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Man Arrested for Using Open Wireless Network
DaCool42 writes "In Tampa Bay, a man has been arrested for using a wide open WiFi AP. The St. Petersburg Times has the full story. 'It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft,' said Kena Lewis, spokeswoman for Bright House Networks in Orlando."
Also, the poor guy admitted to using the connection too (unauthorized access to a computer network, which is a third degree felony according to the article). Now, if he would have just asked for a lawyer and then shut up, he probably would have gotten off with just a warning.
Slashdot = ((Technology + Politics) / Trolls) % Grammar Nazis
So let's arrest the people who do that, too. Hell, let's give the death penalty for all crimes, even the smallest misdemeanors!
I dunno... I think a more appropriate analogy would be if one installed a huge arse window in the front of your house, then stuck a giant plasma TV in it and getting annoyed and frustrated when people stopped by and watched TV through you window.
It's not a perfect analogy, but it's much better than the 'It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft' argument.
I dont want to bang on the "the guy had it coming" drum, but Dinon admitted he KNEW how to secure his wifi but declined because most of the people in his neighborhood are "older". That suggests to me, at least on this topic, that he wasn't acting like the sharpest knife in the drawer. But still, it's more than a little unsettling to have some 40-something guy sitting outside your house using your resources. While the article doesn't say he was a perv, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he was -- and pulling kiddie porn or somesuch.
How was the guy supposed to know that he didn't intend for the AP to be open to everyone.
AP makers should force, once the device is connected for the first time, for it to go to a config page which outlines all the security settings (WEP, etc.)..... maybe then some people will start to understand security.
There's no place like localhost
A lot of business have wide open wireless networks, either intentionally or because of poor security. When will the cops bust into the local Century 21 office and arrest everyone because they never put a password on thier router?
D
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it's just like theft!!
How we know is more important than what we know.
If microsoft left xp disks at street corners unattended complete with legal cororate serial numbers would they be surprised if people were using them? Same idiocy here. Leave a network open and someone's going to get in. If you're lucky it's just for free internet.
...but the actual facts are more compelling. It seemas though the person using the unsecured wifi was engaged in less than legal activity. If the owner is lucky it was just spam - but it could well have been credit card fraud or even (gasp!) child porn.
The moral of this story? Don't switch wi-fi on unless you *really* know what you're doing.
-EvilMagnus
"It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft."
No it isn't. It's not even a copyright problem. What, now I need an extra license if somebody's visiting and they want to check their mail?
It remains unclear what Smith was using the Wi-Fi for, to surf, play online video games, send e-mail to his grandmother...
Don't let that stop you from closing out the article with wild speculation though.
"I'm mainly worried about what the guy may have uploaded or downloaded, like kiddie porn," Dinon said.
Haida Manga
... I shouldn't expect to be robbed, or for someone to come in and watch my TV and drink my beer any time they like.
The cost of them watching my TV and drinking my beer might be minimal, but that's not the point. It's my TV and my beer.
This is the reason people lock their doors and close their windows. We shouldn't need to worry about people coming into our homes, but we do. These people need to learn to secure their wireless points.
I am in no way justifying what this guy did, but hopefully it will highlight something to Joe Average and get them to lock their AP's down tighter (or in most cases, lock them down at all).
On noting the open point, this guy should have at least tried to locate its owner and let them know about it, maybe even offer to help them fix the problem. Instead he took advantage for his own gain, just like any petty theft act really.
If you actually read the article you'll see that he was sitting outside someone's house in his SUV using his laptop. That is quite different from simply tacking onto your neighbor's network, he was outside the house sitting there for the sole purpose of leeching off his internet connection. While the Microsoft analogy is a bit stiff, at least read the article before you all go crazy.
and i supose if you go and drink water from a public fountatin i should be arrested too for the fact the water is open to the public and not locked down. Sounds like they dont want to take fault for not fencing up a public oasis in the middle of no where because you know if it isnt yours its owned already by some one else more powerful and richer then you. Also what if the wifi is a public wifi by choice for the people to use? is it still stealing then?
"to be like god we make our own dolls to play with, but what does that make us, but dolls for god to play with?" Ikari,
In this case, the "victim" doesn't know what the bad guy was doing. There's no sign that he did anything to harm anybody.
Maybe he was just surfing something he didn't want his girlfriend seeing.
It seems odd that in this case, they don't even need to show intent or harm, to hit him with a felony.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
I always thought stuff like this was a little weird.
It is like a radio station only allowing members to listen to their station, but broadcasting to everyone and saying if someone who isn't a member listens in, they are breaking the law. Either set up your shit so only authorized people can access it, or don't and not be permitted to have unauthorized people arrested for using it.
"you sonofabitch i didn't know!"
or a railroad hitchhiker. The train's going to Chicago whether I'm on it or not, and except for the smell, no one would notice I was there.
Who was harmed by this guy?
I guess the ISP was denied a hypothetical customer.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
How about the "I thought this was one of those free municpal WiFi points I keep reading about" defense?
If I have someone I hate, could I just setup an open AP network in my house, ask the guy over and ask him to bring his windows laptop. When his MS' ever-helpful wireless connection program tries to connect to my honey-pot, *BAM* the police and the NSA (hey they helped RIAA too, so obviously they have tons of free time.) comes out of hiding and nail the guy.
It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment.
:P
I think they picked a bad example there.
João Pinheiro
He could have kept his mouth shut... blamed his "connection" on Windows XP's "auto connect" feature for WiFi devices and sued Microsoft for incured losses..... I'm resisting the urge to say .... Profit!!!
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
I feel that it was right to criminally punish the man, maybe not arrest him. He was using something that he wasn't paying for (and something that wasnt free to the owners). Imagine if somebody walked into an unlocked house (open connection) and started using their water or used their phone or DSL line, would this be behaviour where law enforcement is needed? Of course! There would be penalties for trespassing for the latter, but the crimes are pretty much the same. However, to many people, only one of those crimes is actually seen as a crime.
Even though it was an unsecured network, he was still stealing network bandwidth & accessing something he shouldn't be, its fair that he was caught & should be punished for it.
Just because a user isn't smart enough to use an encryption doesn't mean its ok to rip them off & steal from them.
there is a huge problem with Security though, the WiFi routers work as soon as you plug them in and the documentation doesn't stress enough how important it is to secure your network, terms like WEP & WPA-PSK scare the user & confuse them. I think the router manufactuers or the salesmen need to make their customers more aware of securing their networks and show them how easy it is to do.
I wonder how long before we see a suit where a customer sues a manufacturer for not making security clear & easy enough to set up when they purchased & installed a router.
Ok, the headline should read "Man Arrested While Using Open Wireless Network." He was arrested because he had been sitting in front of a guys house all day in his suv on his computer. Whenever he was approached he would shut his notebook and look suspicious. After a few hours of the nonsense the police were called.
The rest of the article is standard "open wireless is for kiddie porn and a gateway to identity theft" FUD. Of course, most people just use it to download music for free, but the warnings of consequences for the owner of the network are legit. If your network is used in-appropriatly, you ARE responsible.
Turn on encryption, add a password, add mac based filtering, turn off dhcp and you are pretty much set.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
I guess you didn't see that scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" where Peter Toole meets up with Omar Shariff at a desert well (that scene was ripped off in one of the later Star Trek movies but played differently).
man arrested for using public bathroom without permission
why is this under hardware?, shouldnt it be under yro or something?
From the article:
...
It remains unclear what Smith was using the Wi-Fi for, to surf, play online video games, send e-mail to his grandmother,
I really hope it's not any of these. I mean being convicted of a 3rd degree felony for just surfing the web or sending e-mail using someone else's network seems really extreme. Shouldn't something like this be a more of a misdemeanor?
It makes sense -- they're selling you bandwidth, and how you use that is up to you.
Now how about this scenario? I've had issues with connectivity before. Sometimes there are several AP's open in an area, say, Joe with his AP, 'linksys' and another guy, Bob, once again with an open access router, just say 'linksys' again, open by default. Two poorly configured AP's.
;)
What's going to keep Bob from accidentally using Joe's poorly configured connection? I've had my Wifi connection die...probably everyone reading this has. It's also kind of hard to differentiate sometimes. What kind of average Joe is going to memorize his BSSID?
Situations like this could lead to very interesting situations involving file sharing lawsuits.
Let us suppose that the man who was arrested was partaking in massive copyright violation (ie. 200000+ songs and movies) over the unsecured Internet connection. When the lawsuits come in, would they be able to target both individuals with lawsuits? Indeed, the person with the unsecured connection may very well not qualify for common carrier status, and thus may be liable for the copyright infringement that occurred over his connection. And then they can yet again sue the man who was using the connection. Indeed, very interesting, indeed.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
The open wireless access induced the man to use the interenet from his car.
Wireless routers clearly should be outlawed
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
Just because he physically didn't have to do anything doesn't mean it wasn't a crime. What if he tapped onto your cable, or phone lines? He is effectively stealing the person's bandwidth, and its good that he was prosecuted. Just because the door was left unlocked doesn't give them the right to go into your house. If you have a convertible and leave your top down, does that give people the right to sit in your car, or throw garbage in it? No.
"Mommm, can I use your copy of Microsoft BOB?!"
"No sweetie. Start saving your allowance and get your own damn copy!"
...if he smoked marihuana cigarettes.
So he never secured his network because he wanted his elderly neighbors to be able to access it with no problems. So wtf is his problem then?
What law did this guy actually violate?
* It's not a crime to sit on a public street in your vehicle and use your computer.
* Is there a law that says receiving a transmitted signal is a crime?
Granted the guy is probably a sleazebag and was up to no good, but I'd like to know if there are laws on the books that clearly make using someone else's open wireless connection a crime?
I dont want to bang on the "the guy had it coming" drum, but Dinon admitted he KNEW how to secure his wifi but declined because most of the people in his neighborhood are "older".
In most countries it is illegal to leave the keys in your car. Partly to not give kids and others an opportunity to hurt themselves or others.
Sharing Micro$oft software isn't theft, it's spreading a disease! Such people should be locked up for life. It's no different to purposely spreading AIDS. THey are EViL.
The homeowner KNOWINGLY left his router unsecured. Then he calls the cops on a guy who was using it. What kind of assclown takes that step first? Go to your fucking router admin page, switch to encrypted wireless, and watch the guy outside drive away.
Most ISPs have a "terms of service" contract which specify restrictions on what you're allowed to do with your wireless network. A simplified version of one of the most common terms is, "You can't share this connection with your neighborhood."
In that sense, it's actually more like the stated example than outright theft: in both cases, no one has been deprived of the "stolen" goods, but the provider of the software/service has been deprived of a source of revenue, due to someone else's violation of a contract. Except the terms of service with your ISP are likely a lot more enforceable than a EULA, seeing as how you actually have to sign something.
Personally, I think the guy is guilty of a crime, and deserving of punshiment: a slap on the wrist, a stern reprimand, and a fine of maybe $50 for being creepy.
I've read a lot of analogies of people saying it's like leaving your door unlocked and someone feeling it's okay to just walk right in. In reality it's more like leaving something on your front lawn and someone coming by and using it. A large number of communities actually have laws to keep you from leaving stuff out in the open where it's easy for someone to steal or vandalize, it's called an attractive nuisance law.
A homeowner can actually be fined for doing something like leaving their house or garage unlocked or leaving things on their lawn unattended under attractive nuisance laws.
Leaving your wireless network completely unprotected is an attractive nuisance. It's almost like saying "Hey, come and connect to me."
While I don't think that people should be fined for leaving an open connection like that I think people do need to start looking at it like an actual responsability to keep people from being able to connect to their network unchallanged. And if someone does connect to your unprotected network, you will have to realize that while they shouldn't have been doing that, you too are a bit at fault for it.
For the first year I lived in my current place, I used an open network, the owner of which subscribed to Bright House Orlando. So eat it BH.
Now, because of this, I plan to open my network and let other share (to some extent). So they can eat that too.
That is, piggybacking off someone else's wireless in the building. I told them it was not a good idea due to security and legal concerns, among other things, exactly like the article says.
How do you know what's coming over that Internet line you're piggybacking on? Okay, so it's not going to your MAC address based on your initiated connections, but how do you know what kind of worm or virus is running on that guy's machine - and what it's scanning for in terms of local connections? It's just dumb to piggyback unless you have a really secure setup, and if you know that much, why don't you have your own wireless?
It's also possible to find out who is piggybacking once it is noticed because all you need is a laptop with NetStumbler and walk around until you get a signal from a laptop and capture the MAC address. Then just knock on the door (if you're the building manager) and demand to see the computer - if the MAC matches, it's over. This is bad news for people who are in buildings that charge for wireless access. Fortunately for them, most of the management and other tenants probably aren't that knowledgeable.
As for this guy in the article, he was obviously stupid to hang out right in front of the victim's house, and then CONTINUE to hang around even once the victim had spotted him. Guy must have been desperate for that connection for some reason, which probably means it was something illegal he couldn't afford to be seen doing at the local Starbucks.
On the other side, I can't understand what the victim meant by not having security because other residents "were older". Was he sharing with the other residents in his neighborhood? If so, then wasn't HE screwing the service provider? Did I miss something here? If it's stealing to share an open wireless access point without someone's knowledge, then it's stealing to share one WITH someone's knowledge. I don't think the terms of use of most commercial providers allow for sharing access to anyone except perhaps ones immediate family at one location (unless of course it is a building-wide access point that is paid for by the building - which doesn't apply in this case because Dinon's is a residential home.)
So it seems like this guy got arrested for accessing an individual's network while the individual involved was sharing it with his neighbors probably in violation of his Terms of Use contract.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I bet it's some law student/lawyer looking to get a name by having his case go to the Supreme Court. Maybe the guy got one of his buddies to open his AP then call the cops on him just to get a case going. Actually, I've always wondered why lawyers don't do that type of thing... sort of a legal honeypot. Shit, I sure as hell would. Make up a fake scenario and have my friend sue me just to try and set precendent. Is that sort of thing illegal? Maybe just get you disbarred
There's theft, there's piracy, and there's illegal access. For all of them, there's "arrest". It's time we came up with something more appropriate to the suspected crime. How does this guy walking around Tampa present a danger to unsecured WiFi accesspoints?
--
make install -not war
So I can't use my neighbor's wide-open-as-a-prostitute access point provided by the phone company for DSL access when the cable provider hosed my cable internet? I guess I need to find the phone cable to dial-up and hack the internet the old fashioned way.
You were the first person bash George Bush in this article. Congratulations!!!
I don't believe that 'domestic' WEP is secure. Neither does my employer, and he should know.
I don't owe anyone on the wider Internet a 'duty of care'. No contract with them.
Maybe some of my neighbours are poor, and need Internet access.
Anyone who came visiting, I'd let them use my PC anyway.
I hope someone would do the same for me.
Long story short: Does anybody know what an unsecured AP does to a person's "reasonable expectation of privacy"?
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
Wasn't there a court ruling a while ago that you could not get into trouble connecting to an open access point on the terms that its too easy to stumble off your own access point and onto someone elses.
wire is the future of networking. Wireless is just a fad.
This happened about a month or so ago.
;-)) Anyway, he wanted to know how easy it was manipulate these APs, and I told him about wardriving, what it was, and what the rules and legalities were regarding it. I then showed him how to go about accessing an unsecured WiFi router using just the windows connection menu, or an application like NetStumbler:
I had a friend over and we were talking about how many people don't secure their WiFi connections, as both of us had recently gotten laptops and he was surprised at the amount of unsecured wifi APs he picked up on a normal basis throughout the day. I told him the same thing happened to me, although I wasn't too surprised -- a lot of people are ignorant to that sort of thing; even one of my neighbors was. (The other neighbor was smart!
1.) look for the SSID. "linksys" and "wireless" are dead giveaways.
2.) Using that info, go online (your own connection, preferably) and find the manuals that list these names as defaults (wireless is common to Netgear routers, as linksys is to...well...linksys). These manuals also contain the default login/pass for the router, as 9 times out of 10, a router with the default SSID will also have the default login.
Needless to say, he was surprised at how easy it was. I then told him how WEP encryption wasn't even enough as it was horribly weak, and with a decent Wifi card and Whoppix you can easily break it. I made a bet with him that almost every AP in houston was insecure, and we drove out there for abou t an hour (we live in Katy), and turns out I was right. I probably logged more than 1,000 APs while we were out, and a shocking amount were unsecure. I don't doubt it is like this in other major cities as well, and it seems like something that needs to be covered on the news, the more exposure the better.
if you left your house or car unlocked and someone walked into it or sat in it, it isn't a crime unless the owner asks you to leave and you refuse. If you don't leave it is only trespassing which is like a 4th degree misdemeanor - much less than a 3rd degree felony.
if you stop broadcasting it onto my/public property. Otherwise, it's your responsibility to carry out basic access controls, which any halfway-decent consumer product will provide.
This guy parked his SUV outside Dinon's home and break into his network (though it was open) and stole his bandwidth. He did it for hours. You dont need more reasons to believe that this is a crime. This sort of thing should be discouraged.
Sitting in an SUV in front of someone's home, provided you're not on the lawn, is simply not like walking into their house and using their water or whatever. The second the signal was reachable off the fool's property he provided a service no different than the city-run wifi areas that are starting to pop up. If he bypassed some security this would be a different issue. As it stands, his network left his property spilling out into the public streets... no real case here, unless the "felon" was distributing the paris hilton video, in which case, COUNTERSUIT here we come!
What would jesus do.. with open source software?
...maintained by a shitbag.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
You guys need to calm down a bit and get rid of the immediate kneejerk reactions, though I do admit that the summary is a bit misleading.
I agree that a felony is a bit stiff for such a victimless crime, but for what it is worth, this guy was asking to be arrested. He sat out in front of the house in his SUV for nearly a whole morning before the police were called. If you are going to use someone's wireless AP, at least be a bit more covert about it. There are so many unsecured APs out there that you could easily exploit and never really be noticed. Go downtown, go to a park with business nearby. Sit somewhere where nobody would think twice about your presence there. I'm sorry, but sitting in front of someone's house for 5 hours and then even more stupidly admitting what you were doing is just asking to be thrown in jail.
This guy deserves everything that he gets. This isn't just a case of someone sitting somewhere and flipping open their notebook and noticing a connection. I do not have wireless at my house for a lot of reasons (asides from the fact that wired ethernet is an awful lot faster), but when I am sitting on my porch, I do admit that I sometimes use the neighbors AP. For my lightweight web browsing, I don't really think that I am interfering with their network or in any way damaging their equipment, thus creating a totally victimless crime. I never even bothered to look to see if they have open shares, but I digress. Also, unless you specifically know of a public access point any network you connect to is technically illegal trespass.
