ASFKAP,
could this be seen as breaking the law....?
Depends on the jurisdiction .... but I would guess in your average Westernised country it would probably not be seen as breaking the law if they were not connecting to the other WiFi dishonestly or with the intent of avoiding paying for their own connection.
I'd imagine the reason we can log on to this network is because whoever owns it is not savvy enough to secure it, but if they were savvy enough could they monitor the information thats been sent through their connection...?
Aaah.... but assuming the person who operates the network is a moron, how do you know a savvy individual is not logged into or tampered with the network. It's not exactly difficult to monitor information transmission, and requires even less savvy if unencrypted transmissions are taking place from your browser.
Would suggest you look for ways of changing which network is used by default.