Scan New England Terms of Use.                                                   
Version 15 - January 19, 2023

Effective January 01, 2020


Scan New England Website (Section I)

A) All members of the forums, and those who apply to be members, hereby agree to the terms in this document.

B) This policy applies to all sections of Scan New England, including any sub-page, area, or wiki page.

C) This policy may be adjusted based on site changes, personnel changes, or any other yet to be determined issues at the discretion of the administrators. All changes will be documented within updated policy releases.

D) Users of Scan New England do so at their own risk. Scan New England isn’t liable for any damages that occur from the website, nor are we responsible for any losses incurred from the site, or for the use of the information on the site. Scan New England holds no liabilities to any member, group or agency, and membership is strictly voluntary at a privately owned and operated Internet website. No rights are implied or granted by the use of this site. Use is on a strictly voluntary basis only. Information contained in the pages of the website are for hobbyist purposes and should not be used for professional endeavors. Scan New England shall incur no liability for damages caused by the professional use of potentially inaccurate information.

E) Data and information provided on Scan New England is for private, not for profit, use only. No data or information from here may be copied or sold, or otherwise used, for personal or professional gain.

F) PDF copies of this user guide shall always be available on a link at the bottom of this page.

Scan New England Membership (Section II)

A) Membership at Scan New England is not guaranteed, and membership may be limited, restricted or revoked at any time, without notice, at the discretion of the board managers. Members who attempt to reapply for membership under false pretenses, or in an attempt to deceive the board moderators, will be denied and blocked from the site at the IP Level.

B) When applying for membership, requested user names may not contain the following:

                        1) Your full email address.

                        2) Vulgarity

                        3) Unicode, HTML, or other coding

                        4) A name that is intended to deceive, such as swapping an “L or an “I”

                        5) In use by another member

                        6) Your SSN, or other information you wouldn’t want displayed on a public web page.

C) All users must have a valid email address. If your email has changed and you can’t login to the site, contact any of the three board administrators to reset your password and email. If you attempt to register a second account because your email has changed, the second account will not be approved. Emails are kept confidential, and only the three board administrators can see them at any time. Users are only allowed one account at a time.

D) Scan New England members who have been previous convicted of a felony will not be granted membership here. Likewise, existing members who are also convicted of a felony shall be banned from participating on these forums, and blocked at the IP level.

Scan New England message board and discussion areas (all inclusive) (Section III)

A) Scan New England is a “radio monitoring hobbyist/enthusiast” website, where discussions can contain any scanning related topics, unless specifically prohibited in the sub forum description, or if they fall under the following, which are not allowed on Scan New England in any forum, sub forum, chat session, or private message.

1) Any hate speech. Derogatory speech considered hate speech by normal standards is not allowed on the site in any location.

2) Attacks, bullying or libel on other people, will not be tolerated. This also includes harassament, intimidation, belittling, or otherwise making another member feel unwelcome to post.

3) Editorial or Opinion pieces about governmental, public or private agencies, public or private businesses, persons, groups, or others not defined here.

4) Information that could endanger the lives or safety of others, including location details, personal information, or other items that fall into this general category. This includes public safety officials, government officials, and military personnel

5) Radio information such as public safety and government repeater input information, under-cover, secret, intentionally unlisted, or otherwise "hidden from the public" frequencies, talk groups and control data, including "identifiable" information such as Radio IDs or Aliases.

6) Information that contains personal private information about any individuals, regardless if they are a member or Scan New England or not, such as phone numbers, addresses, pictures, etc..

                        7) Information about ongoing criminal activity, such a steak-outs, surveillence, riots, large protests, and other "high risk" on-going events. This includes information about departments, officers, radio channels, online streams and other related terms.

           
            8) Discussions which are political in nature.

9) Discussion of illegal monitoring activity, such as intercepting telephone and pager traffic, or decrypting radio communications, including information used on encrypted radio channels, frequencies, talk groups, etc..

10) Solicitation, or advertising of any kind, other than what is allowed in the classified forums, under the terms of the classified forums.

                        11) Disclosure of any private messages or emails, not intended for public communication.

