Google Takes Wi-Fi Snooping Argument to Supreme Court → civil liability?

I have a hard time imagining someone can make a case for civil damages. Since they'd have to prove some sort of monetary loss and since Google didn't do anything with the data, it seems like a non-starter. If Google used it for.....targeting ads or something, maybe. If they used the data in such a way as to gain some economic advantage over those whose data it was, then ok.

If I had to guess, it would be the same idiotic claim that the govt makes when someone breaks into their network, like that "hacker" from the UK that broke into NASA looking for evidence of UFO coverup and the govt claims that he caused a big bunch of "damage" and they incurred large expenses to fix that damage, when it was actually nothing but applying reasonable security that should've been there in the first place. So, I can see some homeowner now claiming that once Google "intruded" onto their network by capturing a couple of packets, the homeowner had to spend money to get the Geek Squad out from Best Buy to secure their WiFi. Pretty weak all around.

yet if that is the case Google saved them money.

Imagine how much they could be out of the neighbor's kid used it to download movies. the MPAA likely would not take "my wifi was not secured" as an excuse and just go away.

My router is in a concrete basement with low power. It can't be seen beyond my property so I don't bother with encryption.

That, of course, is dependent on what kind of sniffer hardware you're dealing with. The point is that ALL wireless communications can be vulnurable. the question is always "is it worth the time" to crack it