Man Arrested for Wireless Piggybacking

Sommelier writes "As reported by KATU in Portland, Oregon, a man was arrested for parking outside a coffee shop in nearby Vancouver, Washington, and using their open wireless AP — for three straight months. '"He doesn't buy anything," Manager Emily Pranger says about the man she ended up calling 911 about. "It's not right for him to come and use it."' Turns out the guy was a registered sex-offender as well." A different computer expert might have pointed out some ways to see if anyone is piggybacking on a wireless signal (many APs have a Web-interface client list), or even suggested something like NoCatAuth.

Comments

AP Mac Tracking

[celardore]

A different computer expert might have pointed out some ways to see if anyone is piggybacking on a wireless signal (many APs have a Web-interface client list), or even suggested something like NoCatAuth.

That's fine, if you have a number of known devices - but for something like a coffee shop where you have many different and irregular users that would not be easy. You could probably track down HIS mac address and block that though.

Re:AP Mac Tracking

[coinreturn]

Print that day's nocat code on the recipts and that stops the leechers.
All the leechers have to do is find a discarded receipt - they're sure to be all over the place.

It's Open

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's open, it's okay to use it.

Don't want strangers to use your AP? Secure it.

Re:It's Open

[WillyMF1]

It's more like putting a TV in your window, turning it on, and getting upset when someone watches it.

Re:It's Open

[$1uck]

if you left your front door open, would it be legal for some stranger to wander in and use your stuff?
I hear this argument a lot, and I dont think its very accurate. Your front door isn't floating out into public space, If you play your music really loud and the sound waves travel out to my ears, am I stealing your music? No. and thats only half the analogy, because as we know the wireless card in the laptop also sends a message back to the wap but for that to happen the wap first has to send out a message notifying the laptop that it exists. So I guess to complete your analogy... if someone's front door has a sign that actively says "I'm open, I'm unlocked" kind of like an invatation for an open house which seems legal to me.

Re:It's Open

[Eccles]

Just because it is open, doesn't mean that it is legal to use it.

I sent a connect request. Your system accepted my request. I rang your doorbell, and your electronic doorman answered and let me in. I'm not trespassing.

The protocol was specifically designed with a mechanism to allow people to share without human intervention, or to prevent it if you so desire. If you're too effing stupid to set it up in the latter fashion, you shouldn't be allowed to use it.

Re:It's Open

[alcmaeon]

"It's more like putting a TV in your window, turning it on, and getting upset when someone watches it."

You are exactly right and I bet if someone bothered to research it, there are some old cases from the drive-in movie era that would be instructive. If a person can see a movie screen from his back porch and watch it but not pay for it, is that stealing? If a person can hear the concert from the bar next door, but doesn't buy a beer, is he stealing it? If a person has a satellite dish and watches an unencryped broadcast, is he stealing it? I venture that in all cases the legal answer is "no."

Under the right facts, I bet the law woudl not even consider it stealing to receive an encrypted broadcast.

Re:It's Open

[Robotech_Master]

I held this point of view, too, until a friend pointed out a few things about property law to me. I tried to argue, but I ended up coming around to his point of view.

It's okay to use it until the owner tells you to stop. At that point, it becomes no longer okay to use it.

If they hadn't first told him to stop--had a policeman tell him to stop--then they wouldn't have had much of a case for arresting him. But once they told him to stop and he came back anyway, then it became a matter of trespassing.

Look, if a store is open to the public and people come in and shop, that's fine. But if one of them misbehaves and they tell him they don't want his business anymore and to stay out, he's not entitled to come back in just because the door is open and other people are going in. He's been told to stay out, and if he disobeys that order he's trespassing. And while some establishments do have bouncers, it's not beholden on every establishment to have security, because the law is on their side in this matter.

In this case he was doubly trespassing: using their wireless access after they told him not to, and using their parking lot after they told him not to. Even if they couldn't get him for theft of service, they could still get him for trespassing.

Would they ever have known he was using their service without buying anything if he hadn't been parked so prominently in their parking lot all that time? Say, if he were located in some business next door? Probably not. But he called attention to himself by acting in an obvious and not a little creepy manner. They had every right to tell him to stop. When he didn't stop, he got arrested.

Re:It's Open

[Hatta]

Under the right facts, I bet the law woudl not even consider it stealing to receive an encrypted broadcast.

