May 29, 1988

DON’T SAY YOU WEREN’T WARNED: I heard last week that my item some time back about cellular phones was the talk of the airwaves because I pointed out that these phone calls could be monitored by anyone with inclination and equipment.

If y’all are so worried about privacy, you really ought to get talking about what’s going on with ACA 36, the “Electronic Bill of Rights” amendment to the California constitution that is now meeting with unexpected and curious opposition.

Its raison d’tre is to insure that electronic communication — all the stuff you do on bulletin boards, MCI Mail, messaging systems, ARPANET, you name it — is equated with existing protected forms of communication, i.e. speaking, writing and publishing. ACA 36 also extends existing protections against unwarranted search and seizure to computer data, equating them with books, papers, etc.

Sounds like a natural, eh? First introduced by Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles) in early 1987, it sailed through every committee, but is now stalled in the Senate Judiciary. Why?

Seems that all of a sudden the California District Attorneys Association (CDAA) has decided to come out against the bill — even though it was neutral until less than two weeks ago.

In fact, says Bob Jacobson, assistant to Moore, the CDAA’s neutral stance even helped the State Attorney General’s office withdraw its initial opposition to the bill over a year ago.

As a result, the Judiciary Committee — stacked with law-enforcement types — is dragging its heels on passing it. the CDAA is saying the bill is “unnecessary” because electronic communications are already covered under the regular ol’ Bill of Rights.

I say hogwash. Electronic communication is easy enough to monitor as it is, and I for one want unreasonable search and seizure to be clearly and unequivocally against the law.

The next hearing is June 14, so call Moore’s office at (916) 445-8800, get a copy of the bill, and start a forum on CompuServe or something. Tell committee chair Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), (415) 582-8800, how you feel. Vice Chair is Ed Davis (R-Chatsworth), the former LAPD chief. His number is (818) 368-1171. Call him, too.

THE NEWSMAN COMETH THROUGH: News junkies always buy all the local papers everywhere they go. And sometimes obsession pays off. That’s what happened when Rusty Weston, a newshound for Macintosh Today magazine (my “real” job), went to Pittsburgh to visit Carnegie-Mellon University.

He picked up the Post-Gazette and the Press and early notice that our very own Steve Jobs and Next Inc. are looking at Pittsburgh (and Cambridge, Mass.) as regional headquarters sites. And, according to the Post-Gazette story, Next is already advertising for sales, engineering and marketing managers — so the well has not yet run dray, despite Next’s eons-long gestation period.

Richard Cyert, president of CMU, told the Post-Gazette reporter he was sworn to secrecy about the Next machine, but says it will be announced in July. We won’t hold you to it, Rich.

MOTOR TRENDS: Car-shop and not want to commit homicide at the same time? Only is you’ve got the new simulation software that’s coming out.

The only one I’ve played with so far is the free one my friend got from Buick. It runs on a Macintosh, and when you click certain spots on-screen, you can rev the engine, open and close the trunk, test your braking reflexes, all kinds of cool stuff. It’s called the “Great American Road Test.”

Then last week, I got some junk (uh, direct) mail from Ford, charging $4.95 for essentially the same thing, called the “Ford Simulator.”

It lets you load up five different cars with options, print out a window sticker and calculate payments. You also get to do some test track simulations. Beats hell out of Joe Isuzu, I must say.

DID YOU KNOW: Friends in high places assure me that the publisher of New York’s hot humor mag, Spy — one Thomas Phillips Jr. — is the son of Thomas Phillips Sr., chairman of Raytheon Corp. of Lexington, Mass. Yep, the head of that multimillion-dollar maker of everything from military equipment to semiconductors to appliances begat the irreverent wit whose magazine regularly calls real-estate mogul Donald Trump a “stubby-fingered vulgarian.”

Must have been some great dinner-table conversations.