What I find amusing is that I can trespass on someone's property and I get a misdemeanor and when I do the same thing virtually, I'm looking at years in pound-me-in-the-ass federal buttlovin prison. I'm a good looking, somewhat effeminate male as well, so I doubt I would do very well with my future cellmate Bubba. The laws definately need to be rewritten quite a bit, and unfortunately with all the identity and data theft these days, I just see them potentially becoming worse and more draconian.
I will say that this guy is a total douche bag. Anyone that thinks it is ok to just sit in front of someone's house for hours without having a specific purpose is just asking to be stopped and harassed by the cops. If someone sat in front of my house for more than an hour, I'd be calling the cops too, regardless of why they were there. I don't agree with the statements that people have made that wireless access points should be required by law to be secure. Do we really need to waste tax payer money on attempting to enforce more unenforceable laws?
If anyone should get upset, it should be the broadband provider, but I honestly don't think that even they could consider putting forth theft of service charges against people who run these networks, good samaritan or stupid joe blow. Maybe when cable services start becoming wireless or more broadband oriented, but that is a whole different story and a wholly different topic for right now.
Moral of the story is this: It is not against the law until you get caught and when you do, don't openly admit that you broke the law and get yourself a decent lawyer when the felonies start to roll over your head.
I hope they just give this guy community service or something, but that is me.
zosxavius photography
If you leave your shit out in the street don't be upset if someone picks it up and checks it out. Be grateful you still have it afterwards and nothing was lost.
If that bothers you, then don't leave your shit out in the street where just anyone can get at it.
Not that anyone expects anyone to actually read the articles submitted...
If someone has a wide open WiFi network, how is one supposed to know it's not being kept open as a private public service? If you leave a desirable good out in the open, with no signs of ownership or desire to be kept private, I don't see a problem. If you want to keep your WiFi network private, encrypt it and turn off broadcasting. This is like a radio station or the police arresting you for receiving a clear over the air signal.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I remember there was a tss ep where kevin rose and that other dude went wardriving around celebrities homes to see what they could find. They even showed them using the unsecured ap's several times thoughout the broadcast! Someone notify the authorities! We have video documentation of serious crimes!
If my neighbour leaves their front porch light on, and I use those light emissions (from the side walk or street) to read a piece a paper at night, am I stealing the light? They are allowing the light rays to go all over the place.
The RF coming off 802.11a/b/g is in the public wavelengths bands. If someone paid the gov big bucks to 'lease' their own band and had an open access point, this would be a different story -- that person would need equipment to access a different (licensed) band... they would be doing so illegally. But we're using a public 2.4ghz band. We're not accessing a computer system, we are accessing a communications system (the net) that was left wide open for us.
I am not trying to confuse the differnt layers of the connection here, but it I think I am illustrating a good point. (I'm sure I could do a better job, I'm pretty darn sleepy right now)
People not knowing that there is a possible 'security threat' with their wireless access point today, is frankley BS. My customers & friends (all ages and experiences) have heard 'horror stories' associated with WiFi access points. First thing I hear from almost everyone now is 'wait a sec, isn't that WiFi stuff unsecure?'
Not the same thing... however, if I leave a gun in an unlocked cabinent and someone uses the gun to kill someone, sure, I'm not going to prison for killing someone. But I'm sure I'm gonna be in big trouble for not properly safe-guarding access to the gun.
Same with the access points. Although YOU didn't commit the crime via your wireless signals and net connection (someone else did) you should be partially to blame for allowing this to happen.
I admit, I have used open access points a few times. I think it's a great service sometimes. The phone companies do not have their shit together for providing affordable wireless medium-high speed internet in a real mobile application just yet. And I think our governments are primarily to blame. Cell phone companies as much money as they make, are still businesses, no different from any other business. The gov rapes these companies in auctions for the air-space/bandwidth. The few times I've used the access points is to access MapQuest when I'm lost. (I have a gps reciver and M$ MapPoint, however it's too much cabling in the car sometimes when you need something fast). Also, yes, I own a street atlas BOOK (paper format) however, when I clean my car out once a month, I forget to put it back in most of the time.
I'd just hate to think that I could get arrested one day because of a cop that has heard of the 'bad shit' associated with wireless. I also hate how the first thing that would come to mind is 'this guy must be accessing child porn'. I think this child porn/fraud..etc.etc.etc is a poor (and most of the time, automatic) excuse to limit the potential of certain technologies.
There is always a down side to a good thing I suppose. The minute there is affordable medium or high-speed wireless access from the mobile telephone companies, I will subsribe and never use an open access point again.
Go ahead and rip apart my logic. I'm not siding with the guy who was illegally using the connection - if he was up to no good, I'm glad he was caught. If you're smart enuf to figure out someone is using your internet wirelessly, then you should be smart enuf to secure or get someone to secure your wifi box for you.
I'm in a bad mood I guess - people have been making my business their business for the past few weeks it seems, maybe it's the heat. I'm a usually a very calm & passive person, but lately I really feel like punching out the next bastard that doesn't mind their own business. That's pretty much what I feel about people trying to get a peek of what I'm using my laptop for in my car. MYOB/or/FOAD
Anyone (partially) agree with what I'm trying to say here?
I finally have a good analogy: It's the equivelent of buying the rights to music, and then uploading it on your website say www.myrecordlabel.com/music, and leaving it and expecting no one to download it. If you manage to stumble upon it, and download it, your getting content that the owner paid for and the owner has no idea you are doing it, and you don't know if its okay or not. Since there is no real damage, or intent to harm, if the user is doing it purposefully, they should just get a misdemeanor or infraction charge, but a felony?!? no way accidental uses are nearly impossible to catch unless you monitor your own network, and I doubt people who don't use WEP would constantly check their DHCP.
Why didn't this guy really confront the dude in the SUV?
First time be friendly and helpful. Hey how are you doing? do you need some help I noticed you've been out here a bit. No decent explaination, next time tell them to clear off, or you'll let the police know what his plates and description are and that he's been casing houses.
Everyday people never seem to take the initiative.
The router broadcasted its presence and indicated that it was an open connection. Here I am, to talk to me use "Whatever SSID". This is an open invitation to anyone. Nowhere on this site did I see an invitation to browse through the files on the web server, however, the server is sending me files that I request so I assume I am allowed to access the files.
The reporter in the article seems to think that people can easily protect themselves on wireless networks, and we all know that just isn't true for several reasons:
/..
- Depending on the card you buy PCs sometimes have trouble converting ASCII to bits in the same way. I have this problem with, say my NETGEAR and my Mac.
- WEP sucks and we all know it, so 15 minutes of a determined script kiddie's time and that's the ball game.
- WPA isn't yet available everywhere, and even it is supposed to be an interim standard to 802.11i.
In short, you can only avoid nuisance freeloading with WEP and it's a pain to use if you have multiple PCs. Especially if you're not the sort that reads
How comes all my mod points got unused and expire and then there is something Insightful...
Paul B.
This seems to be similar to "attractive nuisance" violations: If a homeowner sets up a trampoline in his front yard he must also put a fence around it. Otherwise, he cannot complain about trespassers when all the neighborhood kids start jumping on it. Furthermore, without the fence the homeowner can (and has been successfully) be sued for negligence when one of those kids breaks his neck.
From what I've read, the average internet connection (DSL, cable, etc) will only produce small amounts of network traffic for the average user. To crack WEP, you need the weakly encrypted packets. These packets aren't nearly as plentiful as strongly encrypted packets. For someone to collect enough weak keys to crack WEP, they would have to essentially sit and collect keys for at least a period of days. It is not like you can just roll up to a WEP enabled access point and be inside with a few mouseclicks. It takes a fair bit more determination than that. I believe that even bruteforcing the key would likely take longer than just collecting weak keys. So for what it is worth, WEP is still infinately better than nothing at all, and secondly anyone worth a grain of salt in the security world knows to never allow APs to have direct access to the private network as it is far, far better to place the AP in some sort of partial DMZ and use VPN or whatnot to tunnel into the private network, which also adds another layer to your security risks, but, like WEP, is still far better than nothing at all.
Don't know much about the newer encryption in wireless (WPA I think?), but I hear it is far more secure, is a few orders of magnitude greater to crack and would take a very determined attacker to gather enough information to crack the key. The key is the DMZ though. When the attacker finally succeeds on getting a connection on your AP, they will have a lovely firewall to get through if they want something other than basic internet connectivity and would like to see the inside if your private network.
IPCop does this as well as a bunch of other nice firewall packages.
Knowing is half the battle.
zosxavius photography
Hooray for freedom and our right to vote in people to help eliminate our freedoms! Next up on our agenda, an amendment to eliminate the 22nd amendment so we can keep Bush in the WhiteHouse forever because he has sure made us all feel safer now that we pay $2.00+ per gallon of gasoline and line his pockets even more.
I am a meat popsicle.
Given all the bad analogies floating around on this thread (the Microsoft one in the article has to take the cake though) I thought I'd add my own.
What this guy did was like walking into your house when you leave the door unlocked and drinking the milk in your fridge. That is both illegal and creepy.
We do not yet live in a society where failure to lock your doors is the same as an invitation for everyone to come in and do whatever they will. The attitude that just because someone doesn't secure their Wi-Fi network it is an open invitation to wardrivers to use your network is fundamentally mixed up.
</tinfoil_hat>
I didn't see the brand of the "SUV". I didn't see the builder of the house. And the only thing which might have mattered--who made the Access Point? This collection of trivia and FUD is what passes for journalism.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
That one speaks for itself.
They make it sound like he just used Lowe's to get internet access. Lowe's was sending credit card number, expiration date, cardholder name, billing address, and cvv2 number in the same unencrypted packet.
It's been called the "Man In The Middle" attack since long before wi-fi ever existed. Where the hell did "evil twin" come from? Are they just making shit up?
He makes it sound like there's only one program on the web that can crack WEP. There are several, because there are several independent flaws in WEP, and most implementations are susceptible to multiple different attacks.
GAH!
As far as I know, not even the BSA has attempted to assert that failure to abide by terms of service, in the absence of additional laws, constitutes a criminal act. At least this is a quote.
What's really appalling is the confidence with which they maul both reality and language. It's one thing to be light on details, or present them as uncertain or controversial. It's quite another to present them as a straightforward list of facts to acquaint those otherwise ignorant. They do quote Mike Godwin, but they use misuse his quote to make it sound like he's talking about something else, so they've squandered what slight authority they could have had.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
The first rule if you're going to do something "iffy" is to come up with an airtight excuse before you do it. If/when you get caught there's never enough time to think. In this case: "Officer, I've tried everywhere and this is the only place I can get a good connection to the network I just installed back at my home." This excuse also includes rule #2: play the idiot and act like you don't know a damned thing about what you're doing. Rule #3, of course, is never EVER change your story. If someone finds a hole in your story, don't try to patch it with a concoction; you'll hang yourself. Just say "that is strange" and expound upon the inconsistency; it'll look like you're genuinely trying to figure out what's wrong.
Man!
Dinon admitted he knew how to secure his wifi but declined because most of the people in his neighborhood are "older".
It's amazing the lengths people will go to just to get their daily dose of elder-pr0n.
See earlier comment - wire is the future of networking. No problems with WEP, no problems with incompatible implementations of WPA, no problems with networks extending past your pre-defined usage area. On the other hand, if you automatically assume all wireless networks are insecure, you'll do much better dealing with wifi.
You do NOT have the right to go around and use any access point you want. Although the owner of the home should have secured his network, just because it's not protected doesn't make it public. If you buy a CD that isn't copy protected then does that make it legal to share all across the internet? Of course not.
If I had an open wireless access point, I probably wouldn't mind if somebody stopped outside my house for about 5 minues to use the internet (I'd be watching their activity anyway). However, if somebody sat there for several hours, it would be quite concerning.
Here comes the defense: Well, it was wide open, so it's not really his fault...
Forget the MS analogy. Someone leaving their door unlocked doesn't mean people can stroll in whenever they want. Doesn't mean it's smart to do, but it doesn't mean it's right for people to do, either.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
One day a friend brought in an extra computer from home- there he had a wireless network, which is secured with encryption. Since his wireless networking was on by default, he didn't realize that once he booted his box and started surfing, that it wasn't happening on our network. Apparently someone in the building had a wide-open wi-fi access point. The only way I realized what was happening is that I did not see any traffic on our network from his box.
This could have easily continued all day without anyone being the wiser. I'd sure hate to think that he could have been arrested for unauthorized access, since it was the result of two contributory factors.
> It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program
I guess it's especially bad to copy a Microsoft program, compared with sharing another company's program.
I bet the story did not happen, or at least did not happen as described. Sometime (bad) journalist need to make ssstories 'interesting'.
So, if you've an open field with no fences, no signs, no barriers of any kind whatsoever and no indication that it is private property, then it is generally assumed to be reasonable if you take a shortcut over it, and too bad if you complain.
I would prefer it if things like wireless networks were treated in this regard, for the simple reason that any Joe Schmuck who wanted to abuse the situation could park an open wireless network right next to a genuinely public wifi point. Anyone too close to the dividing line would fall in the wrong network and be open to getting their asses sued to oblivion and back. It would be a simple enough way of Getting Rich Quick and - in some States - possibly even legal, for all that it is blatant entrapment.
In this specific case, it seems likely it was obvious enough that the WIFI point wasn't public, but even there, can you be 100% sure of that? What if there was a public WIFI point the next house along? Can these folk prove, conclusively, that there was an intent to steal? Probably not. Well, technically all they need to do is show beyond reasonable doubt, but it's not 100% certain they can even really do that.
Like I said, it would be good if the law cut to the chase and demanded actual proof that there was an effort to mark boundaries. In this case, a simple WAP password, a non-obvious ID and a no-broadcast setting would be ample. If there's no password, a "public" ID and a broadcast signal, then there may be a legit defence of entrapment, as there would be nothing to differentiate that from any cafe WIFI access point within range.
However, Florida (and most of the South - I know, I lived there for several years) is not necessarily going to go for a "common sense" answer. They are much more likely to rule for the home owner, even if the owner etched ruddy great warchalk markings all over the house.
I'm not even going to get into some of the "home invasion" laws, which this case may well qualify as, except to say that laptop owners in the South should stock up on bullet-proof armour for their cars.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Offtopic but i couldn't help:
..
It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft.
You know, it's ironic, when you actually buy something, share it with friend and it's considered theft by modern standards
People who like this sort of sig will find this the sort of sig they like.
The analogy is a stupid one. I have a wireless laptop. When ever I turn it on, it automatically connects to the WiFi of the guy upstairs. In fact, I generally have four wide open connections blasting through my apartment at any one moment. In order for me to not connect to his connection, I need to go through and disconnect from his network each time I boot up. His connection is wide open. It would be one thing if I had to hack into his network and steal a password, but if you are blasting a signal without even the most basic of encryption, it is safe to assume that you don't care who uses it. Hell, it doesn't have to be some super secret Slashdot elite encryption. Putting even the most basic of passwords up would be more then enough to signal that you are not leaving the connection open for the use of others.
If the guy using the connection did something destructive with the connection, I could understand the fuss. If he was just browsing the web over a wide open connection, I fail to see the issue.
The much better analogy is if you had the ability to broadcast over a short distance with radio waves and the guy down stairs picked up your radio. Is he supposed to assume that the crap you are spewing into the spectrum is private? Keep your damn broadcasting in your own house or put the most basic encryption up. If you have a WiFi network, signal your intentions or don't be surprised when people misunderstand them. If you can plug in your wireless router, you have more then enough technical expertise to figure out how to set up a password. In fact, most instruction manuals have you set up a password as part of the installation.
This is not a case of 'leaving the door open'. This is a case of blasting your WiFi network into public space without even the most basic attempts to defend it and having people pick it up. People won't come into your house to sit on your couch, but they might sit on your couch if you leave it outside on the sidewalk.
How do we know when using an open wireless access point is allowed, and when it is not? I have several friends who have open APs, and don't mind other people using it. They left it open on purpose, to allow others to use it. Also several public libraries in my area run open APs.
The simplest answer is that we should have permission from the owner of the AP that we can use it. But what's tricky, is that the fact that an AP is open can easily be taken as implicit permission - which in the case of this article, it actually was not.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
No no no, officer. I don't trade movies and mp3s on the Internet. It must have been someone who "hacked" into my open wireless AP.
Aparently, he was storing his illegal files in one of the shared folders on my home computer's hard drive, after he "hacked" into my compleatly unsecured LAN.
I can't imagine what other terrible things this "hacker" did using my Internet connection.
The Internet is generally stupid
Seems to me, instead of doors locked or unlocked, a better analogy might be whether open land is fenced/posted or not.
I'd be pissed if someone came into my house and used my wireless.
Oh wait... He didn't go into the house.
The submitter chose to submit the story in one of the most sensationalistic manner possible. It wasn't simply for using someone's wifi. The guy was in his car in front of the guy's house and the homeowner saw him out there three times in one night. I would have been suspicious too. I might have went and talked to the guy instead of calling the cops, but I can understand why someone might be afraid to go up to someone and ask what was going on.
Additionally, the quote is from the perspective of the ISP, so of course they are going to say using free wifi is theft. They are losing potential customers when someone shares!
From the way the story was submitted, it sounds like the ISP is the one arresting someone at random, which isn't the case at all.
People often complain about the media misrepresenting and sensationalizing news. Who are we to complain if we do the exact same thing?
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Piggybacking has caused problems. If he happened to be doing something like cruising for kiddy porn or mass spamming the problem could come back to haunt the company or individual with the internet connection. At the very least it's obnoxious to use some one elses connection without permission and right or wrong it's against the law.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't every wireless router/access point on the market today come equipped with default settings to make it "wide open?"
Glog!
I can understand the argument. If I borrow something and sell it, I am treating it as my own. That is theft. But if I buy copyrighted software, it belongs to me. If I breach copyright, I am using it as my own, but it IS my own, absolutely,not even conditionally. That is not theft, but a breach of copyright only. It can be made statutory theft by the legislature. Doug (Australian lawyer.)
I had a friend that was a poor college student living in an apartment, and the only way she kept in contact was by leeching a Wifi Connection. And I won't even get started with college campuses. I go to a pretty technological one, and just in my dorm, I detected I think 7 AP's, Almost half of which were open access (CS floor, Pretty sure no Wifi was provided by the college itself in the dorms, so the open access ones were prolly above or below, since most CS majors know enough to secure their networks). The sad part is probably like 80% of Joe Shmoe families that just bought a Router and somehow managed to get it working (which I guess is a difficult task to them) w/o any geek helping them are probably open access.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
for the last 6 months or so more and more peaple in my area have been getting the exact same wireless routers which i believe are coming free with bt broadband or come at a cut price i know this becouse everytime i scan for wireless connection on my pc in my bedroom i can sometimes find as many as 6 unsecured AP's all sharig 2mb bt broadband adsl all it would take for my computer to connect to them is to be setup to auto connect to the best signal and it would just connect automatically my wireless network has been up around 2 years now and when peaple started getting their ap's i would find my pc connected to them automatically and sorted the security on mine then so nobody could get in without hacking tools but if their signal is breaching the walls of my house and messing with my network are they to blame for my stress or am i at fault for letting my pc connect to the best signal if a problem where to arise from my computer auto connecting.