"The right facts" being that Sony or AT&T were the ones doing it, and not some guy with a criminal record.

Re:It's Open

[Eccles]

If you come to my block party, and you tear down my wallpaper, break furniture, steal my jewelry, take a leak in my pool, and abuse my wife, you'll get prosecuted. A hacker also claims to be someone they aren't, so there's fraud involved.

Re:It's Open

[Anonymous Coward]

That's rich. The eletronic doorman let me in? hahaha. So if I clone your garage door opener and open your garage, I can just stroll on in and it's cool? Because, like, the door opener let me in.. Or maybe I copy your house key and since the lock didn't actually stop me, it's cool? I mean, the lock let me in with *my* key and you should really secure your front door if you don't want me "borrowing" your stuff. Trespassing, like sexual harassment, is in the eye of the beholder, the minute I decide I don't want you on my property you're effectively tresspassing. The only technicality is if I act upon you, for example in Colorado I would be allowed to shoot you and kill you if you're on my property (the so-called "make my day" law) but I have to make attempts to let you know that you're not wanted on my property and you have to resist my attempts to get you off (so I couldn't drag you in to the middle of my 20,000 acre estate and then tell you to leave or I'll shoot and then shoot you during the 30minute drive to leave my property..)

That's the logic that is going to get congress involved with this stuff. Just push the blame back to the coffee shop, I guess their IT contract with Perrot didn't cover this. Or maybe the CDs that they had made with their custom 802.1x supplicant that they were going to hand out to their customers weren't ready yet..

They're running a nice little service for their customers. I can see being too cheap to get internet at home and too lazy to use a library so you hit the coffee shop every day, buy a coffee and sit their for 4 hours, fine. I can even see every now and then, skipping the coffee now and again and just checking something really quick (maybe you didn't have any cash on you, or you're late and you just need to scan your emails really quick.) IT isn't what the coffee shop does, the internet is kind of a good faith perk, they want the place to be cool, they want people to hang out and buy more coffee.. Simply by virtue of them not securing their network doesn't give anyone an implied right to use it. This is an open and shut case, it's been done hundreds of times, go do your dishes and bath at a public water fountain regularly and see what happens.

Should the coffee shop do something to secure it? Or down power the radios so they are only effective inside their building? Probably but they don't need to do that to demonstrate abuse. They also could put some sort of authorization service in but it's a coffee shop that's trying to do a little something extra, they'll just not have internet. Where do you stop if you just keep pushing the blame? You find kiddy porn on the internet? Well shouldn't some ISP prevent their customers from putting that up? Clearly it's their fault? Or maybe MS should put code in to IE to prevent you from viewing it? Or maybe it's intel's fault they didn't build their chips such that you couldn't create that kind of content with them.. You know at some point, we have to blame the sickos that want to view that stuff also, in fact, that's really what we don't want in society. Same thing here, there is a little bit of an honor code involved, nothing really prevents you from stealing internet from this coffee shop. The fact that the guy was a sex offender just ices the cake.

I'll tell you something else, the coffee shop could have a "rule" about looking at porn or something, and they could "ask you to leave" or "stop using the service" if they caught you. They don't have to buy a filtering service to make that effective, they are completely within their rights to do that and then to take action if you don't comply with them. There is a social "terms of service" agreement that you implicitely agreed to, it's part of being in a society.

Re:It's Open

[rockhome]

OK, Here's the problem that you all have. It is not that it is illegal, it is just not cool. The coffeee shop is providing a value added service with the sort of implicit understanding that people, being cool and decent, won't just abuse it.

This sort of thing constantly boils down into a "you scratch my back, and then I'll ignore yours" situation. It's a matter of being a part of the community that we all share. It is amazing that some many devotes of open source/free software will jump on a company for violating the GPL, but won't recognize the kind of abuse that this article is discussing.

Re:It's Open

[Robotech_Master]

My previous Slashdot comment was my 1337th. Alas, with the posting of this comment, I am no longer l33t. :)

The WiFi aspect of it is what interests me. I've long held the strong belief that people should be free to do as they please with *ANY* signal that impacts them or their property. Guess what? The law as it is enforced today doesn't agree with me. Else I could put up a satellite dish, figure out how to descramble the signals from DirectTV, DISH Network, XM Satellite Radio or StarBand...or cellular towers, or secure police radio transceivers, etc. and use them as I pleased for my own purposes, under the assumption that they were freely given to (forced upon) me.

