Greetings, I am starting some wifi research and had questions about the legality of listening to unencrypted, public wifi data and publishing subsequent research.
>From what I understand, the wiretap act prohibits listening to communications that were not configured to be readily accessible to the general public. Specifically: ...permits "any person" to intercept an electronic communication made through a system "that is configured so that . . . [the] communication is readily accessible to the general public." I have seen debates about whether an unencrypted access point (e.g. starbucks) qualifies under this exception. Is there any concrete legal precedent that defines this either way? The only one I can think of is the google street view case, and they lost. http://epic.org/privacy/streetview/ >From a technical viewpoint, you are just reading unencrypted radio waves. I see no technical reason that it's any different than listening to an FM radio station. Anyone else have more insight/experience? _______________________________________________ Sent through the Full Disclosure mailing list http://nmap.org/mailman/listinfo/fulldisclosure Web Archives & RSS: http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/