I Predict A Riot
"t's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft"
A non-Closed, non-secured Wireless network is broadcasting in the public space. It is meant to be use by anyone when configured as such. Unless there was a big sign clearly visible to all and sundry that said network was not for public use, then then everybody has free access and it cannot be considered as theft. That is the intent of that mode of operation.
If the Wireless network operator did not want the general public using his network, then he should have used one of the many options available to close the service, such as; set up a Closed network, use Access lists, implement WEP or WPA, or use some kind of border control such as 802.1X. Any of these clearly signify a private network.
If someone hacked the security options and then used the network, then and only then could it be considerd theft.
It probably also says as much in the Access Point manual...
Isn't that just common sense?
Seriously, though, wake up folks. DAs are creative with charging people all the time -- had this guy not been a creepazoid he would be home right now (well, had he not been a creepazoid he would have been at home, rather than parked outside someone's house for hours), but being a creepazoid isn't per-se illegal and loitering, which is per-se illegal, is a devil of a charge to make stick. So the DA went for the low-hanging fruit. Its the same basic principle that got Al Capone for tax evasion and that DAs in Virginia get check-bouncers for "uttering" with. (If you want to know what "uttering" is in this context and why its a very DA friendly crime in Virginia, I recommend the excellent http://crimlaw.blogspot.com/.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
kiddie porn reference....check.
:)
inflammantory, irrelevant reference to microsoft....check.
somebody getting nailed for something every slashdotter has done at some point...check.
A typical great slashdot discussion is sure to follow!
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
So, say my apartment/house gets bombarded with the neighbors wifi? Whose property is it? I mean, surely its his radio signal, but its passing through my property. This is akin to running a telephone line through my house. I realize this is somewhat ridiculous, but seriously, your rights stop when they impede mine.
Let's suppose for a second that I sit at home in my bathtub wearing a tinfoil hat and that i don't feel comfortable with your radio waves passing through my house, is it within my rights to try and stop you?
if so, is it within my rights to use your internet?
The parent makes a good point. I'm not as certain about the state laws that may apply, but in any case, it's hard to argue that open WAP's are not configured to be available to the general public. It's not really a case of accessing a network without permission; it's a case of requesting permission to access the network and being granted that permission by the AP. The ability of the AP to grant that permission is, after all, entirely under the control of the user.
Ok lets just say for arguments sake that he wanders with his laptop to the opposite side of his house, far away from his own wireless access point. The computer sees the other access point has a stronger signal and latches on to it during a break in communication with his own access point. He is unaware of the change and continues with his business. Are the default settings for wireless access communication illegal? What would stop someone from plugging in a wireless access point boosting the signal strength and calling the police any time someone accidentally connects? I live in an apartment complex with about 7 other visible access points. I occasionally get bored and plug in a spare access point with no internet connection attached to see who accidentally locks on to me and loses their internet access.
The Microsoft quote seems to be used out of context by the Slashdot author. That quote came as a response when the journalist's "expert" was asked about knowingly sharing your ISP connection via WiFi. It was not used in reference to the alleged crime the Tampa man was arrested for. It's one thing not to RTFA, it's another to read it and then quote it out of context.
His defense:
If someone wants to connect to the network, they reciprocate an intention to accept connections back.
If someone runs a web server to host a web page, does it mean if you access that webpage, you are breaking the law?
Surely the configuration of a wireless device can be deemed an explicit permission, because network security uses words like 'default allow, default deny', and if the computer which ran the stack, which accessed the network, which read the 'hello your welcome sign' allowed this to happen, and people in the court think it shouldn't, then the person who wrote the EVIL TROJ4N L33t network drivers should be to blame, or the RFC guys.
So, lets just see how we can implicate M$ and SCO and move onto finding a way to convince 1up.com to remove their fucking > music off their page. ffffffbah.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
It is about the fact that the guy was a fucking creep.
Seriously- if he REALLY thought what he was doing was OK, why did he act all cagy and close the laptop/drive away every time the homeowner saw him?
WiFi or not, this guy was acting strange in front of someone's home in such a way that I think it would probably freak most people out. The cops used the WiFi excuse just to bust the guy and I say jolly good show on them. I would feel very diferently if the guy simply said to the homeowner who he was and the fact that he was surfing on his net connection, but he didn't.
Because the geek could have driven over to the Starbucks and done the same thing without penalty had the geek realized the Wi-Fi's owner was an asshat who would call the cops after he willfully left his wi-fi open to the public. If the guy willfully and knowingly leaves his hotspot open to the public, I fail to see how this would qualify as unauthorized access. At least the poor geek wasn't in California, or they'd have his DNA by now.
But I'm not the judge, so it doesn't matter what I or any other slashbot thinks. Under Florida law, the legislators went to great lengths to define all those high tech terms but failed to define what constitutes 'authorized' access. So now it's up to the judge. For background on what judges have found constitutes unauthorized access, have a look here.
As the operator of the access point said, he made a deliberate choice, being aware of his options, to leave the access point configured so anyone in the area could use it and the services availabe through it. Also, so that they _would_ use it if it happened to be the strongest signal their computer found when auto-selecting the AP to use.
It could have been one of his own neighbors in the neighbors own home if his AP happened to have a better signal than the AP the neighbor had set up for their internet connection. In which case I suppose his neighbor might be having _him_ arrested for intercepting the communications the neighbor was tring to make through his own access point?
No intent necesary here, it's just how this particular technology works when you have it configured to:
1. Reply to the pings asking if anyone out there is offering service, identifying yourself as being available. An optional feature you can turn off if you don't want to advertise your service as being available.
2. Offer wireless connectivity to anyone who stops by with a wireless card configured as they often are to automatically connect to the strongest signal around. Easy to turn off by enabling WEP.
3. Grant an IP address to anyone when requested. Easy to turn off by turning off the DCHP server.
4. Presumably not use a network name/SSID indicating that it's supposed to be private with something like the word "private" in it.
5. Offer whatever services are then available for onward connectivity. Which might or might not be contrary to the agreement made with the upstream provider/ISP, but the person who has at this point had equipment automatically request service three different times and been told yes each time has no way to know that.
The gentlemans AP was apparently configured to offer the services it offered to anyone passing by. That's a choice he made. One he knew about and could easily, in many ways, have made differently with no more than a second or two of work, like changing the SSID to include the word private.
Now, the intent question in this one is a different matter. The guy in the SUV apparently concealed his access, suggesting that he believed his access was unauthorized. And that makes all of the foregoing irrelevant, because it establishes an intent to use it without authorization. Had he said what he was doing when first approached, if first approached, and not tried to conceal his activity, that would be completely different and would lack that sign of intent to have unauthorized service.
If I see someone outside of my house on a notebook and I think they're on my wifi network, I'm going to walk over to the router and pull the plug. Go out and watch the guy go away.
This guy chose to call the cops as action #1. I've met this type of asshole. He has no consideration that this >>VICTIMLESS crime's charge will scar this other man's records for life. There goes the chance at getting a JOB anytime soon.
Does your radio send packets back to the radio station? Does the radio station have to individually address content to each listener, consuming "bandwidth" on a per-listener basis?
No, no, and NO!
Further- the radio station's costs (licensing music/content) scales with their profits (advertising) pretty equally, since both are based off how many listeners they have.
Sorry, you're consuming a resource if you use my cablemodem. I paid for that resource, and by using it, you're making it less available to me.
Please help metamoderate.
Exactly - I can see it now Man arrested for using Microsoft Software See /. articles on how your Win machine will instantly become part of an intergalactic Beowulf cluster of anal probe gizmotrons on powerup.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
RTWFA (w=whole)...
We all know how much effort is required to step onto someone else's property- but the definition of "trespassing" in New Hampshire, for example, is basically "you're somewhere you don't belong". As in most cases, ignorance of the law is not an acceptable excuse.
Similarly- ignorance in how to use a tool you purchased is not an excuse. It was your responsibility to learn how to properly operate it.
Also, the poor guy admitted to using the connection too (unauthorized access to a computer network, which is a third degree felony according to the article). Now, if he would have just asked for a lawyer and then shut up, he probably would have gotten off with just a warning.
All prosecutors would have had to prove was "he knew he was accessing something that didn't belong to him".
Please help metamoderate.
When configured for open access, your wireless router is essentially a robot that sits there and hands out network adresses to anyone who asks for one, all the while yelling loudly (to any who are listening on the right frequencies) to announce it's presence... it is an invitation for people to make use of the service it is advertising. As it's owner, it is, essentially, inviting people on your behalf to make use of the network. By turning it on configured in this manner, you have essentially consented to it's behaviour. As usualy, ignorance is no excuse.
If you leave a pile of hamburgers on your porch and someone steals them all, you have a right to complain. But if you left a neon sign on over them saying 'free hamburgers', you lose your right to complain.
Say I leave my sprinkler turned on to water the area around the city sidewalk in front of my house. Some neighborhood kids start playing on the sidewalk, in the water. I move the sprinkler to another section covering the sidewalk and the kids follow. Is it something they should be punished for, or should I move the sprinkler off the sidewalk, or just shut up and get on with my life?
I'll buy loitering, no problem. Felony computer network trespassing? No way. If the guy had issues with someone using his AP, he should have turned it off. Or simply told the persont o quit leeching his broadband. Either way, I bet the offending guy would have driven off right away.
My take is that it _is_ why "normal" people don't have the same attitude to security (whether it's wireless routers or windows bugs) as nerds have. Real World has worked on completely different principles so far.
The fact is, even if you locked your door or built a chainlink fence, they're just marking a boundary, not being an unbreakable barrier. Whether you lock it or not, your real defense isn't the door, it's the law. The door is really just a marker that says "my property starts here, if you're caught here, we'll throw your sorry ass in jail." No more.
"I can do it" _never_ equalled "then I'm allowed to do it" in the real world. Anyone can buy/make a lockpick for a lot less money than it takes to buy a laptop and a wireless LAN card, and wiggle your lock open in less time than it takes to war-drive around the neighbourhood and configure your networking to use the neighbour's router. But that was never construed as "then it's your fault for not having an unbreakable lock, and the thief is perfectly within his rights to be on your property and walking away with your TV" in the real world.
And, frankly, I see no reason why we shouldn't apply that RL model to computers. My property starts here, I don't give a damn about how l33t some kid thinks he is, they're just not supposed to be on it. Period.
Placing the onus of securing their property on the victims, and the even more idiotic assumption that if it wasn't 100% physically impossible to get on it, then everyone's _invited_ in, is not how the real world ever worked.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
you got to love the media. "hacking" on a open network. i bet the guy runs windows XP home and has the administrator password blank too. then again some guy out front of a house for that long of time is bound to get in trouble...
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
So this guy in your story basically goes through the first door that happens to be open. It doesn't look like a shop, it doesn't have a price list, it doesn't have a shopkeeper, and generally there's _nothing_ whatsoever that would imply that it's a shop. Could just be someone's home, or it could be that some people were having a party there later and had brought the food in advance. Yet he just assumes that he's allowed to help himself to whatever is there.
Seems to me like a very clear-cut case of theft, by real life standards.
Now let's bring it a little closer to the war-driving example. Let's say your guy _knew_ it wasn't a shop, and had _no_ plans whatsoever to pay for that sandwich. In fact the only reason he was there in the first place, instead of at the real sandwich shop next door, is that he actually _planned_ to get a meal without paying. The mentality all along was "hey, cool, I know this house next door is unlocked, so I'll just go make myself a free sandwich there. It would be stupid of me to pay for something when I can 'share' someone else's food for free instead."
I think by RL standards you have a _very_ clear-cut case of pre-meditated theft.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
First of all, using an open wireless connection should not be compared to opening someones door. The connection is being broadcast beyond the boundries of the property. As someone said earlier, it's like using someones light in their house to read. Problem with reading by the light from someones house is that your in front of someones house. Problem I see with this has more to do with sitting in front of someones house than using the internet. The fact is that they guy has no case now and is facing a felony. He could spend over a year in jail, lose his right to vote, get disbared, lose his securities license, and be required to put this on every job app he fills out for the rest of his life. In my opinion, the guy who called the cops needs to get his house egged, the "theif" should pay a heavy fine for being weird amoung other things, and in my opinon it is the law makers who should be most to blame. The guy does not need a felony for simply using an unprotected wireless network. Who got paid tax dollars to come up with this wise idea?
"It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft," said Kena Lewis, spokeswoman for Bright House Networks in Orlando.
Shouldn't they be arresting the owner of the access point then? After all, they bought the internet access and are sharing it with everyone within 150 feet.
MAC addresses are not foolproof, as they can be changed with a single command. Besides the fact that the building manager has no right to barge into your private residence and check your computer for a mere suspicion of using someone else's unsecured network, the whole thing with the MAC address just falls apart.
There is no practical way to figure out who is using an unsecured network. It is the responsibilty of the AP's owner to secure their router, and if they fail to do so, it's their own damn fault if other people mooch off their bandwidth.
the back-woods-doesn't-understand-computers-worth-a-da mn county news reports:
A man was discovered tuesday standing outside the fence of the local drive-in theater watching the movies. This movie "hacker" has been spotted by several patrons, and was finally arrested by a cop just as ignorant as his superiors for hacking the theater's security fence.
When the manager of the theater was asked why he didn't put a taller fence up(like the other smarter theater owners) he replied, "Most of the people that live around the theater are short, I didn't think they would even bother trying to look over the fence."
As americans get taller, this new type of hacking plagues drive-in theaters across the country. Small towns across america are passing laws to combat this new type of hacking, but some officials think there is little or nothing idiotic theater owners will be able to do to stop determined movie hackers.
http://lwn.net/Articles/139914/
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
Since were all making up analogys how about:
Man finds $10 ground picks it up someone see this call cops and the man is arrested.
Covers all the bases:
Monetary loss, intentional act, easy public access, arrest ensues.
1) using Airpwn http://www.evilscheme.org/defcon/ and giving him the same or similar image (e.g. goatse guy or tub girl)
2) set up a camcorder on the guy's face
3) laugh everytime the guy sees a pic
4) send a link to the video to slashdot
5) profit (emotionally)
See - that's how you get rid of the "???" step!
You have a house.
In front of that house is a spigot where you attach your green garden hose.
Let's say it's a hot summer day and I ride by on my bike and see that you have left the water running - is it ethical for me to stop and take a drink? Probably, even if I don't ask. (Though courtesy might dictate that I do ask. For me, it would depend upon the placement of the spigot and how much of your property I had to cross.)
Is it ethical for me to fill up a 10 gallon container and carry it away? Give myself a shower with your hose? Doubtful, but I suppose there might be exceptions.
Would it be ethical for me to attach a hidden hose over to my house where I don't have my own water? No, not likely to be either ethical or legal, with or without your permission.
No go back to the original question of a drink of water. What if you as a homeowner had removed the handle from the spigot to prevent casual "theft" of your water. (This is a common practice.) Even if I have a wrench or a spigot handle of my own, I think that you've made it reasonably clear that you don't want to share your connection. Circumventing your protective measures is probably illegal and certainly unethical.
Terrorists and child pornographers don't need your WiFi connection to do their dirty deeds. I think most of them are clever enough to figure out how to use open proxies or onion routing or some other method to cover their tracks and not risk having their deeds discovered during a routine traffic stop or a fender bender and encountering an over-curious police officer. (Well, at least *some* of them might not be that dumb. Er, then again, if you're dumb enough to be doing it in the first place, you probably *are* that dumb.)
-- My Weblog.
"ST. PETERSBURG - Richard Dinon saw the laptop's muted glow through the rear window of the SUV parked outside his home. He walked closer and noticed a man inside. Then the man noticed Dinon and snapped his computer shut. Maybe it's census work, the 28-year-old veterinarian told his girlfriend. An hour later, Dinon left to drive her home. The Chevy Blazer was still there, the man furtively hunched over his computer. Dinon returned at 11 p.m. and the men repeated their strange dance." IMO the laptopper DID know he was doing something wrong. It's not that the laptopper had a machine at home, which he used for a wireless stroll around: he was in his car and remained there for HOURS. I'm interested in the follow-up.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Yeah. Technically you are allowed to connect to any fully open network. The wireless AP has an option to ignore the request to associate if it likes or request it be encrypted, and it didn't. Therefore, you should be allowed to connect to any network using this prinicpal. If the guy bypassed the MAC filtering or WEP to get in, it'd be a different story.
SSdtIGFzIGJvcmVkIGFzIHlvdSBhcmUK
From TFA:
... an hour later ...
"It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft,"
Oh my, I didn't know that, I'll just run out and buy ten copies of Microsoft office.
Now, I'm trying to install the second copy of Microsoft Office, but it just opens setup for adding/removing parts of the first copy. How do I install the second copy anyway?
Wait, don't say that sharing the computer is also theft, and I'll have to run out and buy ten computers. The apartment is not big enough for ten computers.
I've been mulling this over and the best analogy i can come up with is this: Having a non-secured AP is like having a website with content that you don't want to share, but require no authentication. If you don't want others on it, secure it. Given that the visitor doesn't know if it's open intentionally or not, how are they to know they aren't supposed to have access? If you don't even disable broadcasting the ssid, then it becomes like complaining that your website is showing up on search engines too. I'm sure flaws in this will be pointed out too, but it's a lot more akin to leeching wifi than walking into someone's unlocked house.
Dunedin's network, however, will be protected by the AES encryption standard, used by the Department of Defense. Passwords will be required, and each computer will have to be authenticated by the network. There also will be firewalls. "I'm confident to say our subscribers are at zero risk for that kind of fraud," Guerin said. (emphasis mine)
There's a word I once learned for that. It's "You are a muppet". OK, that's 3 words, but it's a lot shorter than "blithering incompetents shouldn't be allowed in positions of technical authority, especially not when paid by public money." Alas.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Your house or your car too "broadcast" their position to anyone who has eyes, yet that never was construed as an invitation that everyone should help himself to them.
Even in your example with the house, it's _only_ valid if I write an invitation (e.g., yes, "Open House Today") on that sign. If I decide to broadcast anything else on that sign, such as for example "Moraelin's house is here" or "this is a house" or "this is a door", then, nope, it's _not_ an invitation to enter.