If it were up to me, the burden would fall entirely upon people who transmit over the public airwaves to provide whatever security they deem necessary for their signals. I would favor laws that openly encourage people to entertain themselves however they please with any transmission they receive, and make full use of unsecure wireless network nodes such as the open AP in question.

So...in one paragraph, you say that you should have the freedom to decrypt encrypted signals--and in the next, you say that if people don't want their signals used, they should encrypt them. You really are in training to be a lawyer, aren't you?

It seems fair to me that you should be able to make what use you want to of an unencrypted signal you receive. You could tune in any AM, FM, shortwave, etc. signal you want, or make your own digital clock that monitored time signal transmissions to synch up, or make use of a stock ticker signal someone broadcast in the clear.

But in order to make use of an Internet connection, you have to transmit a signal back, too. In particular, you have to transmit a signal in a certain way so as to make the other party's signal box do something. You're manipulating someone else's property. To use your analogy, it would be fine to watch a TV set through someone else's window--but not fine to change the channel for them without asking, whether you did it by tapping the button with a long pole or using your own universal remote. You're messing with something that's not yours.

But regardless, the thing that gets me about people's responses to this case is that it's not a question of wardriving, where you at least have the fig leaf of "If they didn't want me to use it, they should have locked it down." Though everyone seems to be treating it that way anyway.

This is a question of "It used to be okay for the guy to use it, but he abused the privilege and was banned, but came back anyway." This isn't a wardriving case, it's simply trespassing plus its electronic equivalent. Whether you or I feel they had a good reason for doing it, the establishment was within its rights to ask him to leave. People seem to be ignoring this and answering with their rote "wardriving" responses.

I suppose I should stop expecting rationality on this issue from Slashdot. Many Slashdotters--at or at least many of the more vocal ones--seem to want to get everything for free. Music, movies, software, books, Internet service, beer, etc. And that's perfectly all right when the stuff is in the public domain, or when the owners want to make it available for free. That's what's so great about GNU, BSD, Linux, Creative Commons, Project Gutenberg, community wireless networks, coffeehouses and restaurants who provide wireless free to their customers, and so on. And hey, we all want free stuff. I know I do.

But many Slashdotters seem to feel this sense of entitlement to get whatever they want for free, because they want it, and so they go out and take it. The Rolling Stones song "You Can't Always Get What You Want" holds no truth for them. And so they dance all around justifying this in various different ways. "If they didn't want me to use it, they should have locked it down!" "If they didn't want me to use it, they should have locked it down such

3 straight months

[ilovegeorgebush]

20-year-old Alexander Eric Smith of Battle Ground sat in the parking lot in his truck for three months, spending hours at a time piggybacking on the coffee shop's wireless Internet service for free.
If they had noticed he was 'piggybacking' their connection, wouldn't it make sense for them to A) Secure it and B) Call 911 earlier than three months?

If they had noticed him doing this for hours a day, spanding months, it is in their interest and indeed their responsibility to do something about it?

Six of one and half a dozen of the other

[99luftballon]

Yes this guy was committing theft and should be charged. But why on earth didn't they have their connection locked down? Print the password on the back of a receipt and that way genuine customers can use the connection and the leaches stay outside the network. That said if there are no signs or warnings that the wireless connection was for paying customers only then they could have a problem charging him. A canny lawyer could claim he thought the connection was a free resource, but I'm unfamiliar with US law on this.

Re:Six of one and half a dozen of the other

[Monokeros]

Yes this guy was committing theft and should be charged.

It's theft is it?
Has anyone here ever been to a trade show and taken the free swag without ever buying the product promoted on said swag? Have you accepted free posters & whatnot from an auto show without later buying a Ferrari or Porshe?

Did you ever accepted the free t-shirts that newspapers and other companies hand out on campuses, at sporting events, concerts, etc. all over the country without later purchasing the goods or services they promote?

Then you sir, are a thief. None of that swag was free for those companies. And you should be charged.

Some coffee shops offer free WiFi in an effort to get people into the store spending money. If it fails, that's too bad. When someone uses their free wifi without buying anything it's perfectly ethical and it's perfectly legal.

