so you refuse to leave saying that the library is still open until 5 p.m. Indiana time, as stated in its posted hours. Chris orders you to leave and warns you that he is calling the police to remove you if you don't do so voluntarily. The police arrive and restate the complaint of Chris. The police arrest you for trespassing and you are charged with this crime in the appropriate court by the appropriate prosecuting attorney. You had done nothing wrong whatsoever prior to being asked to leave and refusing to do so. But, Chris has not violated your constitutional rights by ordering you removed for some unconstitutional reason. Chris then goes on the hot date; it is love at first sight, and Chris gets married the next week. As an apology for putting you out for the sole convenience of Chris, Chris invites you to the wedding. Do you have a valid defense to the criminal trespassing charge on the grounds that the librarian's actions were unconstitutional? No. You might have a &quot;good faith claim of right&quot; defense, however, to the criminal charges. Do you have a valid claim for money damages for a violation of your constitutional rights? No. Indeed, ordering you removed for &quot;no reason&quot; that has anything to do with your conduct, as in this case, is probably more likely to be legal and constitutional, than having you removed for &quot;some reason&quot; other than just &quot;because I the librarian say so&quot; that doesn't involve wrongdoing on your part. A Variation In The Hypothetical If instead, your were being ordered to leave the library because you were wearing an National Rifle Association cap (and the library didn't prohibit wearing caps), this affirmative reason, which is contrary to the First Amendment freedom of expression, would be a violation of your constitutional rights, which would definitely be a basis for a civil lawsuit against the librarian and police involved in you being arrested. I don't know the details of constitutional defenses in criminal law well enough to know if the violation of your constitutional rights would be a valid defense to the criminal trespassing charge (or a failure to obey a police officer's order to leave charge) resulting from you failing to leave in that circumstance, and I can see legitimate arguments both ways. This is also a situation where the non-constitutional claim of right defense to a trespassing charge would be a strong one.
someone I spoke with said "there is to be no recording of this or any other calls". Must I follow this instruction? Although, in Canada, there is no requirement on you to obtain consent to make recording, this explicit objection creates a hurdle. If you simply ignore the objection and record the conversation anyway without letting the objecting party know, you may give them a ground for a claim under the breach of confidence doctrine. The safest move would be to reply: No. There will be recording of this and any other calls. It will be then up to them to hang up. If they don't, they lose all grounds for any claims.
Your description of the facts is vague enough that we can't offer an informed judgment, but to remedy this, I will paraphrase your account of the facts (you can decide whether this is what you were trying to say). I was sitting outside of the Sprint store today waiting for my step daughter to come out. While waiting, two police officers walked up to my car and asked me to turn off my vehicle and come inside. When I voluntarily went inside, the store staff said that they called the police because they had had some sort of problems with people applying for service and absconding with the phone to resell on the black market, and they thought that was part of some such criminal plan. Because of that, they refused to give her a phone or service contract. But then they also told us to never come back, threatening arrest for trespassing. I have never been in that store before. Were my rights violated? No, neither by the police nor by the manager. The police, or the store manager, can legally request you to come in for a conversation: what matters most is whether you were forced to come in against your will. By your report, you were not, so your rights were not violated. The police are irrelevant to the remainder of the question. What remains is whether your rights were violated because the manager told you to go away and never come back under pain of prosecution. The store is private property, meaning that the owner has wide latitude to grant or deny permission to enter. If they hate pink hair and your hair is pink, they can legally "ban" you. If they suspect you of involvement in a criminal activity, that can most certainly legally ban you. That does not mean that it was a righteous or justified decision on their part, or a good business choice, but it is their legal right. So, no, your rights were not violated.