On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 22:28:05 -0400, WaIIy wrote:

On Sun, 23 Sep 2012 06:43:06 +0700, Bruce
wrote:

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 09:53:35 -0400, WaIIy wrote:

On Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:58:21 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Wed, 19 Sep 2012 09:15:00 -0400, WaIIy wrote:

As always, it depends on who you talk to:

They stole data. Period, no debate here.

===

I think stealing is probably the wrong word. As far as anyone knows
they did not use the data for any sort of criminal purpose. I agree
that it was wrong to collect it however, even though it was
unencrypted.

Suppose someone drives down your street and makes a log of your
address, house color, type of driveway and number of front facing
windows. Is that stealing data?

If your car is in front of your house with the keys in it, I might as
well drive it away.

It isn't quite the same thing. If you broadcast a radio signal the
courts have ruled that anyone can listen to it. That ruling dates back
to the early days of broadcast television and the days of "decoders"
to unscramble the T.V. signal.

and that isn't the same thing.

I suspect that the courts would first ask whether the signal/data was
encoded or not. If not you would have trouble proving theft.

--
Cheers,
Bruce