It's nonsense. Any WiFi system using WA-2 encrypts traffic and it simply isn't possible to "sniff" packets for iPlayer activity.
In any event, there is a much better approach. Replay and streaming services are increasingly using apps and plugins which are downloaded (it doesn't matter if it's a tablet, phone, laptop, smart TV or any other device). It's possible for the replay/streaming service to gather the public IP address and geo-location data via APIs. Even if GPS is not available on the device, there are other methods of establish location information to various levels of accuracy using a range of methods. On my non-GPS enabled laptop, the location information is accurate to about 10 metres (provided I don't move it around much). There is also device profiling information available too.
Combine the geographic location, time/date, access patterns and public IP address along with licencing records an there could well be enough information for a court to order and ISP to hand over the IP address allocation to customer name information. That's already done for pirating cases of course.
The following gives information on how it's done using HTML5, but the techniques are, of course, general.
http://www.andygup.net/html5-geolocation-api-%E2%80%...
I'm not saying this has all been done yet, but it appears to be perfectly feasible. Of course it might (and I do emphasis might) be the case that the user has to give permission for location information to be passed over (as happens with, say, Google Maps), but that might not apply to apps an, even if it does, it's easy enough for the app/plug-in to be disabled if it is refused permission.
Edited by deleted (Sat 06-Aug-16 23:00:14)
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Michael_Chare
