Legality of Packet Sniffing

I thought some people here might be interested in this, since it has 
come up in discussions (both on-list and over-beers) in the past. The 
following paper is going to appear at IMC'07 in a couple of days. It 
details the legal issues associated with doing measurement-driven 
research on networks (i.e. sniffing and then studying). Although the 
paper is targeted at the specific questions of the CS research 
community, I think the legal discussion can be mapped to "hobbyist 
sniffers" (i.e. war-drivers et al.) too:

Paul Ohm, Douglas Sicker, and Dirk Grunwald, "Legal Issues
Surrounding Monitoring During Network Research (Invited Paper)",
Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference, October 2007.
http://www.imconf.net/imc-2007/papers/imc152.pdf

Abstract:

This work was motivated by a discussion that two of the
coauthors (computer science professors) had with the other
coauthor (a law professor and a former computer crime Trial
Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice), in which it
was pointed out that some of the network measurements
that the computer scientists were thinking of making might
potentially violate Federal laws.
    Several Federal laws prohibit or restrict network moni-
toring and the sharing of records of network activity. These
laws are designed to protect online privacy. They apply both
to private parties and government agents, although the de-
tails vary depending on who is doing the monitoring. The
most important thing to note is that none of these laws con-
tain any specific exceptions or safe harbors for scientific or
academic research. The laws are complex, but they follow
a basic pattern. First, certain types of network monitor-
ing and data access are prohibited. People who violate the
prohibitions may be sued by the people whose privacy they
invade and potentially prosecuted and convicted of federal
crimes (i.e., misdemeanor and felony convictions).
    In this paper, we will examine these laws and consider
what they might mean for the network measurement com-
munity. Although we focus on U.S. Federal Law, we also
highlight general trends and approaches in state and inter-
national laws that impact network researchers. We will ex-
amine the steps commonly taken in prior research in net-
work measurement to respect user privacy, and we will com-
pare those approaches to the evolving legal rules. We will
also consider whether legislative reform is needed, describe
steps that researchers might take when pursuing such work
in light of the legal rules, and propose future technical and
policy-related steps the community can take to focus more
attention on user privacy.

--
Caleb Phillips

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