incrediBILL - 1:45 am on May 16, 2010 (gmt 0)

it is different in Europe. airwaves are not by/for the public. It is much more closed system over there.

OK, granted in Europe the laws may be different.

That means every smart phone with wifi enabled out sniffing for hot spots as you walk or drive is breaking the law, not just Google, doesn't it?

Sounds like anyone running WifiScan is heading for prison.

Not sure how anyone can twist it differently as it's either all OK or never OK.

Some countries actually have laws protecting clueless users.

My point was that laws don't protect your insecure connections.

It's not like the normal breaking of a law, like a burglary, the scofflaw can be on your network right now and you'll never even know it unless they do something really stupid.

OK fine, Google broke the law.

Then isn't every wifi and laptop sniffing phone also breaking the law by definition with millions of scofflaws wandering around unknowingly connecting to networks they shouldn't be accessing and not even aware that the device in their pocket is doing something illegal?

It's the ones wandering around sniffing for malicious purposes [webmasterworld.com] you should worry about and Google, who openly admitted it happened, wouldn't fall in that category IMO.

My point was, and still is, there's no point to getting upset over someone sniffing insecure networks.

It's a simple situation where innovation should prevail over legislation and insecure wifi should simply be banned.

In this event, Google claimed to be only accessing networks without passwords, so why doesn't the legislation require that every wifi device force passwords and we wouldn't be having this discussion, Google wouldn't have been able to sniff those networks.

Perhaps European legislation would best serve the public by BANNING devices that don't require passwords, that allow easily crackable WEP or WPA with shared passwords, basically anything that can be easily breached and then we wouldn't be having this conversation and many others that will surely follow over the folly of legacy junk wifi connections.