And that's all that a hotspot broadcasts. The equivalent of "hi, I'm a hotspot". In fact no even that: what it broadcasts is a handshake signal to other devices, _not_ an invitation (or any other kind of message) to any human. No more, no less, and sure as hell no text to the effect of "this is a public service, please connect here."
So unless that guy's hotspot was explicitly broadcasting something like "open community access point", I'll call bullshit on that. It was _not_ broadcasting an invitation to stay parked in front of his house for hours mooching free internet.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Funny, you would have thought that the internet provider would have had the client arrested also for not securing their property. Are these stories to come? Man arrested for allowing other tenants in his apartment building to use Word on his computer. Woman arrested for reading book using light from neighbor's window, electric company pressing charges. Teens sued by music industry for listening to music from neighbor's party.
Not long afterwards, he's turned into a pig and trapped in that land until his daughter can free him and her mother from the sorceress Yubaba...
Xenu loves you!
what irritates the crap out of me is that this is like someone leaving their bike at the end of their driveway on a busy suburban street over night. It's going to get stolen. Not due to someone wanting to steal it, but because of the owners negligence and complete lack of common sense.
My $0.02 CDN
"Well you're not Fiona Apple, and if you're not Fionna Apple, I don't give a rat's ass."
I couldn't believe what I was reading at the time. I mean how often does the head of a multi 100billion dollar company straight up confess to what would get most of us thrown in jail.
Since that time, every reference to the article (infoworld, I believe) have been excised from the web, google cache, wayback and others.
If anybody has an actual paper copy, I would be interested in having a scan emailed to me:
anonymoustroll@gmail.com
Why yes, Mrs Kena, it does give us slashbots an extra special right to ridicule your stupid ass and question your competence to handle anything even remotely related to logic, computers or technology in general.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
Why play games? Why make excuses to why its okay to use his network? Yeah his network was open and yeah of course it wasn't smart to leave it like that but who cares? He never asked him for permission to get on his network and that's that. It was signal theft, period.
my sony vaio (xp-sp2) came preconfigured by sony (masses of crap on it i'll just _NEVER_ use!). i got it home and switched it on and the wifi was enabled and auto connected to my neighbours wifi access point. i did nufink guv! i've been pimping connections left, right and center ever since! naught ol' me ;-)
i'm getting a router in my place soon too. i'll doubtless leave it open to the net for others to use too. i'll barely use a fraction of the available bandwidth so why not let others use it too? (asides any legal argument). is it _morally_ wrong to allow others to use your connection?
TBH if the host network was open (no key/encryption) then they are just asking to be "used". it's not so much about leaving the door unlocked on your house as leaving all your possessions on the side of the road by a sign that says "free, please consume".
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
stop with the analogies already. We're not talking about houses and physical trespassing. We're talking about networks and wireless access points.
There are plenty of access points out there that are left open for the benefit of the general public. The wifi standards allow for that to be done by broadcasting ssid and not requiring secret logon credentials.
There are also plenty of access points out there that are not intended for use by the general public, yet are open by the incompetence and negligence of their owners.
The real question is: Should we allow the incompetent to kill off the possibility of leaving access points open for anyone to use?
If anyone claims that's not where this slope is heading, please enlighten me how the owners who wish to share should indicate that 'yes, in fact this network is open for all to use'
Furthermore: forget all about your houses. They are physical locations that provide privacy for you/your family, provides shelter and reprieve and an atmosphere to live and breathe in when not in public.
If anyone has that relationship to his d-link plastic box with an antenna, let me know.
indeed more time should be spent securing wireless networks.. tax dollars people.. tax dollars.. do you really want your money being put towards this kinda use?? making YOU pay because other people are too fucking lazy and can't secure their shit?? C'MON!
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Observation: No. I would consider that to be assault against the apartment dwellers. We could call it e-rape or iRape in case you distribute OSX, and then put you away for a good long time.
Another observation is that whoever owns the open wi-fi connection should be in trouble for stealing this poor kid's signal and forwarding *his* data on to the interent without his permission. Just ask the satelite tv companies if you may use a signal just because it's in your space.
(And now to contradict my last statement) : A better Analogy would be someone broadcasting MS Software into my home or ME. If I get hit in the face with a fucking Office CD (After dutifully checking to make sure it's genuine microsoft and I won't be doing hard time for posessing it), I will do whatever I wish with it.
also, "than" after different, maggot.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
"The fact is, for most broadband connections, unless the person is file sharing or using VOIP, it's no skin off your nose that they're doing it."
Bullshit. By that reasoning, you shouldn't mind it if I:
- come over and dump my garbage into your bin (hey, you probably didn't use all that space in it anyway), or
- build a billboard on your front lawn (why do you care about a few dollars less property value if you aren't selling it right now?), or
- bring a cow to graze on your front lawn (you didn't really need that grass, right?), or
- come into your house and use your fridge to cool down a can of Pepsi (you weren't using all the space in it anyway) and/or
- use your computer to check my email (you weren't using it at the time anyway, so wtf should you care about it?), and for that matter
- hop into your car at night and drive to a movie, because I'm too cheap to use a taxi (I'll put it back in the garage in the morning, so why would you have a problem with that?)
The fact is, that's not how private property works. What's mine is mine, what's yours is yours. Unless you have an explicit permission to use someone else's property, stay the f-word off it.
"If for some reason, it bothers you to be neighborly"
So if I don't let you trespass and use my property, I'm somehow not neighbourly. Funny how "neighbourly" and "sharing" get to be used to defend theft. (Well, at least we seem to be over the brainfucked "potlatch" and "culture of sharing" euphemisms for stealing. Now those were getting annoying a few years back.)
Get this, "neighbour":
- "sharing" refers to sharing what's _yours_. You can give away, or grant use of, things _you_ own. There is no such thing as neighbourly sharing someone _else's_ property or resources without their consent.
- "neighbourly" or "community" are two-way streets, give-and-take affairs, not an excuse to be a freeloading leech. It's "neighbourly" or "community" if we _both_ do something for each other, or at least theoretically acknowledging that possibility. Unilateral relationships in which you get all the benefits, and I only get to pay the ISP bill for your downloads, isn't neighbourly, it's just me supporting a freeloading parasite. You'll excuse me if I'm less than thrilled by that kind of "neighbourly" relationship.
- And again, it implies consentual stuff. Letting a neighbour use my lawnmower or my internet connection when they _asked_, is one thing. That's neighbourly. Seeing the neighbour just go into my garage and taking the lawnmower without asking, is a tad beyond the line of what "neighbourly" or "community" means. That's when it's time to get un-neighbourly and call the cops.
(Doubly so if it's not even a neighbour, but some unknown bum who thought he's oh-so-smart by coming over to "share" someone else's property.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Don't people ever reach other conclusions first? They *always* throw that in there when someone gets in trouble and the internet is involved. All this coverage makes child porn sound like the greatest vice since prostitution.
Direct away from face when opening.
That isn't clever... that's slander!
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
"'It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft,' " Nice definition !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Your post reminded me of a good Dvorak commentary that came out about a year or so ago. -- Usurper_ii
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1565274,00.as p
By John C. Dvorak
To drive around looking for connections to open wireless access points is called wardriving. In Canada, people who are caught doing this can be arrested for stealing bandwidth. The legality of this practice in the U.S., however, is a bit hazy, and there are many mitigating factors. One is that several organizations deliberately leave access points unencrypted so that people can use them as necessary. Also, many computers with built-in wireless simply grab the first signal they detect. Then there's the trespassing issue: The wardriver isn't trespassing on the router, the router is trespassing on the wardriver's airspace.
Free Access
This issue was brought home to me recently when one of my laptops told me it was ready to install new Windows XP upgrades, even though the laptop was not on a network and my wireless access point was off-line. I discovered that a neighbor's wireless router, named "default," had provided the access. Using my Toshiba's View Wireless Connections option, I saw five nearby networks that I could grab, three of which were unencrypted. Obviously there's plenty of free access around for harried travelers. It seems to me that being able to download your e-mail at an open connection is a good thing.
Look into the legality of this, though, and you hear vague comments like "The FBI doesn't know how legal it is" or "It may be illegal, because you're using someone else's connection or you're spying on their network." This issue will create ridiculous legal problems, which is bad news for both consumers and law enforcement, unless a sensible, national policy can be developed.
Personal and Corporate Responsibility
Let me jump in and propose a simple, logical public policy. Law enforcement doesn't need to get involved whenever some guy in a doughnut shop poaches a nearby Wi-Fi connection to check his e-mail, thinking he's on the shop's network. This shouldn't be a crime, even if he's intentionally poaching. We must put the burden of responsibility on the broadcaster, not the end user. It has to be made clear that people sending open connections all over town should be responsible for them.
Here's what I propose: Once a wireless signal leaves private property, it becomes public domain. If the person transmitting the signal wants it protected, then encryption is up to him or her. If someone beams an Internet connection into my home and I happen to lock onto the signal, he is trespassing on me, not the other way around. Public policy must reflect this logic. Keep it out of my house if you don't want me using it. Keep it out of my car. Keep it away from me in public places.
The Public Interest
This policy makes sense because it lets anyone who wants to provide open access do so without hassle or fear. Groups in San Francisco and Seattle are openly promoting free 802.11 connectivity. Many coffee shops, restaurants, and community groups now provide free wireless access, and directories of these hot spots are easy to find online.
This ubiquity of access is to be encouraged as in the public interest. But it can't happen if the law doesn't make the person transmitting the 802.11 signal responsible, instead of blaming any roaming users who are simply grabbing open connections. If this means that a corporate network is wide open to hackers, because the company doesn't bother encrypting the signal it broadcasts all over town, then so be it.
We must not follow the Canadian model that views using unprotected 802.11 connections as bandwidth theft. My computer grabs wireless signals impinging on my house more often than it grabs my own 802.11 connection. It just does. Agencies shouldn't be required to sort this out; it would be a law enforcement nightmare. In fact, it's
Ron Paul
Tampa Bay is a body of water. If you must, reference your stories to 'the Tampa Bay area", do not say "in Tampa Bay" unless of course it's a drowning or fishing story.
I've never seen so many bad analogies in one day.
.000075 cents per megabyte...
I live in Tampa - St. Petersburg, where this absurd action takes place.
Verizon installs wireless routers by default on all new DSL connections for the past year in this area.
Tresspass... his router said it was Ok to connect to. The protocol for connection goes like this...
Here I am... Here I am.. says the router.
Knock knock... (laptop) speaks to the router.
Whos there... says the router. Its me X05FD7F says the laptop. Router says come on in and connect. The router is the gateway-man and authorized the entry. Its automatic unless you say otherwise.
To claim things about locked doors and garbage can s and property tresspass... absurd analogies. Garbage cans full of whatever become public property when placed on the curb... I am free to take whatever is in them...
Theft of services???
What exactly is the value of that bandwidth which is stolen?? Maximum possible speed 1.5Mbs a second over the DSL link... or 180KBytes a second.. (of course overhead eats up some of that but we'll go with the very optimistic rate).
So the maximum amount of data over a 1.5Mbs DSL link could draw if it was downloading a whole month is around 466 GigaBytes a month... for this amount you pay $35... thats
The guy was connected for 6 hours.... AT maximum amount of bandwidth used is about 4 1/2 cents worth...truly a big time crime going down here.
The biggest crime is the expense the city faces to bring this through the courts.
If the guy was browsing the other persons computer... then there is a crime of tresspass.
So to frame the story correctly... the phone company issues wireless modems in this area for DSL connections. They may be shipped closed or open... dont know. Obviously the phone company wants people to use the wireless connection.
At the rate Verzion is laying fiber to the premise in this area... bandwidth is becoming very very cheap. So cost of bandwidth is moot and inconsequential cost at the residential level.
As far as the FCC... I am a Ham operator and License Examiner.
All people can listen to ANY frequency except cell phone frequencies. Any and all people can use part 15 FCC devices to transmit. The wireless card is a part 15 FCC device.
There is only a crime if the guy accessed the fellows computer...But surely he has a firewall and antivirus software.
You leave your door open in the city, with a wireless beacon that says welcome. Some one will come in.
Entering your property, locked or unlocked, without permission is called trespass. That's a crime. Taking your property, locked or unlocked, without permission is called burglary. That's a crime.
Even if your front door is wide open and you're out of town for two weeks, there is the rather justified assumption that rational people know the difference between the great outdoors and a building.
Technical arguments about networks very likely will not caryy weight in court. Specifically, arguments that it is the responsibility of the owner of the wireless hardware to block unwanted use is tantamount to arguing that, because we own the locks, anyone who enters through an unlocked door is not trespassing. The issue should be seen from the other point of view: That any use of the wireless connection without the permission of the connection's owner is impermissible.
The best solution to all of this is via innovative technology that would allow a wireless connection to identify the specific pieces of hadware allowed to interact with it, and to reject all others.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Find a way to shotgun a connection from, say, 5 different WAPs and surf on the ultimate free bandwidth.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I have broadband and Wi-Fi, I have no WEP or WPA and I expect it to be used - I hope it is used - I hope others will do the same.
I hope to be running a meshing Wi-Fi node soon but I think that the assumption that people don't want you using their connection is wrong. MANY people believe in having open Wi-Fi.
Now to get access someone has to ask for it using DHCP and I have to respond GIVING them an IP address.
Now if someone IP spoofs, or cracks WEP or try to hack my LAN then they are breaching my privacy.
This judgement is clearly wrong from a technical point of view as there was a request for access(DHCP) and IP address response.
There should be no assumption that a Wi-Fi node is not for public use as there is are lots of people who offer this service to be good citizens.
http://www.locustworld.com/ Link to Citywide Wifi Meshing Project Hub
A friend of mine was called to his neighbours to fix his Broadband, when he arrived he found it was not wired to the guys laptop, nor did the MODEM have Wi-Fi, but it use to work set up just this way, the neighbour protested. Turns out he was unwittingly using his neighbours broadband.
Seriously though this sort of misguided ruling could cause real problems for those who advocate a free Wireless Infrastructure, of overlapping nodes, essentially an Internet - not controlled by Teleco's but by individuals
Of course that may be exactly why this sort of ruling is made, to keep packet flow under regulation.
Those in power feered FIDO-Net, Dialup was too mobile, Broadband is nicely locked down to a physical address.
Don't let freedom fall, American people.
Dear Mr. Leary,
as a software developer and computer enthusiast I found your article "Wi-Fi cloaks a new breed of intruder" of two days ago mildly disturbing.
Although I do not agree with the practice of 'Wardriving' in general, and the arrestee of the article in particular, I believe this is a rather more complex issue than presented.
WiFi is a computer network standard designed for a wide range of applications and uses, and as such requires some setting-up before a network administrator should turn on the WiFi. Many small businesses, such as cafés and the like offer free Internet access for their customers, and for them the standard allows one to run the access point without restrictions.
There is, if you will, a process whereby the computer that wishes to use the access point asks "is it ok for me to log on?", and the access point can accept or deny the connection.
The network owner that the article mentioned explicitly states he had left the access point wide open for anyone to use, citing a concern for his elderly neighbours. Unfortunately so, as the standard also accepts a simple way of specifying that only computers that have been invited should be allowed on. This process, in my own experience, typically takes one or two minutes at the access point, and the same amount of time on each computer to be connected. In fact, it can hardly even be called an inconvenience.
I know that when it comes to consumer electronics, abstract standards are hardly what anyone wishes to deal with. Yet if one does a single search on Google, one will find myriad simple guides on how to do exactly what one needs to secure the access point.
The reason why I bother to write all this, is that there is a larger, more elusive topic at stake here, which is somewhat hard to express. The following questions may clarify a bit:
1. Should I sympathize with someone who buys a piece of equipment that does exactly what it promises and consciously misconfigures it?
2. Should I blame someone who uses a piece of equipment that is designed to communicate and cooperate with other equipment if:
- that other equipment is misconfigured
- by their mutual standard promises more than the owner wanted
- the owner of the misconfigured equipment knows about the misconfiguration, but just cannot be bothered.
3. Finally, how will anyone dare using the wireless networks in parks and the like?
Having people hang out outside of your house using your wireless network can easily be avoided by ensuring one sets the equipment up to indicate which of the standard's behaviors one wants to use. Calling the man who used the network a 'hacker' is not just inaccurate - it is flat out wrong. By that standard, even my mother would qualify as a hacker when she uses the wifi network I've set up for my parents - she's just using it the way it was designed to be used.
The article doesn't mention what exactly the man was surfing for. Perhaps he was just a traveller (with bad judgment) in urgent need of an access point? Perhaps he was a bogeyman surfing for child pornography. If he were, that would be its own crime, but from the article I can't really tell that he's done anything outside of being creepy.
What I can tell, though, is that a man may become convicted of a third degree felony simply for using standardized equipment to interact with a network negligently set up for anyone to use. And for being creepy. Is that fair?
Looks like in the US, only old people don't "hack" open wifi networks.
- Please, ignore everything written above.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes its not very good. However if he had WEP enabled, knowing it could be relatively easily broken it still is the overt act to discriminate between someone who only wants to use an open AP and someone whos willing to crack their way in.
And if this SUV guy had cracked through the weak WEP protection he wouldn't have any leg at all to stand on in the I was just using an open AP argument.
WEP should be used like a No Tresspass sign - it doesn't stop anyone who wants to enter from entering anywhere - but it does inform them they are not welcome to enter the property and are violating the law if they enter.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
Yes, WEP is easily broken, but if you have to break WEP encryption to get on the network it's pretty clear you shouldn't be on it - which should make the legal situation a lot simpler (though IANAL).
If he was in Tampa Bay, how would his laptop even work? Is this some new underwater laptop? Now, if he was in Tampa I could understand....
#include bier;
He was obviously using it to download porn, and got caught when the victim started getting cock-enlargement pill ads spammed in their e-mail.
This seems as much like "theft" as piracy does. I would say that it doesn't fall under theft, but something along the lines of illegal access, unauthorised access, etc. Definitely illegal, definitely wrong. I am not defending any of this, but I am getting sick of people comparing every new cybercrime to "theft". It's time for average Joe to be given a chance to understand these important new concepts for real.
When I moved into a new apartment in Naples, FL, I was shocked to find 3 wireless networks in my range that were wide open. It was nice because I unpacked all of my things and was on the net that night courtesy of my sharing neighbors, while I waited for the cable guy to come the following afternoon.
So what I don't get is, why don't wireless companies just ship their routers pre-setup with encryption. Then, they could just include the key much like software ships with a license number you enter when you install it. If people can handle software installation, this really doesn't seem to be any different. The router companies could even offer a more marketable interface to make it look much like it does when you enter a CD Key from software so people don't even realize what they're doing. Seems like a really easy fix to me.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
So in the case where my Windows XP box by default automatically connects to open WiFi connections, causing me to break the law?
