The wording here truly blows my mind;

  any person who intentionally manufactures, assembles, possesses, or sells
  any electronic, mechanical, or other device,
  knowing or having reason to know that
  the design of such device renders it primarily useful for the purpose of the
  surreptitious interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications,
  and that such device *or any component thereof*
  has been *or will be*
  sent through the mail or *transported in interstate or foreign commerce*

What does the phase "primarily useful" even mean in this context? Is the iPhone 'Voice Memo' app primarily useful for these purposes? Or more pointedly, what about mitmproxy or Wireshark?

Forget 3 felonies a day, how about 10^3. Shit, I have in my possession dozens of 'electronic, mechanical, or other device(s) which are primarily useful for [surreptitious] interception of wire, oral, and electronic communications'. Last time I checked they ship with the OS.

I Googled 'primarily useful' they are almost all links to this law itself. On page 2 there was link with the title 'Subwoofers primarily useful for action movies?' which was a nice reprieve.

What differentiates a design, monitoring, or debugging tool designed for the interception of wire / electronic communications from one primarily useful for surreptitious interception? Maybe the later come with cool names like FOXACID and DEEPMINDFUCK. Maybe they should have thought twice before renaming Ethereal to WireShark!

Given the recent press of how civil forfeiture laws have been / are being abused by police departments in this country [1], the idea that the Obama Admninistration would try to float such an idea, much less try to get it passed into legislation is mind boggling. Just shows just how out of touch they really are.

1. http://www.cato.org/events/policing-profit-abuse-civil-asset...