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War Driving With The Kids
burntfungus writes "War Driving on Vacation with your kids. A drive from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo's Gum Alley (yes, it's bubble gum on the wall), then on to San Francisco. Hundreds of 802.11b Access points available for mapping with Netstumbler. Some in the middle of nowhere."
Just because it is easy doesn't mean it is legal. I am not a lawyer, but I believe the Electronic Communicastions Privacy Act (http://floridalawfirm.com/privacy.html) expressly prohibits the "interception and disclosure" of various forms of electronic communications.
It is against the law to eavesdrop on phone communications, for example, with a scanner. Since +/- 1994 scanner manufacturers have been forced to modify their scanners to skip the frequency ranges commonly populated by cellular telephone traffic.
Also, I believe the law differentiates between snooping an analog signal and snooping a digital one because it could be argued that this signal is "scrambled or encrypted".
Since you need (more) specialized equipment to decode the digital signal and the setup is nontrivial for most folks, you would have a tough time claiming you "accidentally" intercepted LAN traffic from XYZ Corp.
Of course that may not help them once their sensitive information has been leaked to the press or the competition, but it would be naieve to think that you wouldn't be prosecuted if you were caught.