12) Discussion of any item which the member, and/or other members of Scan New England is in litigation, or will be in litigation.

                        13) Discussion of any material which is deemed confidential.

                        14) Vulgarity

15) Posting of any copy written article or material. It is considered generally acceptable to post the first two full sentences and provide a URL to the article in question. Any “fully copied” article that violates this will be truncated or deleted.

16) Posting the exact same item in Multiple Forums (“Cross posting”)

17) Posting a response of “bump” or of zero substance strictly for the purpose of keeping a topic on “top” of a forum. “Bump” posts or similar will be deleted.

18) Posting to strictly get post counts up. Post counts have zero meaning other than for new members at the site.

19) Information on how to program, modify, or otherwise alter radio equipment designed to transmit, that could potentially be used on bands or systems not authorized by the posting party. This includes radios not authorized by the FCC for use in the United States. This also includes providing data on connecting to radio repeaters or trunked systems such as repeater inputs, or other such information.

 

B) Posts shall not have the following IMAGES embedded in them

                        1) Nudity, or seemingly inappropriate content

                        2) Living persons, or people.

                        3) Information that crosses into any of the categories listed above.

                        4) Copywritten images without proper attribution to the original author.

C) Posts shall not have hypertext links or external links to inappropriate websites, nor shall they include any coding which alters how this site is viewed. Members who post links to websites deemed inappropriate may have their ability to post hyper links turned off, or have their membership suspended or removed., depending on the severity of the link posted.

D) Posts shall not have any attachments of software or executable files of any kind. Files which are considered normally shared, such as pdf, rsf, etc., will be allowed to be shared. Intentional sharing of a file which knowingly contains a virus, hack ware, malware, or any other software that is illegal to own or possess by the FBI, will be cause for immediate termination and blocking at the IP level. Sharing of copy written material is strictly prohibited. Copy written documents or files that would normally have to be purchased to view, will also not be allowed to be shared. Confidential documents should also not be shared.

E) Fundraising posts will not be allowed at any time.

F) User posts may be altered, edited or deleted at any time, by board administration or board moderators without further notice, and without any clarification.

G) Users may be warned about violating the above posting guidelines. Continual abuse of the above guidelines by a user may result in a user being suspended, or removed from the website.

H) Information on this site, including in the wiki, databases, etc., may also be deleted without any previous notification and without any clarification.

I) If a user has a complaint regarding any posting in the message forum, and believes it is in violation of the rules listed here, or wants the post deleted, must use the “report post to moderator” function on the post. Reporting a post does not guarantee the post will be deleted. Each will be reviewed.

J) User name-changes will be done on a case by case only, and only under extreme circumstances. Users who wish to change their name, must do so in writing to the board administration staff. Users who get approved for name changes, will have their previous name listed under their current name for a period of 90 days. Exceptions where the name change will be automatically granted are: Changes in amateur radio call signs, changes in martial status that changes your name reference, (i.e. if you use your initials “ABC” but your last name changes to F, we will update to “ABF”)., under court order, or if you have a previous agreement with the board administrators prior to the release date of this document.

K) Several sections of the message forum are available only to registered users. Registered users are manually approved by the administrative team. Email addresses used for registration must be valid and will be verified by the administration team prior to approval

L) Posts about information during large scale events, that may endanger the safety or lives of public safety officials, including riots, demonstrations, crime sprees, will not be allowed to be posted on this site. Information that details operations involved in de-escalating events to ensure the safety of the public and public safety officials, including radio information, shall not be posted at anytime.  Any posts of this nature will be deleted immediately and repeat posts by a single offender will result in the offender being suspended at a to be determined interval.

 

Scan New England Staff and Users (Section IV)

A) Board members fall into the following categories.

            1) Board Administrators, are the heads of the board. They perform all the normal functions of moderators, plus handle administrative duties such as membership management, board management, and dealing with complaints. Board administrators are identified with a user name in purple.

                        • The board administrators are:
                                                Scott Halligan (Scott)
                                                Bill Dunn (ecps92)

            2) Webmaster. Is the site owner. Along with the above functions, is also responsible for all financial, technical and contractual ends of the websites, and has the final say in all board decisions. The webmaster is identified with a user name in purple.