I have obviously disabled this, but this story does not define what he was doing with the connection.
He did not hack in, he did not circumvent any encryption or security scheme, so what exactly has he been charged with? He didn`t carry out any criminal activity as I can see?
Leaving a WiFi access point open and unsecured is broadcasting the signal, and hence, access to anyone in the public who is within "earshot" of the WAP. Some court somewhere needs to wake up and smell the coffee with this issue and give a clear and sensible ruling on it, because even the cheapest WAPs on the market do have a mechanism to switch from public broadcast to private access (i.e. at least turning on WEP). Even though WEP doesn't provide any real security, it at least marks a visible boundry. In virtually every municipality in the USA, the concrete sidewalk that cuts across your residential front yard is public property and everyone in your neighborhood is free to walk along it... it's mere presence constitutes an invitation for the public to use it, but your front yard itself is private... there's no fence in between your grass and the sidewalk. If you have a portable AM/FM radio, does tuning into a local station constitute "hacking" their signal even though you have no intention of buying goods and services from their commercial advertisors? No. Does using an unauthorized satellite TV receiver with decryption system constitute "hacking" a pay-per-view satellite TV transmission? Yes. The "securing of the signal" is what makes the difference.
In a nutshell, leaving a WAP wide open not only constitutes "not marking any boundary at all", but IMHO it also constitutes broadcasting an invitation for the public to use it.
If Dinon truely knew how to keep Smith from accessing his network why didn't he just flip the switch to nock him off the network. Or better yet start a capture to see what Smith was truely doing. People in the US seem to be to quick to call the cops or file a lawsuit over something that could be quite trivial.
Kena Lewis, the owner, compared it to buying a program and sharing it with neighbors. They bought the WiFi, left it open (sharing it). Doesn't that make them the theives?
I thought the FCC rules basically allowed someone to receive any signal available as long as you're not cracking an encryption key? Is it the transmission part that over rides the FCC rules?
that might be a better analogy - its like using your neighbors
garden hose to water your lawn. Afterall, the tap is not
locked. Likewise the cost of the 'service' is similar and you
using some one day for your lawn is not likely to be noticed.
Non-default password choice should be an in-your-face, step one, sort of operation, not an optional thing you do after the new router is finally configured.
I remember back in the day, it was possible to register your bicycle and actually get a bicycle license, unique number and all, on a sticker that you could then put on your shiny new bike in case anybody ever stole it.
How many people actually ever did that? Same deal: if it's any trouble AT ALL, people won't do it. It's not really their fault, unless you're ready to be excoriated for not registering your bicycle.
John.
So if I leave the doors on my house unlocked can I be arrested also?
In the article it has somebody quoted as saying "It opens up a whole new area for ethics, legal boundaries and responsibilities. It's a whole new frontier."
The person only meant responsibilities of the would-be 'hackers' or 'thieves'. But what about the responsibility of the owners of the access point to secure their network? Leaving your wireless network unsecured and then calling the cops when somebody 'steals' it is like leaving your car running overnight in New York City and thinking that nobody will steal it.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
I remember reading that story and thinking to myself , ya they are going to have a real hard time proving theft when the door was wide open and essentially "public". The same is true with a web server whose web pages are accessible via google. Is it "theft" to traverse a publicly accessible web page which is indexed via google? I think not.
Seems like potential "get of jail free card" to me.
Using some folks' logic -- it is the fault of rape victims for not wearing a chastity belt.
The analogy is false, though, because you're broadcasting your property... All of your analogies imply clear boundary conditions, such as property edges, doors, using someone else's computer, etc. But if you put up an unsecured wireless network which you setup of sufficient strength to permeate your neighbor's property, the boundaries are very different.
If you have a wireless stereo system, which broadcasts to your speakers, and your neighbor picks it up, it's not "stealing" your music if they listen. If you want to share photos with your family and you put up an unsecured internet site, it's not stealing if non-family members visit and download your photos.
The fact of the matter is you've setup a broadcasting network through a section of your neighborhood. Congratulations, you're now a broadcaster. All operating systems will automatically connect with your network (...maybe not BSD). If you had a problem with this, you can very simply turn on WEP.
Which is how the internet works. Everything is assumed public until you put on the slightest bit of security. That's the convention. If you visit a website and they don't authenticate, it's assumed public. If someone sends you a link to a streaming movie and it doesn't ask for a password, it's assumed public. By practical definitions, it is public. We're not talking about bolting on an iron-clad Novell authentication system, we're talking about changing one preference in your network configuration settings.
You bought a piece of land next to a public field, and you didn't put up a fence or any demarkations. People will wander into and out of the field as if it were part of the commons. There is no practical way to ask whose field / network it is, nor any reason to see to ask. By not marking it as private, you have used the conventional method of marking it as public.
Would someone make their network public? Lots of people do it intentionally. In my apartment, I generally see no fewer than 10 or so wireless networks. Of those, half or so are unsecured. There's usually one or two that has the default router name (Linksys, etc). But most have changed their name to something else, which means that the people involved knew enough to go through the setup process and decided to leave their network open to everyone. Why? Mostly it's a desire to share and be neighborly. Oddly enough, the ISP up the street does the same thing. Lots of the businesses have open wireless access in an attempt to get people to come in with their laptops and drink coffee while doing work.
Of course, there are tradeoffs involved all around. Your wireless network is fucking up my other wireless equipment and using the available spectrum in my house. My wireless phones and other devices are using the same unlicensed spectrum, but are now competing with your bloody web surfing to be heard. I accept that you're going to have a wireless network, because those things are useful. And if you decide not to secure it and make it public, it's on me (and all of the other users) to be good citizens and not saturate your upstream by sharing on P2P apps all the time, or queueing up weeks worth of downloads. If you do decide to secure your network, it's neighborly of us to respect those boundaries and not packet hack it, despite WEP's inherent vulnerabilities. It's also neighborly to broadcast your SSID and channel, because in high density areas the difficulties involved in keeping people's networks from stepping on eachother is far greater than the minimal security provided by not broadcasting your SSID.
You marked your network as public, and now you're complaining that it's not private. Fine. Flip the fucking switch so that we know that it's private.
The ______ Agenda
This device complies with part 15 of FCC Rules. Operation is Subject to the following conditions:
(1) This device may not cause harmful interference and
(2) This device must accept any interference that may cause undesired operation
Kernel Krunch - Part of a Complete OS
This was in what, st petersburg? You would think that they would have at least one person who would think to check the guy's internet history, e-mail, etc. If they're so concerned about it, they should just check it themselves.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Oh.. sorry, wrong St. Petersburg...
In Soviet Florida, an open wireless lan hacks YOU!
From the article:
Richard Dinon saw the laptop's muted glow through the rear window of the SUV parked outside his home. He walked closer and noticed a man inside. Then the man noticed Dinon and snapped his computer shut...An hour later...The Chevy Blazer was still there, the man furtively hunched over his computer.
So, instead, this man walked into the shop, made the sandwich and had a bite. The owner of the place suddenly saw him in the security camera, came out, tore the sandwich from his hands, and booted his ass out on the street. One hour later, the guy comes back to finish his sandwich.
I'm surprised no one yet has pointed out from the f'in' article that this guy WAS WARNED. I mean, the dude's wackin' off to kiddie porn or what not, Richard goes over, sees this dude basking in the warm glow of free-as-in-beer nip slips, gets pissed, and slams the dude's laptop shut. And swears up a storm at the nudie-leech, but as we all know, this juicy detail never makes it into the news. He's been warned.
Well, what'dya know, one hour later, this dude's right back where he was before, still wackin' away at his free-as-in-wi-fi lolitas, which just goes to show you, kids, never get addicted to tittie pics.
Dinon returned at 11 p.m. and the men repeated their strange dance.
Darn public news source euphemisms. Which means that Richard saw this dude grippin' the totem pole in full basking glow of the bald beaver, got pissed that this dude was freeloading porn when he has to pay $39.99 for it, slams the laptop shut, grabs it, throws it out the window, punches the dude in his family jewels, swears at him, then calls the police.
Why didn't this dude file an assault charge? Simple. He was too busy deleting all the naughty-naughty.
Does anybody else find "wardriving" a puerile expression? It's interesting to see the St. Petersberg Times article pick up on the expression with a little frisson of excitement - though it gives the term's heritage. I can feel the ripples of an expression being criminalised (a comparative example in the UK is watching "asylum seeker" being re-interpreted), and hence the associated activity being criminalised as well...
I've replied a couple times already, but I need to just vent my own opinion on this as a stand-alone as well...
If you knowingly leave your wireless access point open, as this man did, and instead of talking to somebody who is using it against your wishes decide to skip straight to calling the cops, as this mand did, you are both and idiot, and an asshole.
He could have secured his WAP. He didn't. He could have just walked up to the guy's car and told him to leave. He didn't. He could have just secured the WAP after he saw the guy, and then watched him leave. He didn't. He figured he'd just call the cops and waste the taxpayers money taking care of it instead.
He should be taken out into the street and beated with a rolled-up newspaper like a naughty puppy.
Granted, the world's laziest and dumbest wardriver, as I like to think of the accused from this story, should also recieve a couple whacks from the same newspaper. He is a dumbass. But in a sane world he would not be a felon.
Done.
There is a reason to think that too. If you need someones OK to use their network, how exactly are you supposed to get it? i.e. you need to access their network to know weather it's OK.
I think by RL standards you have a _very_ clear-cut case of pre-meditated theft.
I think given the number of places that deliberately provide free access (some whole cities) and the fact that WEP exists and is encouraged for security, we have a clear case of someone getting upset when they were too lazy to get a better understanding of how things work. They should also realize that they were lucky this guy wasn't hacking them, and that someone who was being malicious would probably not have been caught.
BTW, your involuntary sharing of food example is just stupid. Food is finite. Unused bandwith does not get used at a later time. Sharing bandwidth when you want to max it out IS annoying, and one should take steps to keep people out.
The author of this article has no clue about wireless networks and the purposes, laws, and ethics. I am running an open access point for several years now for everyone to share and I expect to find the same when I am on the road. Free wireless neighbohood networks are the future of the internet and more and more so called mesh networks are popping up everywhere. These are networks where the access points do bridging so the IP packets are router from one access point to the other without even requiring a wired connection. Mesh networks will make the current overloaded and vulnerable backones/ISP infrastructure obsolete. Sharing your access point with others is the first step in this direction.
The homeowner is stupid. By saying that he suspects the guy had gained access to his open wi-fi network, implicitly states that the owner knew and willingly left his network unsecured. If the owner did not know what the wardriver was doing, then there was no probable cause to search the vehicle, and any proof of network access would be ex post facto. The police can't just arrest him and search his car on suspicion that he "did something wrong" and then charge him with whatever they find, if anything. But if they knew in advance that the network was unsecure, then the owner is to blame for not securing his own network. "Originally posted by the US Constitution" ....nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,.....
All of the examples you listed are "Trespassing". This is more of a proper analogy. You hire a lawn company to mow your lawn, weed, garden, the whole shebang. while they are working, one of the workers stop to chat with you IN THE STREET. The work is still getting done, but this only becomes a problem if you start up a three hour conversation that attracts THE REST OF THE LAWN CREW (download the LOTR trilogy or something using someones wifi NOT ON THIER PROPERTY). Wifi by its nature is OPEN depending on how the network is setup(DHCP ANYONE?!?! IP REQUEST? IP LEASE?) If you let this happen, it is due to your lazyness and ignorance that OPEN AIRWAVES are protected.
He was stealing my illict p2p bandwidth from which i download riped movies, games, mp3, and all kinds of warez!
Technabyte - Read my tech news blog.
Steal satellite TV signals. They are beaming onto my property without my permission, so they are trespassing and I can do what I want with their signal. Right...
....
This logic didn't work for the TV pirates, and it certainly won't work this. I do agree that it should be upto the broadcaster to secure their network, but if that logic is used in court, they will laugh at you, then find you guilty
The fact that it is easily broken makes no difference at all (legally). Having it on is in itself a notice that "you shouldn't be here" and now requires an active effort to conenct. Anyone who hacks your system is now guilty of a crime (in the U.S.) and can't put up a "but it was open and my system just auto-connected" defense.
Think of WEP like one of those flimsy locks on a cheap trailer door. They aren't meant to actually keep you out, they are meant to tell you to keep out.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I intentionally leave my AP open for anyone to use. Please return the favor. It might be technically illegal, but it doesn't cost either of us anything so why care?
Sure you are unlikely to be near my house, but I'm unlikely to be near yours too.
My 802.11G card picks up both my B network and my neighbor's G network, and I've been thinking about just using his to bump up the speed. There goes that idea.
--- What
So what kind of argument does yours fall into? I mean your whole post, not your example. It seems to be something like: make the other person feel stupid. What is that, analogy? emotional appeal? It certainly doesn't seem like logic, or at least not plain, simple, dry Spock logic there's a lot of implied elitism in that message.
;-) ) In general, I'm awfully leary of supposedly purely logical arguments being used in defense of or to attack purely moral stances. I mean--logically, why are you even bothering to continue to exist in a chaotic, senseless, godless universe anyway? What purely *logical* reason is there for you to even exist? May as well just end it all now since, ultimately nothing you ever do will really matter one way or the other...
I tend to strongly prefer the logic-style of argument. However, in a debate, I'm likely to go with whatever approach (emotional appeal, analogy, etc) seems most likely to produce the desired result--that is so long as I don't have to twist the facts into a pretzle to get there. (I'm not meaning to imply that you did that--I'm just saying that lying or over-manipulation of the facts is something I try to avoid.)
As much as I love logical arguments ("love"? "logic"?), I think they have more than their fair of weaknesses. (And I'm only going to get around to listing one of them before I go horribly far off topic.
I state, without actual proof, that humans are fundamentally irrational, emotional, social hairless primates. Therefore, logic will not always be the best way to sway any given hairless primate to your way of thinking. Sometimes emotional appeal will work. Sometimes a big mallet, or the threat of a big mallet to the cranium will do the trick. I personally don't like the mallet to the skull method because it offends my sensibilities (also I feel I'm more likely to be on the receiving end than the dealing end). So it goes. But speaking from a purely logical standpoint, is there anything faulty with the mallet-to-the-skull method?
Sorry I got off topic--just my primate brain wandering again like it does.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
I see tons of posts to this but what I have yet to read is the irony that Bright House Networks is a network service provider. I mean, it's one thing is Aunt Stella buys a WAP and doesn't know enough to secure the connection, but it's a complete other when a company specializing in this sort of stuff is too stupid to do it.
You never saw a fish on the wall with its mouth shut.
The guy that had the open access point should be arrested, and have his internet connection turned off by his provider. He admitted he left his access point open because of the old people living around him. Well I am sure that is not because locking it would cause harmful rays, it is because he was sharing his access point w/ his neighbors, and encrypting his connection would be too hard for the old people to figure out. So it looks like he is guilty of sharing bandwith from his provider, as I am sure it is against the TOS to share your connection with anyone else. Looks like the police should show this guy a visit.
Because you are fixated on the concept of property. All of your examples rely on real property for the analogies, but radio signals are not private property. They are public property, regulated by the FCC. By virtue of broadcasting them you are making them available for public consumption. Federal law is quite clear about this.
In addition your Internet connection is not property, it is a service. Theft of service laws might apply, but property or trespass laws do not.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I think your example is particularly good because it illustrates the main difference between using somebody else's open wireless access point and making phone calls through a cordless phone base. Since for most of us internet access is unmetered, "stealing" bandwidth does not result in extra charges for the owner of the access point. It is not so in the case of a cordless phone base. In both cases, the use is unauthorized, though.
Microsoft allows you to share it's products with everyone in your home, at least as long as those products are installed and used on only one computer. Windows is regularly used as a multi-user operating system. Isn't that sharing a Microsoft product?
-Rich
Shouldn't the some of the onus be on the manufacturer to make the device come with some security enabled? I know they want to appeal to the least common denominator, but they are not doing any service for their customers by leaving them wide open to exploitation. Couldn't the installation interface have some explanation of risks in layman's terms. Does every XYZ wirless router have to come with the username "admin" and pw "XYZ"? Don't let it transmit until it has been secured.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
First, I agree with the Metered v. Unmetered argument put forth by another replier. Second, sure go ahead, if you can. When I lived in dorms and apartments, I specifically never used a cordless phone (though I did have a cell phone, but that's worlds harder to fake a call from), just because I knew the broadcast area extended beyond the bounds of my dwelling, and I didn't want people listening in unrestricted, much less placing unauthorized calls. Now at my house, I have a consumer-grade cordless phone that I know does not reach the boundaries of my yard, while still being available where I usually am. Thus, you'd have to be trespassing on my property, which would show willful intent to steal bandwidth/airtime.
--- What
The whole tone of this article is dead wrong. The reporter is just taking what he's handfed by the cops. Take this for example:
In another Florida case, a man in an apartment complex used a neighbor's Wi-Fi to access bank information and pay for pornography sites.
So, wait.....which part of this is wrong? So the guy is into porn? Jesus, have him shot! Note that it doesn't say he was accessing other people's banking information. The whole story just implies misconduct by making the guy who got arrested out to be some peeping-tom type hanging out in the yard and acting suspicious, and making everybody else who has hung out on a wifi network (me and probably 70% of the rest of us here included of course) lumped in as a bad guy because this is obviously some kind of foul play. Never mind the fact that they are broadcasting access to their fucking network on our public airwaves!
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
I'm going up to SRQ this weekend and this story is pissing me off. Who else wants to stage a WiFi protest?
To me this whole thing smacks of the "pie in the window" principle: if you've got a pie cooling on the window sill, technically that's your pie, but you are sitting it outside your window beckoning to be taken. It's still yours and it's still on your property but shouldn't you be required to at least put a sign on that pie saying "Dont Take My Pie?"
However the homeowner was a moron for not simply knocking on the guy's window and asking him to get the hell out of his driveway.
theres gotta be a difference between the guy sneaking around in an suv and just using a wireless network of the neighbor isn't there???
"Now, the intent question in this one is a different matter. The guy in the SUV apparently concealed his access, suggesting that he believed his access was unauthorized. And that makes all of the foregoing irrelevant, because it establishes an intent to use it without authorization. Had he said what he was doing when first approached, if first approached, and not tried to conceal his activity, that would be completely different and would lack that sign of intent to have unauthorized service."
Intent only enters into the picture if the act is unlawful. For example, no matter how covertly you eat that bowl of cereal you bought, and no matter how certain you are that you're doing something illegal, and no matter how furtively you shovel each spoonful into your mouth while hiding under the table, your eating does not become illegal.
In other words, if you do something believing it to be illegal, but if it is actually legal, you have not committed a crime.
