Federal court rejects Google definition of Wi-Fi data as "radio communication"
A federal appeals court has rejected a bid by Google to dismiss a group of lawsuits that accuse it of violating the Federal Wiretap Act, turning aside Google's claim that unencrypted wireless data it collected with its Street View cars counted as "radio communication." The decision means security researchers will need to think twice before capturing data from unencrypted Wi-Fi signals, Hanni Fakhoury writes, and it also means law enforcement agencies will have to obtain a wiretap order to do so.
