Netstumbling and US Law

[Tony Wasson]

> CISSP Wannabe asks: As I read the Electronic Communications Privacy Act
> of 1986, the intentional reception, recording, decoding, and decryption
> of wired and wireless electronic systems is illegal.  Therefore, typing
> snoop, tcpdump, or ethereal on a system (for purposes other than
> troubleshooting) is illegal.  Furthermore, it would appear that
> netstumbling and wardriving is also illegal.

I have heard Netstumbling defended as 'mapping local frequencies in use'. If
you are deploying your own wireless network, you'd want to make sure you do
not interfere with existing networks.