Quoting the article, "Smith, who police said admitted to using Dinon's Wi-Fi, has been charged with unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony. A pretrial hearing is set for July 11."
Wow. Where else is this illegal? What are the implications for municpial wireless networks?
-- haaz.
Accessing a publicly visible and unprotected WiFi connection, either intentionally or unintentionally, is about the same as overhearing a conversation spoken between two people on a street corner. IANAL, but it seems that harm must actually occur for someone to have a case against the alleged perpetrator for them to have a case against them, i.e. excessive bandwidth usage resulting in increased cost, etc.
This is ridiculous. Listen to this lady from an ISP:
"It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft," said Kena Lewis, spokeswoman for Bright House Networks in Orlando. "Just because a crime may be undetectable doesn't make it right."
No different? Is this taken out of context, and she's faulting the owner of the AP? Because that's the only way that it's even remotely the same, and then it depends on the terms of service of the ISP. The MS EULA prohibits you from using the software if you haven't legally acquired it, and prohibits the user from redistributing. So, no matter whether you are the sharer or sharee, you're violating the agreement...and you had to view and agree to the agreement to put the software on. In this case, the ISP's TOS is only agreed to by the customer. So, the person using the access has no obligations to that ISP. The person putting up an unsecured AP may well be in violation, but that's a different issue.
I can't tell whether the reporter should be blamed for using the quote out of context, or whether the ISP spokeswoman should be blamed for bullshitting. But one way or another, that's bullshit.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Caveat: This article is merely the results of my research, so please keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and am not qualified or licensed to disburse legal advice. Corrections to this information are welcomed and desired.
My research would indicate that accessing an open (that is unencrypted) 802.11b/802.11g wireless network is not a federal crime. However, individual states may have enacted their own laws.
According to Title 18 (Crimes and criminal procedure) of the United States Code, Part I (Crimes), Chapter 119 (Wire and electronic communications interception and interception of oral communications) from usdoj.gov:
I do not believe that Title 18 (Crimes and criminal procedure) of the United States Code, Part I (Crimes), Chapter 47 (Fraud and false statements) Section 1030 (Fraud and related activity in connection with computers) from usdoj.gov applies:
Whether or not this would apply would depend on the definition of the term "protected computer". An open netwo
How it works is that the FCC grants the public the right to use a frequency band with in certain guidelines, (Mainly power.)
900 Mhz 2.4 Ghz and 5Ghz are all unlicensed bands.
there are several bands on lower frequencies, but I don't know what they are, (I just know those three because they are the ones advertised on cordless phones.) the lower unlicensed bands are also used for RC cars/planes/boats etc.
This is like arresting someone for using a phone with a "Free" sign on it in a public place.
I have a flat price for all calls on my plan. Is it theft if I install a phone on the sidewalk for people to use?
For the record, I leave my network open intentionally in case someone on a boat or in the park across the street can make use of it.
What do you expect?? Everything's illegal there.
Actually, it is. It's more like you have a window open into your apartment and the guy across the street watches your Pay-per-view off your TV just by looking out his window and into yours.
You won't find any judge or jury willing to convict the guy across the street for stealing PPV content. It'd be REASONABLE to assume if your window is open you're aware of the risk of someone looking in.
By the same token, with the status of today's networking and the news about open WiFi points, the onus is on the network operator to take reasonable steps to secure access. If the man had to decrypt a WEP key or guess a passphrase to get access to the WiFi AP, I'd say he indeed was stealing and should be prosecuted. Since all he did was take advantage of a publically available (by all rights) network, this case is rather baseless.
go to a public area
/Admin or Admin/Admin as the password.
navigate to 192.168.1.1
enter in
You'll be amazed how many networks have this open.
I think most people here are using the wrong type of analogy for this case. The "theft" wasn't performed by any form of trespassing - so analogies of "borrowing" someones car because they didn't lock it is absurd. The AP is broadcasting information that is coming onto my property - I didn't go into his house to use it. There is no correct analogy for this - but the best may be with trees. If my neighbor has a tree that is growing on the boundary of our properties, and the trunk is on his side of the property - the tree is legally his. HOWEVER - I am legally allowed to trim the tree back to the boundary between our properties - even if it is HIS tree. But what about the fruit that falls from his tree onto MY property? This is where the law gets fuzzy (and why we will probably never have a good answer for the issue with open AP's). According to long-standing law doctrine - the fruit belongs to the owner of the tree - as well as any limbs, leaves, or anything else that falls from his tree. Therefore, if you ask your neighbor to remove any of these annoyances that happen to be landing on your property and he does not remove them - he can be held liable for any damages or costs to remove any such items. Sure, you can take any fruit from his tree that falls on your property (or is on a limb growing on your property) is he is okay with that - but if he decides he has a problem with that and he has evidence of you taking the fruit - he will win in court every time. The same could be said for your open AP - even if you are just "borrowing" his bandwidth without his knowledge and he finds out - you can bet your ass you are still stealing and can be held liable. The bottom line - even if he is broadcasting into YOUR house, it's still not your's for the taking. Try asking your neighbor is he has a problem with you using his open AP next time.
Hey Kena, get a clue. Your saying that 'It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment." doesn't make that true. In fact, I'd say that it is different (though that wouldn't make my statement true either). If your customer shared his wireless network in violation of your terms and conditions, inadvertantly or on purpose, then ding your customer. If your customer's wireless router is misconfigured because your customer service is lame, ding your customer service manager. Dinging the guy that used an OPEN network seems to me to be the height of stupidity. If I were the arrested person, I'd sue your collective asses. I'd be willing to bet a beverage that he'll get an attorney and do just that.
And, by the way, somebody should ding the spokeswoman for argument by assertion.
Rather than being something that you expect people not to enter, and regret having to lock, is not internetwork access now like the use of a road, which is paid for by people who lived there a long time ago and who live there now, but which other people are expected to use, on the basis that they provide similar access elsewhere, or are using it for purpsoes that are on average beneficial to the providers of whatever public good it is.
Expecting a visitor not to get water from the well or to keep his horse from drinking out of the Corporation trough seems mean and in the end adverse to all our interests.
Some time ago I saw the remark that the only part of the cost of a telephone call that could be directly assigned to an individual (user and) call was the cost of the ink for that line on the itemised bill.
That seems like a silly case to bring, and I hope that nobody who has a choice will be buying service form the company involved, now.
"Theft of Communications Services" is just as illegal in the U.S. as in Canada - try hooking up cable without paying for it, even if your neighbour knows about it.
The theft in using someone else's access point (and it is theft, as opposed to the bizarre microsoft copyright analogy in tfa) is from the ISP, not from the neighbour. The neighbour has a contract for the ISP to provide services. You don't. The neighbour's contract specifies that he can't redistribute the bandwidth. If I get cable TV, and then decide to wire up my whole apartment building with free cable... well I'm not allowed to do that.
But so many people, like Dvorak, get hung up on the law making a certain activity illegal. They don't think about how things work in the real world, where there are police and judges, people who have to THINK about what is reasonable. The law and its enforcement is (in theory) almost always based on what is reasonable. If I fill up a bucket of water from your hose, am I stealing? Yes. And my chances of being convicted are? But if I tap your plumbing and use it for my shower?
In Canada, there has been exactly ONE person convicted for stealing bandwith by using an open access point. He was caught driving the wrong way down a one-way street, naked from the waist down, with a laptop on the front seat downloading kiddie porn. The theft of communications charge was one of many, and the least of his worries.
I am typing this right now using my neighbour's AP. Am I worried the cops are going to come after me? Uh, no. It's not going to happen. And even if some idiot decides to knowingly leave an unsecured access point and then actually phone the police (like the guy in this story), it's just going to be like a noise complaint.
I really think it's time we define what 'stealing' and 'theft' really mean. This is getting a little rediculous.
Linux sucks. And you're fat. Take a shower hippy.
The ISP defense that it's like sharing one copy of MS Office is pretty poor, as the bandwidth is fixed; it's more like sharing a video, which seems to me to be entirely legal AFAICT.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I think you'd note that the AP owner's agreement with the ISP explicitly restricted the AP owner from reselling or allowing public access through his service.
Moreover, the owner knew: the device was broadcasting to the public, the device was configured to accept connections from the public, and the device was broadcasting that it was for public use. You extend and invitation to someone to come to your house, and call the police to report them as a tresspasser? Worse, the cops are willing to accept the dinner guests as tresspassers, even though you went to the trouble of preparing them a nice meal?
Dumb.
Uh oh I divulged too much info already! If anyone here works for roadrunner, optonline, whoever, what I said was a joke. Of course I use my cable modem to connect only one computer and nothing else just like the good, high paying customer you expect me to be :) Nothing more to see here....
If you really want to compare it, it's more like handing out keys to strangers on the sidewalk, and saying "you can use this to enter my house."
The Tampa Bay office of Bright House Networks can be reached at tampabay.customercare@mybrighthouse.com.
He is guilty of being a 41 year old loser that drives around in a car with a laptop and sits outside an house all night (even after being approached TWICE by someone forcing him to attempt to hide his computer) pecking around on an crappy laptop.
In short, he is guilty of being an idiot.
What a brilliant way to argue logically!
If microsoft left xp disks at street corners unattended complete with legal cororate serial numbers would they be surprised if people were using them?
*I* would be surprised if people used them, but, then again, I read slashdot.
This is really in the same vein as stealing cable television service. The reason it's called stealing here? You are "borrowing" someone else's service for your personal use without paying for it.
This would be roughly equivalent to someone plugging into the outdoor power outlets on my house or garage to run their A/C in the summer.
If I knew about this and was ok with it, then it becomes an entirely different story.
A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion. -- Chinese proverb
Leave voicemail on someone's digital answering machine. It is a computing device (as defined by the law). You didn't have explicit permission to alter the state of that computing device. You are a criminal.
Go to your job. Logon. Change the background screen color. You didn't have explicit permission to alter the computer device in this manner (this was an example in the State vs. Randall Schwartz case). You are a criminal.
Dude, this is, like, giving me an analogy overload...
It's like, imagine if you were in Soviet Russia, and you left the door to your house unlocked, but there was a HOT DOG inside your door. Any reasonable person would expect to be sent to the gulag because that's counter-revolutionary!
No... I don't think that simply because someone else uses your unsecure, open wi-fi network, the mere fact that they temporarily "limited your bandwidth" constitutes "stealing" on their part.
Most consumer broadband services don't guarantee you a specific amount of bandwidth to begin with! They tell you "rates of up to X" speed. In the case of DSL service, Customer A who is lucky enough to live a few houses down from the central office probably gets as much as 2 or 3x the bandwidth for his money as Customer B who is about 12,000 feet from the same central office.
The only thing that makes sense here, in my opinion, is charging someone if they actually do something criminal while borrowing your open network. (EG. If some guy in a van keeps pulling up close to your house and is obviously using your wi-fi network, and the next month you get questioned about downloading child porn - then it's time to report him and have him arrested.)
Short of that, if you don't want other people connecting to your wi-fi network, secure the thing! Otherwise, people really have no way to know if you're purposely offering free Internet access to those around you, or you're just clueless or too lazy to lock it down properly.
(That's where your unlocked door analogy falls flat, too. It's understood that a home belongs to a specific owner, and you're NOT allowed to just walk in, uninvited - especially if the door is closed and you have to turn the knob just to enter. You probably aren't sitting on that person's physical property at all when your laptop picks up their open wi-fi network.)
I don't think comcast had WAP's in mind when they wrote this part of thier policy, but it's directly applicable...
You are responsible for any misuse of the Service, even if the misuse was committed by a friend, family member, or guest with access to your Service account. Therefore, you must take steps to ensure that others do not use your account to gain unauthorized access to the Service by, for example, strictly maintaining the confidentiality of your Service login and password. In all cases, you are solely responsible for the security of any device you choose to connect to the Service, including any data stored or shared on that device. http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp
Why did you guys have to call this "war driving"? That was a bad choice.
in 1981 the US Supreme Court ruled that it was legal to receive any signal in the air, it was illegal to descramble it. This is why HBO started scrambling their signals. There really was left no room for interpretation on this issue, and it totally amazes me that somebody is trying to bring it back up.
If you do not use the minimal security, you have no leg to stand on according to the Supreme Court.
Maybe somebody wants to have this retried but with the availibility of even the simplest security to cya, and chosing not to use it, the Supreme court will probably not even hear it again.
this is also a good example of why police should have to get law degrees: arresting somebody for a law that the useless spineless cop knew nothing about should make that cop spend time in jail.
from the dcma chapter 3
"And again, similar definitions for the special terms:
(A) to "circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure" means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or otherwise impairing a technological measure; and
(B) a technological measure "effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, prevents, restricts, or otherwise limits the exercise of a right of a copyright owner under this title. {FN144: 17 U.S.C. 1201(b)(2)}
The technological measure does not need to be flawless in its protection in order to be protected. Instead, the provisions are intended to protect mechanisms that are simple, like the Audio Home Recording Act's Serial Copy Management System, which uses only two bits of control information (one to indicate it is a work to be protected, the other indicating that it is an original copy) but is effective since there are no legal digital audio recording devices that don't honor the system.
The practical, common-sense approach taken by H.R. 2281 is that if, in the ordinary course of its operation, a technology actually works in the defined ways to control access to a work, or to control copying, distribution, public performance, or the exercise of other exclusive rights in a work, then the "effectiveness" test is met, and the prohibitions of the statute are applicable. This test, which focuses on the function performed by the technology, provides a sufficient basis for clear interpretation. It applies equally to technologies used to protect access to works whether in analog or digital formats. {FN145: H.R. Judiciary Comm. Print 105-6 at 10}
Congress indicated that even a simple password control could be an effective technological measure.
For example, if unauthorized access to a copyrighted work is effectively prevented through use of a password, it would be a violation of this section to defeat or bypass the password and to make the means to do so, as long as the primary purpose of the means was to perform this kind of act. {FN146: Sen. Rep. No. 105-190 at 11}
"In fact, there is no need to protect a technological measure that is so good that it cannot be circumvented. Instead, you want to use the law to allow technological measures that are simple and inexpensive. As an analogy, imagine what your home doors would look like if there were no laws against burglary and you had to use only technology to protect your new, big-screen television. Instead, because there is a law against "circumventing" a locked door, most people get by with an inexpensive lock, even though an expert could open it with little difficulty."
New and improved Guilt. Now its alcohol soluble!
is that while they focus on how things appear similar; they actually only relate to things that are different. Two comments (one short, one long): First, I wonder what EVIDENCE (other than the "perp's" confession) the police gathered to actually PROVE that a CRIME occurred? After all, people apparently confess to crimes they didn't commit...all the time. Were logs downloaded from the router? What type of computer forensics were undertaken on the scene? Was the upstream ISP's logs subpoenaed? Oh well.... Second, who actually committed a crime? The homeowner/ISP customer is probably prohibited from sharing his connection. *HE* violated his EULA with the ISP. There is no contractual relationship between the "perp" and the upstream ISP. Particularly when it is very likely that that same ISP proactively offers free wireless access in certain other settings (perhaps a local coffee shop/the library, etc.). Is passthrough IP traffic across a router considered "accessing a computer network"? I am not sure it is that simplistic. After all, if he did not access the homeowner's actual PC or network services (DNS/SMTP), as opposed to the ISP's services... Finally, if a randy couple decides to have sex in front of their living room picture window with the curtains open, such that the neighbors across the street can clearly see them FROM INSIDE THEIR OWN HOME!?!?!? Who has committed a crime, if any: The randy couple could be guilty of "public indecency" (even though they are in their own home); the neighbors could be guilty of "peeping tom"...
That's a terrible metaphor. You know how I first discovered what turned into war driving? My friend and I were at an OS X demo. When it was over we went out to his car, he opened his powerbook to make some notes, and "OMG, what's this?? I'm online??" It was a complete ACCIDENT. If my Grandmother can accidentally stumble onto her neighbor's "illegally shared" internet then there is something seriously wrong.
It's not like walking into somebody's house, it's more like opening your bedroom window so you can listen to your neighbor's XM radio. You're not paying for that XM... you're stealing by listening to it without your neighbor knowing. Sure, you can't change the channel just like you can't reconfigure their router settings, but you ARE leeching.... whatever. It's absurd. It's asinine. It's not stealing if people are offering it, let alone broadcasting it out with an SSID beacon, and it shouldnt' be illegal if Apple and Microsoft are setting us up for these "illegal" activities by making their OS auto-connect to open networks. Am I the only one who's found himself accidentally using his neighbors signal instead of his own? It's not stealing if I go to my friends house to watch DVD's he rented or bought. It's not stealing when I flip through the channels on his TV even when he's not home. I do agree that saturating your neighbor's pipe is out of line, and using it without their knowledge might be a bit shady, but illegal? That's ridiculous. If they don't want you on their net then they should turn on WEP. If the internet companies don't want you sharing your pipe then they should charge by megabyte.
My wireless router works great when it's up. Unfortunately, the connection suffers intermittent brief outages (dunno why).
When my notebook loses the connection to MY router, it just automatically looks around for other unsecured wireless connections (several in adjacent apartments), asks "may I connect?", gets the reply "sure you may", and connects. All I see - if I see anything - is a short-lived small balloon stating "connected to wireless router".
Nearly all routers are pre-configured to accept any connection request.
An increasing number of computers are pre-configured (or trivially configured) to connect wherever possible.
Don't tell me it's not legal when open auto-connect is how the routers and adapters work out of the box.
To re-invoke the land tresspass analogy:
Most real tresspass laws require you go through significant lengths to inform people to stay out: post specifically-worded "POSTED" signs at certain intervals, erect fencing, etc. - and even then, one must practically detain the tresspasser (putting you on legal thin ice), call the cops, etc. to get anywhere close to really forcing them off. In rural areas, owned land is often large enough and ill-defined enough that determining boundaries is nearly impossible. There's a general sense of "stay out unless permission granted", but that quickly evaporates in light of "ask who? it'll take me far longer to get permission than to simply cross without a trace."
Likewise for open wireless networks. No WEP = no "POSTED" signs. With auto-request and auto-approval, it's like wandering into a forest before even realizing you're on someone else's property - and all indications point to them not caring or implicitly approving.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
For as worrisome as it seems, wireless mooching is easily preventable by turning on encryption or requiring passwords. The problem, security experts say, is many people do not take the time or are unsure how to secure their wireless access from intruders. Dinon knew what to do. "But I never did it because my neighbors are older."
What the heck is this? He just admitted to knowing how to secure his AP and his choice is not to because his neighbors are older??
So he's saying his neighbors can use it, but someone driving down the street can't? If that's the case, why didn't he secure, and set the neighbors up with a secured connection?
Talk about being an opportunist.
