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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."
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.
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!"
no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft'
or better yet, continuing to use her flawed analogy:
It's like buying a Microsoft program, and leaving the open box, with the jewel case and installation media on the sidewalk in front of your house then bitching when someone walks by and installs it.
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.
Sure you are giving permission, if your network hands out an address to anyone who comes along you have basically given them permission to use it.
Look at it this way, if you leave your porch light on, is it illegal for someone to use it to read by if they are out on the public street?
Right now you're accessing network that you have no received permission to access. Guarenteed. How can I possibly know? Well heck, you're posting on Slashdot. The whole concept of the Internet is based around a default policy of openness. It is assumed that we have permission to access anything connected to the Internet and that assumption is only revoked by layering an authentication system on top. These people who buy a wireless router, connect it to their network, don't even bother to turn on the authentication system and expect it to be private are just pissing in the pool.
How we know is more important than what we know.
But if you leave your TV facing the front window, and you don't close the blinds, you shouldn't be surprised when people on the sidewalk look through your window and watch the TV you're paying for.
An open wireless network is hardly a "back door" - it advertises its existence to the world, and it blankets an entire area. Walking in through a back door means targeting a specific house and looking for a way in, but it may not even be possible for the average person to figure out which house is hosting a particular wireless network.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
You could be arrested if your neighbor happens to also have a wireless network and your computer decides it likes that one better one day. That's egregious.
Or worse still, he could have been spamming!!!
The person being arrested should be the one with the open access point. The owner could be committing all sorts of illegal acts and can then claim 'But my access point is open. It could have been anyone. Prove it was me!'
How can he be arrested for using a resource which was advertised publically? The guy was broadcasting his ssid with no security on it, which sounds like an invitation to me
I think a more appropriate analogy...
How about not using any analogy at all - this isn't exactly rocket science. Don't screw it up by suggesting another bad analogy to explain a simple situation.
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.
I don't think the open doors analogy is fit.
What you are getting is not a property, is a service.
When using network sockets, there are well documented protocols being used.
So the client computer is basically saying to the server, or wireless router: can I connect?
and the server replies: sure, go ahead
It would be the same thing if a bartender gave drinks for free because he wasn't trained in asking for money in exchange.
Would the customers be liable of theft if they took advantage of this?
It's even more than that. The wireless router received a standard, "can I have legitimate credentials on this network?" request in the form of a DHCP lease request. The wireless router replied with valid credentials for that network. The user did not make any malformed requests, did not use any information that he should not have rightfully posessed, and in no way forced his way into the network.
He also properly followed FCC rules regarding the use of wireless equipment.
If the owner of a wireless transceiver, a radio if you will, doesn't want to let that device communicate then they bear the burden of making it not communicate. If they leave it in a mode that allows any public access over frequencies that belong to the public-at-large then they bear the responsibility.
I'd like to see the ARRL and the FCC get involved in this, even though the odds are against this guy having any official licensing from the FCC.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I know in my last apartment that from my sofa I could see three separate unprotected networks *AND* my protected one.
:) ) does using these networks constitute a crime? Isn't it incumbent upon the owner of said network to secure it? If I leave a set of tools on my front step and it disappears, then I see my neighbor with it, just how mad can I be for having left it out for anyone to walk off with?
Oftentimes (the way the nic drivers for my card worked) would cause my system to prefer the stronger signal, so I would waft onto one of the other networks. I was only free from the other nets when I logged into each one as admin (they were broadcasting the name "linksys" and had left the original admin accounts untouched) and add my MAC address to the deny list.
So, the question then becomes, when I was using their networks, was it because I was intruding onto their network, or because their network was intruding into my home?
I mean, at what point (other than logging into their WAP as "admin"
#!/Jerald