Hi, we're from the FCC, and we're here to wipe our ass on your fourth amendment rights while we inspect your wireless router:
You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.
That’s the upshot of the rules the agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency device.
“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.
The FCC is about as archaic today as the law which gives them this authority. If the agency is going to be kept around, then it needs to be lobotomized by having its content regulatory powers unilaterally revoked, and its authority to regulate devices limited to production and large scale deployments of hardware that could cause serious interference with privacy communications. Actually, you know what? Just get rid of this damn bureaucratic vestigial limb of the FDR era. If the Republicans had any desire to send shockwaves through DC by regaining their limited government credibility, they'd sponsor legislation that would simultaneously abolish the FCC and DEA and auction off all of their property to pay down the Bush-era debt.
This behavior is sadly not unprecedented. The courts have, so far, been lenient on the police when they "tag along" with regulatory inspectors who just so happen to be visiting a site of interest to the police. Here is an example of what I am talking about that happened in Prince William County, VA. Here is another write up on the same subject. Fortunately, the courts are slowly wising up to what is going on here. Those cases are not quite the same, but the courts have generally been a lot more willing to allow fourth amendment violations to occur if they happen under the auspices of a "regulatory inspection" by regulators who just so happen have to have the authority to shaft you, than a "criminal inspection" by the police.
The whole issue of bandwidth infringement could easily be handled by the courts with no need for a regulatory agency. After all its really only the radio stations that would have a potential problem with bandwidth, and that mainly on the edges of their broadcasting area. Customer expectations would keep all other services from using the same bandwidth as someone else. After all, who wants their phone calls to have crosstalk? It would be resolved very quickly. And beyond that, smaller devices simply dont have the signal strength to do any interference. That wifi router in the house doesnt reach very far and the use of a MAC address on the router virtually gauantees that no device will ever be confused as to which one it is talking to. There have been instances of bad hardware with the same MAC being given to multiple devices but this is easily solvable by spoofing a MAC address. And if someone spoofs an address to gain access to your device, again its an issue for the courts, not for a regulatory agency, as it is an issue of private property.
They'd better start issuing body armor if they want to pretend they're the FBI.