Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Public WiFi Pcaps
From: Eric Rand <eric.rand () brownhatsecurity com>
Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 10:36:59 -0700
If you're interesting in ensuring that you do so with appropriate legality, then your best avenue would be to get the permission of the WAP owner--tell them that you're doing research on wifi, that you wanted to get their permission before doing so, and that you're sensitive to privacy etc. You're going to get a lot of "no" answers. Proper social engineering/salesmanship will mitigate some of these if you present it as something of value to the WAP owner--"free site survey to help you increase your security" (provided you follow through with at least some documentation derived from your pcaps) or "it's for a study" might get you some better responses. But yeah--get (written!) permission from the WAP owner and you're likely to be entirely in the clear. N.b. I am not a lawyer; this isn't legal advice; this is just a practical interpretation from my individual perspective. Your mileage may vary; void where prohibited. --ER On 09/08/2014 09:37 AM, Bryan Bickford wrote:
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/
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Current thread:
- Public WiFi Pcaps Bryan Bickford (Sep 09)
- Re: Public WiFi Pcaps Eric Rand (Sep 09)
- Re: Public WiFi Pcaps uname -a (Sep 09)
- Re: Public WiFi Pcaps Wesley Spikes (Sep 10)