Other coffee shops charge customers for WiFi. If this shop can't handle the inevitable freeloaders they've certainly got the option to lock down their network--and until they do the freeloaders are doing nothing wrong.

Re:Six of one and half a dozen of the other

[voice_of_all_reason]

but I'm unfamiliar with US law on this.

US law is "he is a sex offender -- he has no rights."

And if you disagree with that, then you are obviously a terrorist.

Re:Six of one and half a dozen of the other

[Hoi Polloi]

I see people IN coffee shops who I swear have had their butts parked there for 3 months or more and I never see them buy anything. They just sit there with their laptops. They should arrest them too.

I don't see why they mentioned he was a REGISTERED sex offender. What does that have to do with this? Maybe he stayed outside so they couldn't accuse him of violating some distance restriction.

Re:Six of one and half a dozen of the other

[99luftballon]

There's a slight difference between promotional items, where there is no explicit requirement on the recipient to promote said product, and possibly this case. If there was a clearly observable sign saying that the signal was for customers only then I'm sorry but it is theft.

I got to a lot of trade shows and have managed stands where we were handing out freebies. While the behavior of some people trying to grab handfuls of USB pen drives is distasteful it would be a long stretch to describe it as theft. The idsea behind these items is partly to draw people to the stand so that the sales staff can pounce on them and partly that they will use them outside the show and this make the name of the product or company more well known.

Why bother to call the cops?

[MichaelSmith]

The whole point of the open AP is to encourage people to hang around in the shop or the area around it. The smart thing would be to send somebody out with a free cup of coffee and get him hooked.

What an freaking idiotic crime to get him on

[technoextreme]

Theft of services??? How about trespassing. Much easier to get him on that especially since the deputies told him to stop hanging around in the parking lot.

I don't get it

[a_nonamiss]

I don't get the legalities of this all. Was he tresspassing? Was he stealing coffee? Did he sign a contract saying that he would buy x amount of coffee for y amount of bandwidth? If the coffee house wants to secure their network, the technology is available. I get that the guy was a creepy sex offender, making him easy to demonize, but in theory he's paid his pennance and isn't committing more crimes. (aside from dubious wi-fi stealing laws) I am playing music loud on my outdoor speakers, I can't sue my neighbors for listening to it. In the same way, if I'm broadcasting a wi-fi signal, it's my responsibility to secure this signal

911???? WTF?

[brunes69]

Calling 911 when someone is having a heart attack - commendable.

Calling 911 when someone just stole your car - questionable, but I can understand it I guess since you want to get in touch ASAP since time is of the essence, and you may not know the local police number.

Calling 911 because someone is annoying you by using your WAP???? How in any way is this an emergency? Why couldn't the store take 30 seconds to look up the local number for the police?

911 is for emergencies. The phone line time these bozos were taking up to complain about a guy using internet may have delayed an ambulence getting dispatched by 45 seconds - 45 seconds that could mean life or death for someone. People should get fined for this bullshit.

Re:911???? WTF?

[drewzhrodague]

Oddly enough, my friend's car was vandalized by some drunk idiot. I mean, multiple keyings, dented hood, broken side mirrors -- they did a good job, the car looks like hell. So, he went to call the police, and it was busy -- ALL DAY LONG. Eventually he called 911, because he couldn't get through. After explaining the situation, the operator asked him why he didn't call there first. "Because it's for emergencies," my friend said. The operator told him to use 911 next time. Go figure.

Re:911???? WTF?

[Eccles]

I had a car radio stolen once. It was stolen overnight, so presumably it had been hours since the theft occurred. I tried calling the police station via numbers in the phone book. They told me to call 911.

The phone line time these bozos were taking up to complain about a guy using internet may have delayed an ambulence getting dispatched by 45 seconds

You know, they have more than one operator.

Re:911???? WTF?

[mrchaotica]

Why couldn't the store take 30 seconds to look up the local number for the police? 911 is for emergencies.

Yeah, just try telling that to the Atlanta PD. If you try to call their regular number to report a non-urgent situation, all they'll do is tell you to hang up and call 911 because the dispatchers are apparently the only ones who record incidents.

sex-offender

[Threni]

> Turns out the guy was a registered sex-offender as well.

So what if he's using someone elses internet connection? It's not morally wrong as far as I'm concerned, and it's probably not even legally wrong in a lot of places. The people in the coffee shop are selling someone elses coffee - which they've paid a fraction of what they're going to make off it to the original suppliers for. I mean, while we're talking about being fair here...

