Florida Man Charged For Stealing Wi-Fi

baldass_newbie writes "The Saint Pete Times has a story about Benjamin Smith III who was arrested for stealing a wi-fi signal in Saint Petersburg, Florida, where apparently wardriving is considered a third degree felony." From the article: "...xperts believe there are scores of incidents occurring undetected, sometimes to frightening effect. People have used the cloak of wireless to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities. 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.'"

Comments

It's dupe-a-licious!

[TripMaster Monkey]

Yet another dupe...previous story can be found here.

Zonk fails it again...

Re:It's dupe-a-licious!

[NanoGator]

" If you're so offended by people pointing out (and being offended by) dupes, then perhaps you should just avoid threads with names like "It's dupe-a-licious"."

Mmmmhmmm. Except almost every god damn comment in this thread is "dupe!!!!!!!!!! bitchbitchbitchbitchbitchbitch!" I'm whining about excessive dupe bitching, not bitching about dupes. What's irritating about it is every comment bitching about dupes is serving an ad. Basically, the people against dupes are begging Slashdot to post them. Dumb fucks.

"so you picked an odd target for your rant"

I didn't pick your comment as a target because I checked everybody's posting history and thought yours was the one to blast first. I picked yours because of your ridiculous overreaction to the dupe.

"With dupes like this, if I truly want to get involved in the discussion, I might have to carry it out in two different places, with different participants, etc. And the discussion won't be quite as good. That's all."

Unlikely and unlikely. If your motivation for being anti-dupe was about having 'good discussion', then I would expect that it wouldn't matter if a dupe happened or not. If your 'that is all' reasoning were really true, I wouldn't expect you to threaten to leave Slashdot.

Of course I can only speculate, but I think your real reason for bitching about dupes lies somewhere in between trying to make an 'insightful' post and annoyance at... well actually I don't get what's so annoying about dupes. Unless, of course, you're watching Slashdot a little too much and you are offended that they haven't entertained you with something 'new'. Honestly, just skip the damn story if it's not interesting.

Slashdotters sure get noisy for the most frivilous of reasons. They're like Star Trek fans. It's really fucking obnoxious.

Dupe should be

[Arthur B.]

a third degree felony...

again?

[pilot1]

this poor bejamin guy is going to be in jail for quite a long time with all the arrests he's been getting lately.

Re:again?

[Spackler]

this poor bejamin guy is going to be in jail for quite a long time with all the arrests he's been getting lately.

(hey, it worked for the story. I can almost smell the Karma)

Not only is it a dupe...

[scribblej]

It's a dupe of the most commented on story of the week, proving once again that the editors don't even take a passing interest in the site.

New Slashdot Poll:

[geeber]

There should be a new poll:

Slashdot editor responsible for the most dupes:

(a) Commander Taco
(b) Zonk
(c) write-in candidate
(d) CowboyNeal

Re:New Slashdot Poll:

[FrostedWheat]

Shouldn't that be:

(a) Commander Taco
(b) Zonk
(c) write-in candidate
(d) CowboyNeal
(e) Zonk

Re:New Slashdot Poll:

[Anonymous Custard]

More like:

(a) CmdrTaco
(b) Zonk
(c) write-in candidate
(b) Zonk
(d) CmdrTaco
(e) CowboyNeal

Re:Wardriving a Felony!

[jusdisgi]

Christ driving around to see what doors stupid ppl have left open should not be a crime. If I drive around my neighborhood and look at how many dumb ppl have left their front door wide open should I be arrested. Breaking in is one thing but just looking is another.

That's a horrible analogy. Because it is and should be illegal to walk into somebody's house without permission, even if the door is open.

But that's not what an AP setup like this is like. It's not just "open" ...it's actively inviting people to use its access. It's broadcasting an SSID, and then answering DHCP requests by giving out leases. So, using an AP that was configured like the one in this case is more like driving around looking for signs that say "keg party down the street" then finding the house that says "keg party" on the door, then knocking, and having the door answered by somebody who says "come on in" and hands you a cup for the keg.

This does not hold if the AP is not broadcasting its SSID and using DHCP. If you go sniff the network and setup a static address on it, you've probably done so without permission. But when the system advertises its existence and offers you an IP when you ask, you have just been authorized to use the network.

The real article

[slapout]

from the please-read-your-own-website dept.
annoyed_reader writes "The Pete Rose Times has a story about baldass_newbie who was arrested for stealing Slashdot articles via wi-fi signals. Experts believe that there are scores of incidents of stealing slashdot articles. People have used the cloak of wireless to take old slashdot stories and resubmit them. Sometimes they use multiple aliases. The problem, experts say, is that slashdot editors do not take the time or are unsure how to check for duplicate story posts. Slashdot editor Zonk knew what to do. 'But I never did it because I was busy playing The Sims.'"

Any good lawyer could prove this bogus

[lugar]

Making some basic assumptions (the wireless was using an SSID, was unencrypted, and a DHCP server was available), any lawyer can make the valid claim that the wireless access point was intended for the public to use:

- SSID was advertising the availability of the access point.
- Absense of encryption re-enforces the fact that this was not a private network.
- DHCP giving an IP address is as good as saying "have a seat, enjoy the connection".

A good analogy would be to have a big sign in front of your house saying "Cookies inside!" (SSID). You leave the door propped open (lack of encryption). You have someone inside pull up a chair and invite the person to sit down and enjoy said cookies (DHCP).

If you don't want people on your wireless, take appropriate steps to protect yourself. Someone breaking encryption to get access to a network is illegal. Connecting to an unprotected network should not be.

Zonk!

[Excelsior]

I used to play this game called Zork. Every time you walked into a room, you were presented the same description. It got very repetitive. Playing Zonk is apparently very similar.

Zonk, read the damn site, or quit as an editor.

RTFA before saying RTFA

[keraneuology]

The poster's claim:

In fact the man is not being accused of WarDriving. He peformed other illegal activites while on the network which he is being charged with, like trying to gain access to the residents computers, etc.

TFA:

Smith ... has been charged with unauthorized access to a computer network

IE Smith was charged for war driving. Period. There is NO indication that he performed ANY illegal activities other than allowing his computer to respond to an invitation to connect to the network that was sent by the AP.

More from TFA:

It remains unclear what Smith was using the Wi-Fi for, to surf, play online video games, send e-mail to his grandmother, or something more nefarious. Prosecutors declined to comment, and Smith could not be reached.

If you have further information, please provide. If you don't, then don't ask people to RTFA to ascertain information that simply isn't there.

Mod the stories

[KrunZ]

No we should simply just have a moderation on the entire posting:
() Dupe
() Old stuff
() Interesting ...

... and then we could draw some statistics on the editors.

Subscribe?

[the_rev_matt]

And this is why I don't pay for a subscription to slashdot. Until the editors can be bothered to care about the site, no way I'm paying my hard earned cash.