It's just that the equipment it takes to reliably do so, from
any reasonable distance in situations where you do NOT have access to a
direct connection, is well out of the realm of tools that the
'consumer' can easily get (or know how to use).

Oh, you are soooooo wrong. I'll leave it at that. :-)

And it can be easily defeated by implementing basic security
measures on the wireless network. Try again?

That MANY people don't do BTW. It is VERY possible and I'll leave it at that.
Don't think it can't be done because I KNOW it can and pretty easy at that.