Posted on 07/07/2005 5:02:32 AM PDT by blackeagle
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Police have arrested a man for using someone else's wireless Internet network in one of the first criminal cases involving this fairly common practice.
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Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony.
Police say Smith admitted using the Wi-Fi signal from the home of Richard Dinon, who had noticed Smith sitting in an SUV outside Dinon's house using a laptop computer.
The practice is so new that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement doesn't even keep statistics, according to the St. Petersburg Times, which reported Smith's arrest this week.
Innocuous use of other people's unsecured Wi-Fi networks is common, though experts say that plenty of illegal use also goes undetected: such as people sneaking on others' networks to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats.
Security experts say people can prevent such access by turning on encryption or requiring passwords, but few bother or are unsure how to do so.
Wi-Fi, short for Wireless Fidelity, has enjoyed prolific growth since 2000. Millions of households have set up wireless home networks that give people like Dinon the ability to use the Web from their backyards but also reach the house next door or down the street.
It's not clear why Smith was using Dinon's network. Prosecutors declined to comment, and a working phone number could not be located for Smith.
Anyway, it's a mess. I believe I saw another version of this story where the owner of the WAP said something to the effect that he knew he should secure the WAP and how to go about doing it, but he just never bothered with it. In that case, I think the alleged perpetrator, such as he is, might have a decent argument that the owner was fully aware that people could access it and either tacitly approved or at least didn't really care about it. In which case, the owner is the one who should be on the hook for serving up free internet to the neighborhood, which is almost certainly a violation of his TOS. Hey, maybe that HBO analogy isn't so bad after all ;)
A car is not internet access.
wifi hunting is not stealing.
I don't do it, but I don't find anything morally objectionable about it unless you use it for shady purposes. By not locking it down, you are willfully making it available and open to everyone like it is a service you are providing.
IOw, if your service is open to the public, it therefore becomes a service you are providing.
If you want to make it private, you have to lock it.
Otherwise, it is fair game. If I am driving by, I don't know if the connection is private or public.
All I know is that I found a connection. It could be a public building nearby is offering the connection. I really don't know.
You simply can't say sniffing is immoral. If you want your connection to be private, put a stinkning password on it!
What if you don't know you are taking a private connection?
Actually, it's more like someone walking around naked complaining about others looking. When someone steals your car you don't have it. That doesn't apply to your Wi-Fi.
Further, people should not be lulled by a law that their privacy is safe if they don't take precautions.
What if I was a homeowner and was actually willing to give free access to anyone driving by (personally, I don't care if somebody is using it just to surf the net)? No doubt some just don't give a crap if people use their connections or not. I sure would not if I had wireless instead of DSL. I have the computer locked up tight anyway.
you probably can find a PDF version online.
Also google something like preventing wardriving etc.
A short list that most anyone can do:
There is more that you can do, but that short list establishes your clear intent to restrict access to users that you have authorized by MAC address, shared the SSID and shared the WEP key.
More advanced users can invoke WPA with pre-shared keys or the new WPA2 with AES encryption. That's pressing the boundaries of supportable technology.
Uh-oh...
I'll give it the old college try anyway.
Thanks for your help.
Not even close. To steal the car or enter the unlocked door, you have to commit physical trespass ( a crime) and steal it (a crime). The user of the purloined wi fi is NOT depriving anyone of property and/or services and is not commiting trespass, so your analogy is wrong.
As for myself, this is a primary reason I use CAT5 wiring in the house.
If your ISP service charged you by the kilobyte transferred, you would certainly be angry as hell if someone tapped into your WiFi network without your permission. My 1XRTT CDMA connection to the internet is measured in kilobytes transferred each billing period. I would never connect that path where an WiFi intruder could access it.
The presumption should be on the side of public use.
There is simply no way to know if it is a public or private connection, and even if a private connection, if the user meant to lock it (I frankly wouldn't give a crap if somebody was using my connection just for normal web surfing unless they were there all day or downloading big files etc.).
If he sat there for a long time, perhaps that warrants some punishment. If he just was using it for a little bit because he had to send something real fast or check something out, I don't think so. Of course, if the guy told him to stop and he didn't, it doesn't matter how long he did it.
No, the airwaves are regulated by the government via the FCC. The United States is unique in the world with respect to permitting access to transmit and receive traffic over the air. Many countries control access to things as simple as an AM radio to limit the information accessible to the people under their control. Even the UK requires its subjects to pay for a "TV license" to watch the boob tube.
Emitting a signal from a WLAN that is not locked down is NOT an invitation to intrusion. You may sniff the signal all you want, but once you initiate moving traffic through that WLAN without authorization, you are an intruder.
I don't think so - try taping your neighbor's conversations on his 2.4 GHz cordless phone and see how far that defense gets you. ;)
if his security was enabled - then its intrusion. if his WLAN was wide open, there is no case here unless he had some sign on his lawn that said "DO NOT USE MY WIDE OPEN WLAN".
We have a secured wireless network in our home and we often see our neighbor's unsecured network when we're on the computer. There have been a couple of times when we've had problems with ours and my daughter wanted to use the neighbor's to get on line and I won't let her do it. I explained to her that we were not paying for it so we had no right to access it.
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