(It wouldn't be so bad if he'd been a communist, drug user or muslim. Gotta keep those bogeymen alive...need an excuse to spy, burgle and bug citizens.)

Owner is a lame coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Without getting into the debate on the rights on wrongs of wireless freeloading and the actual act itself I would like to make to an observation on the cafe owners behaviour.

A guy sits outside the cafe for three months, obviously being observed by the owner. At no time does the owner walk up
to the guy and ask him what he is doing. He doesn't say something simple and polite like

"Hi there, I'm the owner of the the cafe across the road there, are you plugged into my wireless connection? Because y'know, like its really for my customers."

Not once. He sits and broods and waits for three straight months and finally calls 911 to get the cops involved *as a FIRST recourse*

If he had made it clear to the guy that he knew/suspected what he was doing there's a 99% change the freeloader would have moved right along.

The problem we have, the deeply endemic pathology in society is not apathy, stupidity or greed, it is cowardice.

Re:3 straight months!

[stecoop]

I believe your going in left field with this one. There isn't a TOS for wireless access. If you don't want someone to use it then you have to keep the radio waves out of his property. He was pretty much using the service that was trespassing on public property. It stinks that he is a sex offender because he'll be setting precedence in court by being convicted leaving the door open for other to be convicted on some charge like this. No, it isn't thinking of the children; it is just another freedom being infiltrated because I let my wireless network be used by anyone and many others do the same. Soon this might be illegal thanks to the shop.

This country's starting to scare me

[bnocturnal]

Why is this a police matter? Seems to me that the Cafe was not taking any measure to prevent his use... Did they even have a "Click through" page where he had to agree to "Terms of Service", i wonder? This would be like me putting a bench in a public park and calling the police if anybody sat on it. The ones being arrested should be the business owners... for wasting the Police's time, and for making false 911 calls.

Was this really an emergency?

[organgtool]

I can understand the manager's frustration with this guy, but was calling 911 appropriate? I wouldn't consider prolonged wireless piggybacking an emergency.

Also, was there a sign in front of the coffee shop indicating that the wireless signal was only for paying customers? Is this implied?

If they really cared about wireless freeloaders, they could use a wireless key and change that key every day. That key could be distributed with all purchases and the problem is solved.

Contradictory?

[Mayhem178]

using their open wireless AP

When deputies told Smith to knock it off, he came back and is now charged with theft of services.

This article is pure FUD. Okay, the guy was a sex offender. The article only mentions this once, and it clearly says they have no idea if he actually did anything wrong. It just says that to discredit him.

I can't help but wonder if during those 3 months anyone working at the coffee shop bothered to ask him if he wanted a drink, or informed him that he would have to make a purchase if he wanted to continue using their wireless AP.

A computer expert told KATU News there is no way to know if someone is using your wireless connection without permission.

Some computer expert.....did I mention this was all FUD?

That's just lazy

[clevershark]

It seems to me that an individual or company who, in this day and age, deliberately chooses to not enable any security on his wireless network really shouldn't get any sympathy from anyone.

How is this a crime?

[JustNiz]

If they leave their internet wide open and broadcast an SSID then I beleive its fair to assume that this is an open invatiation and they are offerng a community service.

If he was just using the internet why would the coffee shop give a damn anyway? its not like they are losing anything. In fact, I would have thought the coffee-shop would WANT to offer a free wifi zone as its free publicity about how community-minded they are.

I think there must be more in this. He was probably parked in front of thsir shop, downloading porn and masturbating in public.

Vancouver WA sucks

[Simonetta]

Not to belittle my wonderful neighbors too much, but anything that happens in Vancouver, Washington (not Vancouver BC) should not be taken seriously. The place is on the north side of the Columbia River in the Portland Oregon metro area. Oregon has no sales tax but high income taxes. Consequently Vancouver is filled with people who want the cheap income and property taxes and to also hop across the river to buy everything with no sales tax.
    Also, Portland tends to be liberal, environmental, and moderately progressive while Vancouver is packed with pious, self-righteous, bible-thumping, overweight, narrow-minded freaks who believe that they have managed to keep their own little piece of Alabama pure while surrounded by sinners and liberals.

