On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Jon Masters <jonathan@jonmasters.org> wrote:

... snip ...
 
Well, the US law of the land says that you can't listen in on telephone
communications frequencies either. And the CFR advice and FCC
implementation is to require that designers of radio equipment make it
intentionally difficult to modify that equipment to listen in on such
frequencies.

FYI.

The law in Canada is/was a little different.

Your were allowed to listen, but you were not allowed to repeat anything you heard.
Thats why you can/could buy un-blocked scanners here.

... at least thats the way it _used_ to be.

The issue with WiFi isn't so much the ability to 'listen' to traffic,
its the fact that not all 'defined' frequencies that the hardware is
capable of using,  ARE legally usable in all countries.
Now how does a device/laptop 'know' what country its current operating
in is another story.  Its not as if it has a built-n GPS!  :-)