Show HN: the government sent me a traffic sniffer

Is anyone else on HN participating in this FCC research project to measure broadband performance? [1] I signed up for more information when the project was announced, some time ago, but a few days ago the device arrived. Technically, it is quite an interesting little box.

It's a generic consumer device, shaped like a wireless router, with an antenna and five RJ-45 jacks. But it works more like a bridge, plugging in between my existing ADSL modem/wireless-router and any wired devices that used to be plugged directly into the existing ADSL. No changes needed to be made to any of the wireless devices in the house---the antenna on the new device sniffs any wireless networks in the vicinity.

It came with a printed copy of the GPL.

There was no configuration required except to plug it in. Within a few hours, I received an email announcing that it had successfully phoned home and offering a login to the web site where I could view graphs showing the results of measurements on my broadband connection.

I've not examined the software in the device yet to figure out what all it's actually doing, but I can't help wondering [2].

[1] http://www.samknows.com/fcc_and_samknows

[2] Two years ago there was a brief discussion on HN about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2837451