    So some guy found a WiFi hot spot. And he parked his car there. Every day. for three months.
So what?
    And he's a 'sex offender' too. Well, in Vancouver, a sex offender may a guy who has done some seriously bad things with his ... Or, it may be some guy who twenty years ago got caught unireating ('taking a whiz' in the American slang) behind a bar or gas station in the middle of the night. Or got caught kissing a 17-year-old girl when he was 18. Or got caught swimming naked in a lake in the woods on a hot summer day. Or, lots of other stupid harmless things that the Americans lump into the category of sex offences that have nothing to do with sex offences.

    Or maybe he really is a super predator who actually was endangering the community by...what was it?, oh, yes... parking his car and using his computer in it.

Analogy time!

[Churla]

Complaining that someone was using an unsecured, free AP as theft of services is like saying someone should have to close their eyes if they hang around outside your store at night as to avoid taking advantage of your free lights.

(someone has to have a better one than that, let's see it!)

What it boils down to is that if they want people to have to buy something to use the WAP then secure it in a way as to assure that happens, don't complain because you're too lazy to do something proactive to control it. It isn't hard. People fire up a browser , first page is a redirect on which they have to enter the "password du jour" which, as mentioned above, could easily be printed on the reciepts or even on a small sign next to the cash register.

Re:Analogy time!

[stinerman]

Complaining that someone was using an unsecured, free AP as theft of services is like saying someone should have to close their eyes if they hang around outside your store at night as to avoid taking advantage of your free lights.

Not exactly. Since the wireless bandwidth is shared, anything the leecher used dimished what others can use. It is not so with lights. That being said, I tend to agree with you that using an open AP should not be a crime. The AP broadcasts the SSID. DHCP does the rest. In effect:

AP: "Hey, I'm an access point."
Client: "Great! Can I have an IP?"
AP: "Sure thing. Here you go, have fun!"

And somehow this is theft?

Come on guys, if you can't at least secure it with WEP or some sort of "password du jour" as the parent says, don't go complaining when people use your access point.

Another example of "law protecting the clueless"

[Opportunist]

Aside of people who deliberately keep their APs open as a service to the community, there are numerous who just can't get their APs secured. Yes, of course, internet crimes are a lot easier from insecure APs. The only reason why it isn't done more often is simply that there are easier, also impossible to trace, ways to do it than driving around for it.

What does the legal system do? Require people to close their APs or keep logs? No. What they do is, the person who's smart enough to use that security hole gets the blame. Oh sure, he's a sex offender. So "think of the children" is this time the excuse, I guess.

If you don't understand technology, don't use it. If you want to use something, make sure you know how to use it. If you fuck up, don't shift the blame on someone else for your blunder.

If you don't want to use it.

[LWATCDR]

Keep your photons to yourself. Hey if the next door to me is watering his lawn and his sprinkler hits my grass am I stealing it?
Did the shop say free wifi? If so I really don't see the problem. If you set up an open wifi access point and a sign that says free wifi then there is a logical assumption that it is free to use. Of course since the guy was a sex offender it is all right to bust him.

takes nothing to become a registered sex offender

[r00t]

Two teenagers screwing all the time. The guy turns 18 years old. Suddenly he can't fuck his 17-year-old girlfriend without committing rape. Her mom is pissed, and insists on prosecution. Guy goes to jail (instead of school) and becomes a registered sex offender.

Then...

Girlfriend turns 18. Girlfriend moves in with her boyfriend's parents while waiting for the boyfriend to get out of jail. Girlfriend and boyfriend get married and start a family.

Girlfriends mother probably wonders why her daughter won't call anymore, and why she married a guy who couldn't complete school.

-----

A friend of mine saw just this. Neighbors won't let their kids play with the couple's kids. If the guy gets reported as doing something like helping out with a kid's soccer team, he immediately goes to jail until a judge can find time to deal with it.

This a a law that needs to be stopped ASAP. It's out of control. At least letting the "victims" wipe the slate would be good.

Re:Latte

[hackstraw]

How are they going to prove he never bought a latte? Are they going to be able to swear that in the last three months, of all the lattes they sold, not one was bought by him? How do they know his friend didn't buy one and bring it to him in the car?

Who cares?

This is yet another example where human logic and rationality are excluded when a computer is involved.

AFAIK, there is no law against using, ahem, free stuff floating in the air.

