Little known in the passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 3547) this past January was an additional provision (18 U.S.C. 2523) inserted into Title III of the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) prohibiting the monitoring or recording of all forms of commercial air traffic communications including, but not limited to, private air to ground company communications, digital communications as well as ATC communications. Apparently this provision has been long sought by DHS (Homeland Security) and somehow it got sneaked in during the dead of night without public comment or hearings. Not clear to me whether this also applies to non-commercial aircraft or operators, but it kind of makes it moot unless they start segregating frequencies between commercial and private use.
More research is required vis-a-vis what we all do here, whether merely listening to a stream is a violation, etc., especially since the criminal penalties are imprisonment of not more than five years and a fine of not more than $250,000, however you should know that the new provision is effective as of today, April 1st, 2014.
