[Myrddin]

Stealing wi-fi bandwidth is not a passive, receive only activity. It requires your device to actively transmit to the AP to establish a connection. Listening to cell phone calls with a scanner is already a violation of the law...and that is a purely passive act...most of the time. If you hear something "interesting" and use the information, you can be criminally prosecuted. The laws are already on the books.

People are caught when they divulge the information they received eavedropping on a private communication. Cable companies catch thieves by using a truck mounted receiver with a directional antenna to pick up the local oscillators of a cable box. They make lots of digital noise with a fairly specific signature. It's a paying proposition to catch and fine the thieves.

[mamelukesabre]

You seem to know alot about the electromagnetic spectrum and wireless communications. I’d like to ask you an unrelated question.

I’ve read that there is a new hobby called amateur television. People are transmitting television signals on very specific frequencies that are allocated by the FCC specifically for amateurs. I don’t remember what frequencies are allocated for this but I think it is in the UHF range. Supposedly, anyone with a cable ready TV and a cable box can pick these signals up.

My question is, what the heck does a cable ready TV have to do with receiving these airwave signals? Doesn’t cable TV receive signals over a wire only? THere’s no signal on the airwaves, is there? What are they talking about and why does it require a cable ready TV to pick up these amateur signals?

Oh, as for your discussion about how they catch people stealing cable TV, couldn’t someone rig up a simple faraday cage around their cable box to render the cable box “invisible” to their cable box detectors?