The JFK post got me thinking...
 

Is it possible to install some kind of software on your laptop so that when u use it in for example a hotel, others won't be able to find out what you are sending or receiving from the Internet?

make sure you're the page you're on is HTTPS when submitting sensitive information

for email, you can use a 3rd party service like hushmail.com for easy encrypted webmail

Packet sniffing, you don't even need to install anything on the target PC, just monitoring their data and with wireless being so popular, its easier than ever.
WG

if someone physically got into his machine or an unprotected share & installed a keylogger or something thats one thing

but if he was just being sniffed (for instance at the epass login page) it would have helped

yep. nothing is as safe as wired directly to the wall.

Public wireless is always wide open and anyone with even slightly decent skills and tools can sniff ALL traffic on the wireless network.

If you are connecting via https, then that traffic is encrypted and safe. Yes...if it were weak encryption it's possible that someone could decrypt it, but with all the low hanging unencrypted fruit, they wouldn't bother.

Either way, always use a VPN or SSL when on a public wireless network. Of course, the safest thing to do is to just not do anything that you wouldn't want a stranger to see.

-- Bill

Something must have been installed on his machine as epassporte automatically redirects to their https page so it is doubtful a packet sniffer would bother trying to unencrypt that data if intercepted.