So they have to give you free WiFi with no strings, stipulations, or benefit to them?
You're free to not get on the WiFi if you don't want to, and frankly if you're hopping on any public WiFi, you've more or less lost any practical claim to privacy in the first place.
That might be your opinion, but I think you are wrong. And not only that, but where I live you would even be legally wrong. If you open your access point for public use here and you then go and look at other people's traffic, that is illegal and you can go to jail for it.
And no, they don't have to give me free WiFi - they just have to not snoop on me. Just try to transfer your argument to a scenario that doesn't involve WiFi or facebook, but rather, say, tap water and as a prerequisite you have to confess belief in Allah. Illegal? Certainly not. Totally inappropriate? I would say so.
You see, this is not a legal argument, it's about ethics, about what makes a society worthwhile to live in, not about what the minimal standards are that we enforce using state power.
They are legally and morally permitted to make snooping on your Internet traffic part of what you have to agree to in order to use their WiFi.
The ability for a person to set the terms in which others interact with his private property is what makes this society worthwhile to live in. People can't force their way into your stuff without you setting conditions for that use.
And you're correct that looking at other people's traffic is illegal. It's illegal where I come from too.
There is no such thing as "ethically permitted". Ethics is not about being allowed or not being allowed to do things, but about how to do things in such a way that it's a nice way to live together. You see, the general principle that you have control over what you own is one that in general makes a nice way to live together. That does not mean, though, that any conditions you technically might be able to set also make for a nice way to live together. If you have tons of bread, say, and your neighbour is starving, you sure can set as a condition that he has to cut of his left arm before you give him bread, and he obviously is free to refuse your offer. But I hope you would not consider treating your neighbour that way to be the ethically right thing to do that would make for a generally nice way to live in society.
Oh, and by the way, there even are legal restrictions on the kinds of conditions you can set, at least where I live. If you reserve the right to cut off your neighbour's left arm after he has accepted your bread, for example, you would not be able to enforce that contract. And you wouldn't get your bread back either.
As I think that the ability to communicate privately is similary important as protection from bodily harm, I would think it would be appropriate to have similar norms as far as snooping on communication is concerned - and even where they are not legal norms, they would still make good ethical norms.
So, no, noone should be able to force you to provide access to your WiFi, but still, if you do provide access, you should go to jail if you do listen in, with contract clauses allowing you to do so being unenforcable.
I disagree. Well, strictly speaking, asking for identifying information might be OK, but storing it or communicating it to other parties is not, at least not without some justification why that is needed.
Control over your personally identifiable information is similarly important in the modern world as is control over your property, and where the two come into conflict, appropriate solutions have to be found.
