[wplug] On the subject of wardriving...

[Bobbie Eicher]

> Just because one can put a radio in the car and collect raw data does
> not automatically mean they are doing something illegal. Drew and
> others have tried to make this point repeatedly. The FBI have also
> been clear on this matter -- simply associating to an access point is
> not illegal.

The laws being discussed are recent (and untested) Pennsylvania state
laws, not federal laws.  When you ask an FBI agent whether something's
illegal, the odds are that you're going to hear about federal laws,
because it's simply impractical to expect someone who isn't an extreme
specialist to remain fully up to date at all times on the details of
technology-related laws in all 50 states, plus assorted plots of land
that go by other titles.

Therefore, what the FBI has said -- barring the possibility that it
was said since (late) 2002 and was directly addressing the state of
Pennsylvania -- probably wasn't in reference to the same set of laws
that Bill Moran was mentioning as a potential issue.

Even if they did specifically reference the recent PA state laws, the
interpretation wouldn't necessarily be binding.  If everyone
interpreted the law the same way, we wouldn't be able to make use of
the sheer number of lawyers and judges that we've got.  We also
wouldn't need the extensive appeals process that we have.

In non-trivial cases it is, unfortunately, very difficult to have a
clear idea of what is and is not illegal (in the sense that the
authorities can and will enforce it) before there've been a few good
test cases through the courts to build up some precedent.

>>Yet it would be exactly like "wardriving."

On the user end, they're similar enough that it's not much worth
fussing over.  On the ethical and legal levels, they don't necessarily
have much in common.  [To be clear, for the sake of responding to this
sentence I'm simply assuming a definition of "wardriving" that strays
as closely as reasonably possible to the analogy he was trying to
draw.  We've had multiple potential definitions of the term in this
conversation alone, and some of them wouldn't fit the comparison he's
trying to make at all.]

I'm not saying that wardriving [with the definition of your choice] is
legal and I'm not saying it's illegal.  I'm saying that no one really
knows for sure until it's officially been through some kind of attempt
at enforcement.

- Bobbie Eicher