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Wardriver Charged with Theft of Communications

Posted by michael on from the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction dept.

BiggsTheCat writes "A number of news sources are reporting that a Toronto man is the first to be charged with "theft of communications" (Canadian Criminal Code S. 342.1) for downloading child pornography using someone else's residential wireless network. The "War Driver" was caught naked from the waist down driving the wrong way down a one-way street, with a laptop in hand. The Edmonton Sun warns that 'War Driving ... is becoming more and more common among perverts trying to avoid online detection'. Yeah."

2 of 678 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A major point here seems to be.... by Shakrai · · Score: 2, Redundant
    That's not a very fair anology. By using my neighbors phone I'd be preventing them from use of that phone. Not true with wireless, outside of very extreme circumstances.

    No, but your slowing down his Internet connection. What if he is trying to download something? And what if he pays for his Internet connection on a per-byte basis? Highly unlikely, but not impossible.

    In the grandparents example (dead Internet connection.. neighbors is alive and wide open) all he had to do was walk next door and say "Can I use your AP for awhile?". He did not choose to do that. Thus he broke the law and stole a resource that didn't belong to him.

    If my electric stops working is it ok for me to plug an extension cord into my neighbors house without his permission just because he doesn't have a lock on the outdoor receptacle? Common sense here people....

    --
    I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
    We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
  2. More anti-free FUD by cyberformer · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I'm against dangerous driving and child abuse, but charging him with "theft of communications" is an extremely dangerous precendent. Using free Wi-Fi networks is something that a lot of people do, and I've even seen Steve Ballmer say that he does it. Of course, that was when he was trying to sell Windows with Wi-Fi support. He'll change his tune when Palladium arrives.

    The propaganda against free Wi-Fi is particularly worrying because most of the complaints aren't about "free as in beer" but about "free as in speech": Many powerful people within the government and corporations are trying to associate anonymous Internet access with evils ranging from pedophilia to terrorism to spam. And the Edmonton Sun article goes even further:

    The man used Kazaa, a popular file-sharing web program commonly used to share music, to download the graphic material.

    In a study using 12 words associated with child pornography, the U.S. General Accounting Office found that 42% of 1,286 files on the peer-to-peer site contained child porn.

    This is obvious BS (isn't "peer-to-peer site" an oxymoron?), but it shows that the RIAA is succeeding in its campaign to get P2P associated with child porn.