There are laws against loitering, vagrancy, and tresspass. Any or all of those could apply to this situation, but no, a computer was involved so it must be some special unwritten law that he broke.

What on earth...?

[steveo777]

I like all the people who are asking what he did wrong. Well, for one let's just drop the fact that he's a sex offender. The guy had been sitting in their parking lot for hours. I don't know how busy this place got, but the parking lot is for customers, and if he wasn't sitting in his car for hours at a time, he would have been towed. Then there's the fact that this is obviously his primary use of the internet and he's not even supporting the company. So he may not have affected anyone elses surfing or parking, but he's in the way regaurdless. It's just indescent. I know I use coffee shop wifi all the time. But I'll always have coffee or something when I'm there.

Now I am going to say they should have kicked him out after a few days of parking in the lot for hours and not buying anything. Not three months.

Re:What on earth...?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Yes, it was wrong/underhanded/sneaky. The question is...was it illegal?

Re:What on earth...?

[sizzzzlerz]

Since when is being "in the way" grounds for arrest in a public, non-life threatening situation? If the parking lot was signed for customers only or, in some other ways, was restricted and the individual had been requested to move his car by someone in authority, there are legal grounds for his removal (tresspassing, for example, not consuming WiFi signals). But if it was a public parking lot with no clearly specified time limits then where is the violation? Furthermore, why just the WiFi. I assume he was also consuming the aromas emminating from the coffee shop. Why was he allowed to get away with that?

Yes, the guy sounds like a leech but I still don't understand the reaction here. Unless there is some other real violation here, my guess is he'll walk.

Re:What on earth...?

[steveo777]

I've been in a few places with signs up saying minumum to spend and max stay time. Typically $5 min, 2hr max. But these are high school hang out Perkins and the like. I've spent hours in a perkins just talking and sipping on free refils, and usually they're fine with it if no one is around. We've gotten our check and paid it long before, but we still drink the bottomless cup. Heck, I went to Baker's Square with a good friend and we both brought brand new 200+ piece Lego sets to put together. We spend 10 bucks between the two of us and sit there for three hours. If they ask us to leave, no problem, but at least we spent some money, and tipped the server. (there was a sign prohibiting board games and other activities the next time we went in, it was in the front for about a year)

You'd never get away with just sitting down, reading the paper, typing a report, but not ordering in a restuarant/coffee shop. They'd throw you out. I'd throw you out.

Maybe it's just the Minnesota Nice in me, but there's a pretty easy way to see if you're imposing. Look around. It is busy? Is the waitstaff giving you dirty looks? Does you butt hurt because you've been sitting on that bench for hours? I'd say no more than half an hour in a busy bistro, but two or three hours if you're obviously not in the way... or the third time the server asks, "Can I get you anything else?"

Re:I do it too...

[rockhome]

That's just the kind of attitude that this generation of Stallman/Lessig influenced, wannabe hippee-communists has developed. So many people think that everything ought to be free and open that they forget to actually be free and open themselves. Look at it like this, am I free to just walk into your house just because you left the door unlocked? No, that's tresspass.

Similarly, though several magnitudes less, using a coffeee shop's open wireless network, or anyone's for that matter, just isn't right. We live in a world where things work best when we all scratch one another's back. The idea of providing an open AP is to encourage you to scratch the back of the coffee shop, not just abuse the service that they provide. When a business provides free access to some service there is an IMPLICIT understanding that one ought to throw some cheddar to th business for providing the service. This shouldn't be a question of law, it ought to be a question of common decency and respect for the world that we all live in. I doubt that many of the people that read and post on /. have ever maintained an open AP so that any slouch can access it.

Sure, simple protections would prevent you from using some one else's network, but simple decency ough to as well. I own a parking spot that I generally do not use, does that make it OK for someone to just park there? No, that is my property. Maybe if they'd say "hey, I need an extra spot this weekend, here's a couple bottles of Biddendens" then maybe I'd not be so put out. Too often in our society, people take first rather than give first, and many of the free information/software/love people are the worst about the taking without giving.

Re:more like...

[residieu]

More like the coffee shop has newspapers available for customer to read, and this guy comes in to read the newspapers but never buys anything. Rude, but not exactly illegal.

Then be honest.