 

                        • The board owner is:

                                                Mike Fitzpatrick (W1KNE)

 

            3) Board Moderators, “moderators”, are the controllers of the forum. Their job is to enforce compliance with the rules here, to enhance user interactions by their own interactions, to continue keeping the forum running smoothly by moving, editing and adjusting posts to fit the forums. Moderators may also perform duties such as editing or deleting posts that don’t comply with the rules above. Moderators are not required to perform all functions, but rather encouraged. Board moderators are expected to be regular, contributing members to the forums and/or wiki. Moderators who do not log into the site in a six month period may have their moderator rank removed. Moderators report to the board administrators and webmaster. Moderators may make changes to posts without notifications to the regular users. Board moderators are considered representatives of Scan New England, and their actions on the forum, including how they interact with other members, are considered the same, therefor, they are held a higher level. No moderator may extort, bully, threaten, or in any way, use their power to persuade a poster from posting, nor may they demean a member to also persuade them to or from post(ing). Board moderators are identified with a user name in Green.

            4) Regular users. Any registered user who is an active participant at Scan New England. All regular users are normal users who have hit a posting count threshold, and are considered “active”. A registered user may use and or post in all parts of the forum, except forums designated as moderator/admin access only. Inactive users who have not logged onto Scan New England in one calendar year will have their membership deleted. If you are service member or of some other entity that will restrict you from being able to access the site, please contact the board administration to keep your user name active.

            5) Newly registered users. Users who have either recently registered or have a post count below a set threshold. Newly registered users may not have access to the classified forums. Newly registered users are also moderated, and have to have an administrator or moderator approve their first few forum postings.

            6) Moderated users are users who are put into a moderation queue by the Board Administration for various reasons, not only including violation of the rules above, or for conduct not conducive to this forum.

7) If a user has a complaint about another user, they are to contact one of the moderators immediately. If the user has a complaint about a moderator or a board manager, they are to contact Mike Fitzpatrick/W1KNE.

8) Immediate threats of harm to other users, will be immediately reported to law enforcement authorities. We will fully comply with all legal investigations.

 

 

Scan New England WIKI (Section V)

 

A) Scan New England maintains large media wiki site, which contains radio, frequency and other data that pertains to scanning for New England, and Eastern New York state.

B) The WIKI database is maintained by users designated as board moderators above, and overseen by board administration, also above.

C) Data for the wiki comes 100% from user input, and user input from Scan New England users is both encouraged and welcome. All data is assumed accurate unless clarified otherwise.

D) Board moderators who are wiki editors are assumed to have knowledge in wiki editing, and proficiency in maintaining a well organized and thought out database. It is also assumed they have basic understanding of modern scanning technology, so as to understand what is put into the wiki.

E) The wiki prides itself on both accuracy and good workmanship. The duty of the board moderators is to maintain that level of proficiency, and the board administrators to oversee it.

F) User submissions are to be processed in a timely manner. By processed, this means either the data is entered into the wiki, rejected from entry into the wiki, or the submission is moved.

G) Board moderators are heavily encouraged to “process” user submissions, and “share the work”.
While board moderators are not required to be wiki editors, those who are normal wiki editors
should continue to process all submissions.

H) Data within the wiki is copy written for use at Scan New England only. Unauthorized copying of data from the wiki for use on other sites, blogs, news postings, etc., is strictly prohibited under US copyright law. Scan New England falls under the domain control of NECRAT, which is an active copyright holder.

I) Board moderators/wiki editors shall have the same user name across both pages.

 

 

© 2020, 2023 Scan New England, Scan-NE, Scannewengland. All information on Scan New England, unless otherwise mentioned, is copyright by Scan New England as a collective, and NECRAT/Mike Fitzpatrick as the owner.

 

 Written by :      Mike Fitzpatrick

Approved by:   Mike Fitzpatrick
                        Scott Halligan
                        Bill Dunn.

Any questions about policy can be directed to w1kne@scan-ne.com

A PDF version of this is available here .