[barrkel]

Why is it normal to be allowed to eavesdrop on conversations you're not a party to? Wouldn't it be odd for that to be the default position?

There's a cultural norm embedded here. What you think is odd and what's normal is strongly dependent on your priors.

[laumars]

It's not a question of cultural positions but more a question about why airport communications were added to an exclusion list when it's perfectly legal listen into all other private signals bar police radio (as far as I'm aware). Even collecting data on private WiFi broadcasts is fair game; as we learned when it was exposed that Google Street Car was doing just this.

It's pretty obvious why it was made illegal to eavesdrop police radio but less clear why airport communications are also illegal. So I find it odd (baring in mind I'm speaking from a position of ignorance - which is why I'm raising this question) that airport communications were added to what seems a pretty sparse list of excluded broadcasts.

Maybe it's just another example of laws not keeping up with technology? ie that law originates from a time when radio transmissions were pretty limited to private and public broadcasts whereas nowadays most of our private communications are also broadcasted via some frequency and waveform - albeit we now have automated encryption/decryption techniques to protect our correspondence. So if the law was written now it would be more like a whitelist of content you could listen into (eg radio and TV broadcasts) rather than a blacklist of specifics you could not. I'm just guessing here though.

[germanier]

Capturing any communication is a criminal offense in Germany unless you were explicitly allowed to or it was intended as a broadcast. This is a constitutionally guaranteed right of the people communicating. There is no blacklist. Police, ATC, and similar are not even mentioned in the laws that are used to prosecute those cases.

As far as I know there have been investigations into the Google wifi case but I have never heard of anything coming out of it.

The law in its current form is pretty new, it even was clarified just a few months ago to specifically mention non-acoustic communication.

[laumars]

Thank you. Maybe the same is true in the UK (where I reside) as well and I was mistaken about it being legal?

I'm not sure if this is the relevant legislation but I've found the following in section 48 of the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006:

A person commits an offence if, otherwise than under the authority of a designated person—

(a) he uses wireless telegraphy apparatus with intent to obtain information as to the contents, sender or addressee of a message (whether sent by means of wireless telegraphy or not) of which neither he nor a person on whose behalf he is acting is an intended recipient, or

(b) he discloses information as to the contents, sender or addressee of such a message.

Source: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/36/section/48

[fixermark]

Cultural priors indeed.

"Why is it normal to be banned from interpreting electromagnetic flux that's being pushed through the space around me, in my house, and literally through my body, without my consent?"

[barrkel]

Society gets to make up the rules, not individuals.