[mmaldacker]

Legal problems and technical problems aside, what are you going to gain by intercepting the traffic? Most of the traffic is going to be market data and order data which are public information (well, order data is public once it hits the exchange). You can take advantage of knowing about order data before it hits the exchange but then you'd have to transmit that information extremely fast, which using a drone (and against those huge radio tower) is going to be pretty much impossible.

[aaren]

You could intercept and then re-emit false market data, then trade against whatever position this puts the users of that data in.

Whether you could do this, and do it without being noticed, I'm not so sure.

[scottlocklin]

You're going to use ... what ... to re-remit false market data? A model airplane, compared to a giant tower designed to send microwaves over vast distances. Sure, that sounds possible. As for intercepting the signal for profit ... what are you going to do with it? The microwaves are already the shortest path.

[aaren]

I agree, it would be technically difficult.

My point is that there is a mechanism by which you could profit: false market data. Whether you could remain undetected and whether this could actually be implemented technically, legally or logistically seems uncertain.

[frandroid]

I like the drone idea, but it wouldn't have enough power... Unless it was stationed right by the receiver, where it wouldn't need too much?