-xyst
I would have read the story, but as I tried, it kept shifting a few lines down, and then a few lines back up. Pause, repeat.
Turns out there is some aggrivating ticker on the top of the story that kept doing this, asshole.
And people get paid for this... I quit reading the article.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Heyaz. Just wanted to contribute a totally harmless piece of self-promotion here. :) I'm the admin behind the open-source Kaboodle project at http://kaboodle.org/. Many of our users use the tool for not much more than mapping their wireless LAN (technically, just their class-C subnet) to see who's actually connected.
This is very similar to nmap's capability, of course. Kaboodle just makes it point-and-click doable for the average Internet user (ie, someone who knows their email address, but not their IP address).
-Scott
Okay, so if a grown man was on the sidewalk dancing in the water from a lawn sprinkler, it'd be kinda creepy, but would it be theft? Is he stealing "your" water that isn't even being used for the purpose of watering your lawn?
If the only notable impact of "borrowing" your network is slower response time, then why should it be a crime if someone happens to be on the network but isn't causing any problems?
I can't wait for the day when "bandwidth" is no longer a limiting factor - then the only thing that should be illegal on an open network is unauthorized access of someone else's computer. If I just happen to be sitting on a park bench outside your apartment and need to check my email, what's the problem, as long as I don't go near your sensitive data?
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
My notebook & router spontainiously disconnect occasionally, persuading the computer to connect to my neighbor's WAP. The only indication is a brief "connected to wireless network" message.
Don't make me legally liable for what common products are doing standard out-of-the-box according to accepted norms - especially when my neighbor never notices a thing.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
So owners should be liable for illegal activities that are conducted on their Internet connection just because they can't positively identify who is using their network? Sounds like a legal and privacy can of worms. For example, if a cafe allows you free access with a purchase (WEP key printed on the receipt) and you paid in cash, are they still liable? Are they responsible for doling out individual access keys to each person? Most worrysome, how well do they need to identify each person? Do you need to present ID? And are they going to keep a copy of it? And where does "illegal" activity stop? Does soliciting child porn count? Will an mp3 download send the RIAA MIB to the cafe? Will SSIDs need to be logged with the activity and tied to DLs and credit cards? If so, for how long? That's just the beginning.
The intent is right -- reducing spam -- but the methodology is all wrong. Closing open relays and blocking port 25 is an easy start, but remember that spamming can occur with just a single email from a legitimate account. If I have a cafe, and a customer uses a Hotmail account to spam just one person with unsolicited commercial email, should I be liable? I don't think criminal liabilities for connection providers should be set as a precedent.
I personally doubt that this is the case. If it is the case, it would certainly be contrary to what would be considered reasonable with wireless handsets for a telephone connection, as an example.
So it's not even the "TV through an open window"; it's more "inviting the neighbours around to watch a film"!
Wikileaks, no DNS
...to secure his/her own network. By not securing your network, you are putting yourself at risk.
Obviously, if I use your Wifi, I am not paying for a service that I otherwise would have to pay for. Second, you may not even realize I am using your bandwidth.
I find this hard to enforce, and also quite rampant. I have several buddies who live in apartment buildings in dense metropolitan areas. They are saving some cash.
Thefy implies something was stolen.
If you were to make a correct anology you would say your neighbor is making a chemical that is in the air and floats over to your property. You freely enjoy in this chemical say... infinite supply of Oxygen.
If your neighbor did not wish for you to not use his oxygen then he should not allow it to leave his property.
If bandwidth can be a tangible thing that is stolen then one could sue anyone who is interfering with your wireless connection wheather that is an airport or other legitimate wireless access points.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Yes, it was open and DHCP grants you a lease of time, including giving you a valid network IP and gateway address and even a DNS server address, how much more do you need to convince you that you are authorized?
The guy's agent, his "robot" or machine gave you permission when you asked.
End of story, move along, this is not the bin laden you are looking for...
Aside from all the comparisons, accurate and otherwise, that are being drawn to the situation, there is a legal precident that can be applied here. It's an oldie, but a goodie.
Expectation of Privacy.
Ok, IANAL, but here's the rough version as I understand it; if you have a conversation on the phone, it's private, and can't be recorded, etc. If you're on a speaker phone, in a public place, there's no expectation of privacy, so you can record whatever you want, use it as evidence later, etc.
So, if you have your unsecured wireless device hanging out there in public, there's no expectation of it remaining private. Which makes "listening in" or hopping on the system, perfectly legal.
It's silly, and quite obviously so, that this guy got charged. Then again, it's the florida government. They can't even count properly. </cheap shot>
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
I just love how they throw in the threat of child porn here even though there's no indication that that is what he was doing. Just in case we weren't insanely scared now we'll stay glued to the article because of child porn. Seriously, bust a child pornographer then talk about child porn. Bust a real script kiddie then talk about DOS attacks. Bust some guy for using wireless without parying for it and shut the hell up!
On another note, if they are so worried about this in St. Petersburg why aren't they busting the times reporter that wen't wardriving?
Listening to someone's loud music blaring out their window...
Is this where I insert a reference to the Nazis/Hitler?
Can any of the analogy guys tell me how this is different from me parking (in public parking space) in the shade of "your" tree while I listen to the radio? Sure, I'm soaking up your shade, and listening to a public radio broadcast. I'm not walking into your house, or onto your property. It's none of your business if I'm listening to Howard Stern (naughty), the gospel hour, or the latest pop-tart. If I'm freaking you out, come out and ask what's up. If I'm listenning to your radio (through an open window), and you don't like it you can "secure" the broadcast (close the window, turn down the tunes).
kancho!
the nytimes writer compared band hacking to "..buying a microsoft product and sharing it with all friends in your apartment...it's stealing.". well, bandy hacking is stealing, sharing a product with your friends is a RIGHT. i cant believe a nytimes writer actually said that. either he's a liar, or he doesn't know what he's talking about.
"There was no sex." - hoggoth
The grandparent has it right. If anyone is breaking any rules here, it is clearly the guy with the unsecured AP who is publicly sharing an internet connection which he (presumably) signed an agreement not to share.
Cities, apartment complexes, and suburbs are so saturated with wifi anymore it is impossible for the average person with a laptop to distinguish the legitimate open APs from those that are open but aren't "fair game". Some ISPs allow sharing (I believe speakeasy is one), some don't. Near many neighborhoods (or directly below many apartments) are stores that run free, open APs. How is the average person with a laptop going to tell which of the 15 APs he can see from where he's sitting is legit if none of them have descriptive labelling, and they all allow him online?
We have trouble with this at our house-- we're in a sprawling suburb in Indiana, but there are 9 open APs in range from our house. My fiancee's laptop often drops the encrypted connection to our AP, and preferentially prompts to reconnect to the next-door neighbors open AP. Heck, windows used to go right ahead and auto-connect to their network. Is microsoft "pirating internet access" because their software did this automatically?
If you leave your network wide open against the policies of your ISP, it's your own damn fault. YOU are the pirate, not the guy who was granted permission to use your network. Even a simple MAC allow-list would serve the purpose of indicating that this network was not for public consumption.
The ISP defense that it's like sharing one copy of MS Office is pretty poor, as the bandwidth is fixed; it's more like sharing a video, which seems to me to be entirely legal AFAICT.
No it's not. You can only share it with family/friends. Allowing anyone to watch the video too is not legal. This is where the FBI warning and the "for private home exhibitation only" clause come in.
That is someone wanting to steal it. Just because you are jaded enough to believe that someone would take it doesn't make it the victim's fault. We SHOULD be able to live in a society where we wouldn't think twice about leaving a bike at the end of a driveway or leaving our house unlocked at night.
Thank you. I found that helpful.
Pasco County Of,Pinella County of, State Attorney's Office, Clearwater - (727) 464-6221 - , Clearwater, FL 33755 - Google Maps 14250 49th St N, Clearwater, FL 33762 - (the number seems to be to a central switchboard for a bunch of offices - so if you call know who you are calling. - oh. Bernie McCabe handles both counties.
Post Office Box 5028, Clearwater, Florida 34618 Telephone (813) XXX-XXXX
Bernie McCabe
Firm: State of Florida, State Attorney's Office, 6th Judicial Circuit
Address: Room B-200
5100 144th Ave N
Clearwater, FL 34620-2803
Phone: (727) 464-6221 (Pinellas County)
(727) 847-8158 (New Port Richey)
Fax: (727) 464-7303
E-mail:
Best known for the terry shiavo case.
* Bernie Mccabe Unlisted Phone Number & Address Found. - Information was found in Public Records, including Age, Address History and Family Members.
www.intelius.com
"It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft," said Kena Lewis, spokeswoman for Bright House Networks in Orlando. "Just because a crime may be undetectable doesn't make it right."
Perhaps someone with a more objective outlook on this than i have can express an informed opinion about whether this is defamation.
To do: cancel brighthouse subscription.
-Times staff writer Matthew Waite contributed to this report. Alex Leary can be reached at 727 893-8472 or leary@sptimes.com
I think that this article was shameless yellow journalism.
A drive through downtown St. Petersburg shows how porous networks can be. In less than five minutes, a Times reporter with a laptop found 14 wireless access points, six of which were wide open Has he been arrested yet? Six felonies in 5 minutes - a serial hacker, clearly 3|33t.
Or are they arresting some people and not others, in an arbitrary and capricious manner?
*informative. interesting. flamebait*
You guys really need to learn to read the article... The man was sitting outside the house all day, and the owner did not call the police becuase of the wireless network use, but because he was looking suspicious
If I'm wrong about the legality in the intent of my initial post, the analogy might in fact be surprisingly good :o(
Wikileaks, no DNS
Is it stealing to listen to someone else's copyrighted music? Not that I know of.
The RIAA says it is. Spokesman Martin G. Reyes has said several times recently that the RIAA believes that hearing another person's CD is an act that requires record company compensation, and that there are plans to begin suing violators before the end of the year.
Meanwhile, the Overheard Compensation page is at http://www.riaa.org/overheard.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Well, if your computer sends out a DHCP request for an IP address and a server replies and hands you an address, then you affectively Asked for access and it was Granted. End of argument...
Oh well, what the hell...
I do believe, sir, that you have been trolled. You have lost. Have a nice day. :-)
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
'She had 3rd degree burns on her fucking vagina for christ's sake'
First, the comment "there is no other kind!". Is there something about McDonalds coffee I did not know about? Do they sell vibrating cups too?
'damages when the defendant is as huge as McDonald's and thus won't be punished by a smaller verdict.
Damn straight! McDonalds was criminally negligent for not requiring all of its female coffee drinkers to show proof that they were wearing waterproof chastity belts.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Technically, and legally, yes. But the term has become demonised in the media: "Asylum seeker" in the poor quality press is often mentioned in stories about thefts, fraud, fake visa applications and so on, the implication being that most if not all asylum seekers are criminals looking for a soft country on which to prey. I am concerned that the neutral term "asylum seeker" - simply somebody seeking sanctuary, is being degraded and criminalised: e.g. the Daily Mail's statement that "we resent the scroungers, beggars and crooks who are prepared to cross every country in Europe to reach our generous benefits system" (2001). An interesting report is here: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/hors243.pdf (Home Office study). IMHO, if somebody who is penniless and being raped and tortured in their home country somehow manages to get half way across the planet they at least deserve a break and a chance to plead their case. After all the UK has an aging population - we *need* more young people here.
:-)
I think "wardriving" fits into the same category, a term that could easily become criminalised, except the criminalisation could be self inflicted because of the emotive expression itself. Dumb geeks wear it with pride, I think because it feels macho, even though no testerone or physical ability (well not much) is required to walk or drive around with a laptop and a bit of software. I think a more neutral expression would be a reallllly good idea....
An owner knows as much about people who are overhearing his music as he does people who are tapping into his wifi. He left the wifi unprotected intentionally, just like music playing out the window.
Now if I had hacked into his wifi, thats a different story.
wow, after reading so many posts I admit that I changed my mind a few times.
analogies: while I liked the TV pointing at the street and *especially* the water hose running into the street... WiFi is after all a two-way medium. this makes it different from all of the examples wherein somebody shared some media (TV broadcast, rented movie, water) with their neighbors. we are dealing with a new breed of thingy here.
the comment about permissions is the only one that seems to apply to this new breed: the ISP has required you to agree to terms before you can use their connection... they have no agreement with the wardriver. therefore the wardriver may be authorized by the homeowner (by way of broadcasting SSID and unrestricted DHCP) but they are NOT authorized by the ISP (who ultimately "owns" the bandwidth, yes?)
however, it is my personal opinion that people should be allowed to connect to open APs as long as they don't cause any problems and anyone who think that's the same thing as pirating MS products can suck it good.
-marshall
For many years, people in apartment buildings adjacent to Wrigley Field in Chicago would watch Cubs games from their roofs. They would also charge other people to come up to their roofs to watch the games. The Cubs tried to stop this via lawsuit, but it was determined that the apartment owners had the right to sell tickets to their roofs, even if the value of the tickets was based on a game produced by the Cubs.
The Cubs then put up a fence blocking the view from the apartments, and then the apartment owners sued the Cubs for reducing the value of their property.
Ultimately, the two parties settled, with the fence being removed in exchange for the Cubs receiving some portion of the proceeds from the sales of tickets to the neighboring roofs.
Applied to Wi-Fi, if you don't want other people viewing it, the onus is on you to put up the fence.
paintball
There is a key difference between listening to your neighbor's XM and using your neighbors Wi-Fi: Listening ot the XM is passive, and using the Wi-Fi is active.
Listening to your neighbor's XM is akin to listening to all the packets transmitted on your neighbor's wireless network. But your analogy breaks down when YOU transmit onto their network. It's a similar problem with the analogies about people watchingthe big TV or listening to their neighbor's music from the sidewalk outside: In both cases, the activity is limited to observing what the neighbor has broadcast into public property.
But using Wi-Fi is not limited to just observing what your neighbor is braodcasting, you also have to transmit back onto/into your neighbor's private property.
There's another problem here as well: Even if we assume that by leaving the Wi-Fi open your neighbor has given you permission to use their network, the cable company definitely hasn't given you permission to use their network.
paintball
If you google this "victim", you'll notice he lives in the middle of an exclusive looking Feather Sound Country Club:
+ Sound+Dr,+Clearwater,+FL+33762
Richard Dinon - (727) 540-9865 - 2400 Feather Sound Dr, Clearwater, FL 33762
http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=2400+Feather
It looks like the kind of neighborhood you'd get busted for wearing white shoes after labor day.
The guy who got busted will either be litigated into oblivion by their powerful court system or will scare their DA into dropping the charges with a wack of lawsuits of his own.
I guess it all depends on what sort of background the guy has and how much kiddieporn is found and/or planted on his laptop.
Considering the shakey legal ground, I am guessing the DA will drop charges if he agrees not to sue and leave it at that.
If you want to further the metaphor, your neighbor having their window open is akin to them disabling WEP, allowing interference to come in, such as the sound of the trash truck on Friday morning, or any loud noise you happen to choose to make. If they close their window/network they are effectively guarding against those interferences, allowing them to experience their service in private.
You know it doesnt matter if he's on public radio frequencies and that there was no REAL crimes committed. What matters here is that he did not fight the arrest. They'll arrest you for chewing gum if they can get you to just admit to it and serve the time
Giving them the password and a URL for the terms and conditions wouldn't satisfy them IMO. To them, I expect, additional users who might have otherwise have bought a connection would be considered 'thieves'.
Wikileaks, no DNS
what i've been saying for 5 years now.
The United States legal and judicial system is not equipped to handle electronic laws or crimes
And it will be a long, long, loooooonnnnnngggggg time before the US population gets its head out of its ass and elects people who have a freaking clue so that the system can be fixed. That guy's fate is up to the judge who tries him, and thats not fair. The judge can pretty much go either way, and be deemed correct by 3rd parties on either verdict, and he just set a precident for which all cases in the future will be tried by.
That is bullshit
"Ya know, prior to The Enlightenment there was only two forms of argument....Following the middle ages we received another kind of argumentive style. Some might call it a "modern" style of argument, but I prefer to say that it is a logical form of argument."
Umm, are you smoking crack? The "modern" style of logical argument existed far before The Enlightenment. There was a guy named Aristole - maybe you've heard of him - who wrote about it in excruciating detail.
Get the usage of your body parts straight; you're ass is not for talking out of.
I was driving by a state police barracks one night with net stumbler running on my lap top (I have an external antenna too) And found a wide open 802.11b access point. The police don't even lock things up, what makes you think that the average home user is going to secure his/her wireless access point....
That's assuming you're running XP SP 1 with patches applied or are running XP SP 2. Luckily everybody patches their system once a week, keeping up on all the latest trends in MS's implementations of various functionality. Luckily they're all that computer savvy and trust MS that much. Seriously, they do.
However, what about people who configured Zeroconfig so that it would connect to untrusted networks automatically (because they're sick of Mom calling them up asking for tech support or something)? And what about everybody who has the default Linksys SSID in their trusted network list? And what about people who are using 2k or ME? And what about people who use their 3rd party wifi card's management software? And what about people who are using Mac OS? And what about...
The point is that SSID broadcasting, automatic client association and DHCP work together to provide seamless networking capability. That's how it WiFi was designed. Two years about I spent countless hours making sure that whenever people plugged in one of my companies wireless cards it would automatically join the network which had the strongest signal. Now somebody wants to say that's illegal? Bullshit. That is ridiculous. If they want to bust you with roaming onto somebody's wireless network they'd have to prove that your intentions were heinous. The act itself is not wrong.
I've been cracking up reading the analogies in this story, someone needs to make a compilation post.
Lets put it this way:
I was walking around the streets to look for someone/anyone to have conversaysions.
I heard a guy talking on the other side a fence while I was walking by. I say, "Hello, it's great to hear you!" No reply. I was standing there and repeating myself for couple of minutes, and that guy did not respond to my at all.
I walked to another fence, heard someone talking; I asked for a conversaysion. The reply was a dog talking back to me. I walked away because I could not understand the dog words.
I walked to another fence, heard some voice; I started to talk him. I asked for a lot of information and told him to deliver my messages as well. While I was enjoying my conversaysion, the cops came and arrested me for talking without authentication.
So, I was the laptop (or a WiFi thing), those guys (and that guy speaking like a dog) are the routers.
What do you think?
This wifi case is more like if your listening to your radio with the windows open and someone walking by outside hears it and starts singing along and now you can hear them sing.
How can that possibly be illegal?
I think that this is the right approach: have policies to deal with the fundamental problem: excessive use of bandwidth.
The Office analogy is pretty poor though, in my opinion, for several copies of Office can be run in parallel; bandwidth, however, is not multiply allocable. The problem of sustained excess use can be dealt with by using monthly limits.
