...no? I can't read your HTTP communication merely by being with propagation distance. I have to actually have control over the communication channel. Which I don't.

For starters, I've definitely been in shared facilities where "controlling the communication channel" was pretty trivial, including unsecured WiFi, ethernet switches that broadcast everything on every port, etc. Second, I'm actually referring to how little most people care about privacy or security in general. In a disaster scenario where you need backup communications because all other infrastructure has failed, privacy wouldn't have occurred to me to be high on the list of concerns suddenly.

In many cases that propagation is just the distance to the nearest Starbucks WiFi.