Wikileaks, no DNS
OK, so the consensus here among Slashdotters is that this guy who was charged with a felony, Benjamin Smith III, did nothing wrong.
What can we do to help him and get the charges dropped? Is the Electronic Freedom Foundation sending a lawyer to help him?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Sensationalism at its finest.
At least I learned that, according to this guy in Florida, the "Information Age is over." Apparently we are now in the "Age of Connectivity." I'm glad he let us know -- I would have still been looking for information!
There are other channels . I usually use 1 or 11 since most open points default to 6
It's not a matter of one person trespassing on the service of another person, but rather of the recording of phone conversations, which bears on the whole "hey, you became a broadcaster of your own free will" thing. In the days of analog cordless phones it used to be common that cordless phones could be heard faintly on neighbors' handsets or baby monitors, or with radio scanners.
Now, consider that anyone having conversations of an even vaguely secretive nature - that is, conversations they wouldn't want public - would be a fool to use such a cordless phone. However, people did, and sometimes their neighbors recorded the conversations, and the whole situation wound up in court. The case is McKamey v. Roach. The court found exactly the standard being advocated here - that there was no expectation of privacy when speaking over an open-air medium. In other words, your neighbors are completely free to record your conversations when they're conducted over analog broadcast signals. The courts have already ruled on this: if you become a broadcaster, you give up the right to refuse people to receive your signal, even if you became a broadcaster by buying a piece of consumer electronic equipment.
The obvious extension to sniffing unencrypted wireless packets is left as an exercise for the reader.
There are numerous wireless network signal in my house, coming from my neighbours. Damn, wireless signals are harmful to my health. How can they intrude into my house in such way?!
Oh, now. Your signal get into my house, and I can't use it? You gotta be kidding me.
You know, here in the city I live in, there's signs up in LOTS of businesses and coffee shops and bars that say "free wi-fi". I guess it's time to get the Nazis ready to start shutting down bars and coffee shops.
I can't see what the difference would be at my home wi-fi router if I let my buddies use my hotspot -vs- letting them use my computer or direct wire onto my network.... Oh, that's right, the ISP's want every penny they can get. Shhh.. Don't let the phone companies know that I have Skype.
You guys like to make analogs, so here is mine.
You are playing beautiful musics loudly in your home, and I am passing by. I like your music, so I stop in front of your door and listen to the music. Can you blame me?
Or I am your neighbour, I like to have a good rest. Now your fucking music annoys me. Can I blame you? Surely I can. You can't disturb your neighbour, can you?
Now, your wireless signal gets into my house. Though I can't feel it by myself, it probably does harm to my body. Just like your music disturbs me.
I won't use your fucking wireless network, and keep your fucking signal out of my house. I hate the so-called high-tech stuff. Please, I just need a healthy, quiet, peaceful place to live.
There's a pretty good chance you CAN reconfigure their router. If they're not smart enough to enable WEP or WPA, what makes you think they'd have a router password?
One of my neighbors was interferring with my connection because they used the same channel. So I connect to their network and suprise! 192.168.1.1 was the router, and 'admin' was the password.
I took the liberty of changing their channel. I doubt they even noticed any difference.
I don't have secure wireless.
It is in the OPEN mode. If someone wants to surf the net using wi-fi, they can gladly connect.
Imagine how nice it would be if ALL wi-fi was open... you go anywhere in a city and there is free internet access.
I think it's fair to say it's difficult to apply an analogy that fits really with WiFi
I think (maybe?) there should be laws specifically written for WiFi (the standard), not just 'general' radio rules/regulations/laws.
Reasoning behind this is, I suspect this use WiFi/go to jail siutation is going to get worse and worse because law enforcement truley doesn't know what to do in certain situations. (WiFi=Criminal Activity mentality)
Blatantly accusing someone of stealing because they are using an open hotspot is insane. If they cracked the encryption key, then this is a different story.
There's another problem here as well: Even if we assume that by leaving the Wi-Fi open your neighbor has given you permission to use their network, the cable company definitely hasn't given you permission to use their network.
If I connect to a wireless network, I am not connecting to the upstream bandwidth directly. I am connecting to a private network that has chosen to multiplex a number of computers onto a single connection. The decision to re-broadcast the signal from the ISP is entirely up to the owner of that connection.
It's worth noting that most ISPs specifically prohibit subletting, putting the onus on the owner of the wireless equipment and internet connection to ensure that no other people will be able to use the connection whether for a fee or not.
The "victim" of this so-called "crime" was knowingly allowing others to freely use his internet connection, probably in direct contravention of the contract with his ISP. And deliberately leaving a point of entry open through which anyone nearby could freely access the internet under a cloak of anonymity.
Yet he is considered blameless in this case, despite redistributing his connection, and essentially operating an ISP from his house that allows access to anyone keeps no record of it's customers. This guy was deliberately negligent and irresponsible in the first place and then went crying to police and media about it. What a disgrace.
> The "victim" of this so-called "crime" was knowingly allowing others to freely use his internet connection, probably in direct contravention of the contract with his ISP.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most broadband providers specifically give you instructions on how to share your connection? I have Cox Cable and their support pages tell me I can share the uplink over a wireless network.
Granted, they probably assume I'm only going to share it with members of my household, but if we're paying for the bandwidth, how can they dictate whether we share it with friends, neighbors, pets or strangers?
- MFN
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Granted, they probably assume I'm only going to share it with members of my household, but if we're paying for the bandwidth, how can they dictate whether we share it with friends, neighbors, pets or strangers?
You no doubt agreed to some kind of terms of service when you signed up for your internet service, somewhere in most such agreements is some kind of provision that prevents you from reselling the internet connection or undercutting them by providing the same service for free to anyone who happens to be nearby.
At any rate, ISPs are usually free to choose not to do business with anyone without providing a reason (in addition to any terms and conditions they may have set out in their terms of service).
> You no doubt agreed to some kind of terms of service when you signed up for your internet service,
> somewhere in most such agreements is some kind of provision that prevents you from reselling
> the internet connection or undercutting them by providing the same service for free to anyone who
> happens to be nearby.
Yes, I checked my TOS and it disallows me from providing commercial access to the network (i.e. reselling it), but otherwise I am evidently free to open it.
Seems to me, though, if they allow you to share your connection, there's an awful big gray area around that permission. Is my neighbor a stranger? They couldn't tell me. Are neighbors who live in my building part of my "household"? Again, I think they'd have a hard time drawing a legal line determining whom I can share with, once they've told me that I can share the connection.
- MFN
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
The thing is that if loads of people shared the same 'consumer WiFi' connection, their bandwidth would suck badly!
Maybe the doctine of first sale is appropriate. The bandwidth, having been sold to you, is now yours to resell.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Let's use your laws that you quoted.
The fact that you installed, and turned on a WAP device, means that you are intentionally broadcasting a negotiable network signal.
The fact that that signal *INVADES* my network equipment (by the simple fact that radio waves, hitting an Antenna introduces electrical signals into the device that the antenna is attached to) implies your attempt to connect to my network device.
This would make *YOU* the criminal that would be punishable for the offense, even if you didn't intend to do it.
Your only recourse? Disconnect those antennas and power off the WAP device.
Now, do you really wish to pursue your lame analogies?
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
You clearly didn't read the definitions in the laws I quoted, as RF hitting your antennae don't qualify as "computer access".
1,6, and 10 can be used at the same time without stepping on each other
You mean 1, 6, and 11. Channels 6 and 10 technically step on each other.
Although you can also use 1, 5, 8, and 11 together, without interference getting high enough to cause any noticable delays.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Actually it does. as each broadcast comes in through the antenna, a packet is generated, which is then analyzed by the network device which reads it as a *broadcast* packet and determines what to do with it.
Whether or not it's a packet intended to flow elsewhere via the WAP's transport, or intended as a "HERE I AM", is immaterial. A packet is a packet, and a packet flowing through the network *IS* networ access - there can be no other definition.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Oh yeah, you're right. Man, it's going to suck when they start outlawing access points.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPAA/
Does anybody actually know where you can get information on what is and is not a crime, and what the consequences are? Even if someone sniffs a network that isnt broadcasting its ssid, you crack the key, and break through the authentication, is that so wrong? You still are causing no damage or monetary loss to anyone, and as long as you are using the connection for legal activities, I see no reason why it could be illegal.
:-/
I already know what is right and wrong, but thats not what law is. You can use these analogies to prove anything, but in the end, if it is against the law, you get in trouble. I have considered talking with a lawyer about this, but I dont really have the money. If there is a good resource out there, I would love to see it
# "The plaintiffs were apparently able to document 700 cases of burns from McDonald's coffee over 10 years, or 70 burns per year. But that doesn't take into account how many cups are sold without incident. A McDonald's consultant pointed out the 700 cases in 10 years represents just 1 injury per 24 million cups sold! For every injury, no matter how severe, 23,999,999 people managed to drink their coffee without any injury whatever. Isn't that proof that the coffee is not "unreasonably dangerous"?"
# "Even in the eyes of an obviously sympathetic jury, Stella was judged to be 20 percent at fault -- she did, after all, spill the coffee into her lap all by herself. The car was stopped, so she presumably was not bumped to cause the spill. Indeed she chose to hold the coffee cup between her knees instead of any number of safer locations as she opened it. Should she have taken more responsibility for her own actions?"
# "Coffee is supposed to be served in the range of 185 degrees! The National Coffee Association recommends coffee be brewed at "between 195-205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction" and drunk "immediately". If not drunk immediately, it should be "maintained at 180-185 degrees Fahrenheit". (Source: NCAUSA.)"
Where were you when the voynix came?
Crap, this is buried under mountains of posts from the last 2 days and nobody'll read it. Oh well!
We need an analogy because, to the vast majority of consumers with wireless networks, THIS IS ROCKET SCIENCE. 99% of people who buy wireless access points do not understand the security implications. They do not understand that unpacking the AP, hooking it up, and turning it on leaves them wide open. They shouldn't need to. But unfortunately all the manufacturers let their products default to this because it makes them appear "easier" to setup.
So let me grace you all with an analogy.
Let's say you want a nice rose garden in your front yard. You buy the soil and fertilizer, plant the roses, and they bloom looking oh so lovely. Really proud of yourself, aren't you? Now let's say there's some obscure group of people for whom a rose garden has a very specific meaning. In their group, the rose garden is a clear indicator that "my house is your house, please come in by any means necessary and make yourself at home." One of them passes by your house, sees the garden, comes in, eats your food, farts on your couch, and takes some of your stuff for themselves.
You'd be kind of pissed, right? How were you supposed to know that your rose garden had this meaning for these people? Were you supposed to do exhaustive research, looking for any possible obscure pitfalls like this before planting a garden? How ridiculous is that?
This is exactly how the wireless situation appears from the perspective of most "normal" people. Of course it's screaming "WIDE OPEN NETWORK" to anyone on Slashdot! But to everyone else in the world, they just bought something, plugged it in, and expected it to work with no ill consequences. They should not have had any expectation that their privacy could be invaded when hooking things up in the default configuration. Sure, there's a manual, but let's get real - most people don't understand half the stuff in there, and reading it won't help them. Does that mean they're too stupid to use wireless technology? No. Only an arrogant asshole would say that.
I blame this on the wireless manufacturers. They either need to make their devices more secure by default, or HIGHLIGHT the inherent security risks IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, easy for the layman to understand.
It's kind of like what happened with cordless phones early on. With earlier models, it was easy for anyone to snoop on their neighbor's conversation, or (I assume) make phone calls on their neighbor's line. I'll bet a lot of people didn't know this at first, but then technologies improved and cordless phones got harder to listen in on. Manufacturers started touted their relative security as features, and thus the general public gradually became more aware. The same needs to happen with wireless networking. I'll applaud the first manufacturer that rolls out devices which are automatically secure out of the box, but EASY for a neophyte to setup.
As for this particular case, the leecher certainly knew what he was doing, so he should be punished appropriately (not thrown in pound-me-in-the-ass prison or anything like that - just a slap on the wrist). Unless you're given explicit written or verbal permission FROM THE OWNER (not from the hardware's default settings), you shouldn't be using someone else's connection. Regardless of law, it's immoral. Want to use it? Just ask!
For cases where you unknowingly connect to an open network, of course there should be no punishment. There's no intent to "steal" service in this case, and it's still up to the provider to secure it themselves anyway.
I am wondering why can't Spyware companies be charged under the same laws for stealing our bandwidth? Not only do they install on our systems without our knowledge. They are using our bandwidth without our permission, so that they can track our usage.
"85 degrees celcius is not fit for human consumption."
Yet, according to the facts in the Stella site the guy linked to, 23,999,999 out of 24,000,000 were able to consume it.
"a modest drop in the storage temperature could have prevented the lawsuit."
Then the coffee is too cold, and below the recommended temperature. The greedy old bat would have found some other frivolous lawsuit to file. Maybe vaginal caffeine poisoning.
Calling it hacking is the same as saying that clicking on the link to the story above is hacking.
In no way is this hacking. I get on people and media often about thier use of the words "hack" and "hacker". Most people when they use the word hacker most of the tyme really mean cracker or script kiddie. If they must use hacker then say "black hat hacker" or some such as these people don't follow the hacker ethic . If it weren't for hackers we wouldn't have computers on our desktops or sitting in our laps. For those who don't know what a real hacker is I strongly recommend they read Steven Levy's Hackers .
FalconShould there be a Law?
Yet, it is the industry standard.
"What they're recommending, taken literally, would destroy the throat of any coffee drinker within seconds."
Yet, according to the stella site, 23,999,999 out of 24,000,000 are able to drink it with no throat damage!. I think you are just too stupid to drink coffee.
"(not to mention completely undrinkable)"
I think that is why billions of cups were sold, and people keep coming back for more. Even Stella herself had consumed many cups with the upper lips before her bout of stupidity and greediness.
I guess maybe you are right. No one ever dared to drink the coffee they bought, right? They just thought the cups looked snazzy and the coffee smelled nice.
"The woman only sued for expenses"
As if it makes it any better that she asks for a smaller amount of money which she has no right to since they did absolutely nothing wrong? Is the mugger who steals $200 a nice guy since he did not steal $200,000? It is still robbery, even if someone lies in court to steal it The only just compensation was the 45 cents McDonalds should have paid her because she was not satisfied with that particular cup of coffee.
In a just world, Stella would have ended up paying McDonalds a lot of money for the bother of all the harassment and outrageous claims. The greedy old bat refused to take responsibility for her own actions.
>> "What they're recommending, taken literally, would destroy the throat of any coffee drinker within seconds."
> Yet, according to the stella site, 23,999,999 out of 24,000,000 are able to drink it
> with no throat damage!. I think you are just too stupid to drink coffee.
All this coffee crap is way off topic, but FYI drinking a liquid hotter than about 140 degrees (60C) *will* cause burns - the millions of people you are talking about may have been *given* coffee that hot, but they certainly didn't drink it at that temperature. They must have cooled it down first.
Here's a test - run the hottest bath you can, take the water temperature, and stick your feet in for 15 seconds. I doubt you will be able to withstand anything hotter than 120 degrees for that long.
It's like this: even if you don't lock your door, you still have a right to be mad when you walk inside and find someone eating the cookies in your kitchen.
Another analogy would be whether or not there is a front door and whether it is capable of locking (not whether or not it is actually locked). If you did not install a front door, it could be reasonable for people to assume they are entering a public area. On the other hand, if you have a locked front door, it is a private space no matter how insecure the lock. The case of the missing front door isn't that uncommon, consider lobbies and enclosed front porches. With some businesses, there may be a door that is capable of locking but people enter without knocking assuming there is a public lobby on the other side. If you have an unlocked front door, the meaning depends on context. In some areas, friends and neighbors assume they can enter without knocking or prior announcment but strangers should not. Porches frequently have a door that latches but has no keyhole. It is generally assumed that you may enter the porch to go knock on the front door behind it but that you may not do so for the purpose of walking off with the barbecue grill.
In the case of WiFi, it makes good sense for people to make their access points public for the greater good but there are problems. Open access points can be used for malevelent behavior such as spamming, hacking, and piracy. Also, ISPs that sell discounted connections on the basis of use by a single household don't want you sharing your access with your neighbors. Some means of identification is needed. Unfortunately, this is usually currently handled by overpriced wifi roaming network accounts. But consider the social contract of, I will open my access point to you if you open yours to me so we both can get access away from home. Indeed, I can see one form of "open" network where anyone can get an account provided they provide access themselves. This eliminates two concerns of upstream ISPs: identification and you don't have mooches using the ISPs bandwidth via their neighbors without paying for access themselves. The next level would not require you to have an open access point but would require you to have a paid (typically landline) internet access.
There needs to be a general way to provide roaming authentication that provides for a traceable identity, notifies your upstream ISP that a third party is responsible for traffic rather than the the subscriber, allows filtering of traffic if a wireless account has been misused, prevents password capture, and allows optional blocking of those who do not already have internet access.
One approach would be to establish an encrypted IP tunnel to the "home" ISP. That way, the home ISP could handle authentication, logging, and filtering and any abusive packets would be seen as coming from the home ISPs netblock so complaints would go to the appropriate party. One would simply block all net access except from known computers or traffic directed at a wireless tunnel port (say port 802). This has performance issues as traffic must be carried further but requires less to implement. But it requires the cooperation only of those setting up the access point and the roamer's home ISP (or any machine they control as a gateway). If the ISP upstream from the Access point wants to block, it can block that one port. And it removes the blame for any inappropriate activity from the access point owner. Mobile IP is similar but less secure.
In the longer term, a way of VLAN tagging foreign traffic to your upstream ISP would be good. This would provide better performance while letting ISPs filter and monitor traffic but requires cooperation of your home and roaming ISPs, router vendors, DSL/cable modem vendors, etc.
Ultimately, any solution needs to be an internet standard with its own name/number so you can require that your ISP, client OS, and access point comply with the standard. A standard would ideally in
How are you supposed to be able to determine if a hotspot is public, or simply misconfigured. If you had to crack WEP (weak as it is), then that's clearly unauthorized, but how can you tell when a hotspot without a captive portal is public or not?
"it's also true that the people bringing these lawsuits are just incapable of taking responsibility for their own actions"
That is what makes this a textbook example of a frivolous lawsuit. It was all her own fault.
"The temperature of the coffee is actually largely irrelevant"
Once again, you see the obvious while so many others do not.
"Coffee served at normal Starbucks temperature would give me third degree burns if I poured it in my crotch"
The same is true of the too-cold coffee they are forced to serve now. If you decide to do something really stupid with it, like dump it on your vagina, you can get hurt. If the coffee was room temperature, she could have drowned if she decided to inhale it, too. Anything can be dangerous to the self in the hands of idiots, but only the idiots are to blame.