[LWATCDR]

Have a notice saying Internet access to paying customers. If you have a sign saying it is free then I figure it is free to use. Frankly I have never used free wifi anywhere since it never seems to be where I need it on business and I just don't take my notebook with me to lunch. I think calling the police and charging this guy was wrong. Someone should have asked him not to freeload or the Police should have asked him not to. Why the hell should the taxpayers have to foot the bill for his jail time, trial, and probably public defender because somebody didn't like him using their free, unsecured WAP!

Re:So they should publish what their terms are.

[Akaihiryuu]

I have a feeling that we aren't hearing the whole story here. It's probably just a case of bad journalism. If I'm reading TFA correctly, the police had already told him that he couldn't come back. This would mean that he had been told by the police that he was banned from the premesis. It's likely that he had been doing something to annoy their customers and wasn't just minding his own business and surfing. This would mean that the restaurant already had the cops there once before and had the guy banned. We had to do things like this in the convenience store I used to work at as an assistant manager all the time - usually to drunks or homeless that would constantly try to bum money off of people. Anyway, if the cops told him he couldn't come back and he did, it wouldn't be "theft of service" that they'd charge him with, but *trespassing*. If someone that is known to have been banned from your property proceeds to come back, calling 911 is definitely the correct thing to do. I have a feeling that the article author heard that this guy had been using free wireless internet and decided to twist the truth of what actually happened. Or maybe they decided on the "theft of service" thing in addition to the trespassing he was already being charged with.

I wouldn't take it to trial

[CodeMasterPhilzar]

Granted, I'm no legal expert but a couple of points would seem to be in the defense's favor:

• It is an open network, presumably broadcast off their premises. Would you sue someone for sitting on a sidewalk bench reading a newspaper at night by your store lights? "Hey, that light is for customers only!" Or "Hey, that muzak is for the customers only!" Maybe in that case people on the sidewalk could sue the store for noise pollution ;-)
• If you buy into the idea that it is for paying customers only, what level or amount of service is implied? If the guy was ever a customer then he's covered. I mean, does one latte buy you 1 hour of access, 1 day, ... what? If he has any proof he ever made a purchase there, then it is a matter of how much service he was entitled too. I'll bet the shop only has a little sign that says "Free wireless internet" or some such. Probably doesn't even say "For customers only" let alone any limits. Ah, and IIRC a contract without limits is not valid...
• How long before these hot-spots start posting AUPs? I'll bet the shop doesn't have one, yet.

Nope, no matter how creepy, innovative, clever, stupid, or {insert characterization here} you think this guy is, he probably can't be successfully prossecuted.

The real question is, who has time to sit around in their truck for hours each day? Sheesh, I barely have enough time to read a /. article or two for entertainment! ;-)

Throw the book at him, or, not.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only relevance to the "sex offender" status is if he was downloading child porn through the coffee shop's wifi. That said, with him being 20 years old, my guess is that he was 18, she was 17. This, in my opinion, belongs in the class in which if Dad wants to kick his ass, everyone looks the other way. On the other hand, it could also be a legitimate rape charge which has *nothing* to do with the case at hand.

The sex offender registries which include consensual 16/17 17/18 or such relationships just about make the registries worthless. Also worthless are registries, as in Illinois, which include a 25 year-old gentleman which grabbed a 15 year-old girl by the arm and said "are you @##$@ stupid!?!" after she ran out in front of him and narrowly avoided dying.) In my area, there are about 20 offenders listed within a mile of my house. Probably 15 of those are bf/gf. So much for childhood sweethearts getting married and living happily ever after...well, I guess you still can (after you get out of jail); it's just that you can't live within 1,000 feet of a school.

Theft was not really committed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anytime you broadcast an RF signal to the wide open general public, you are actually indeed broadcasting free use of that signal to the general public whether or not that was your intention. In fact, due to the way wireless 802.11 networking works, you are even ADVERTISING your system's availability to anyone within "earshot".

Failing to secure your wireless is NOT an analogy to leaving your car parked at the side of the street with doors unlocked as some folks argue (and where the car owner should still have reasonable expectation that nobody should open the doors and prowl around inside). Failing to secure your wireless is much more like leaving an ice-filled cooler without a lid, chock full of cold cans of Coca-Cola, sitting on a table completely unattended on a busy city sidewalk full of pedestrians, on a hot summer afternoon, with a sign that simply says "Here is a cooler full of ice-cold, tasty Cokes". In that situation you would have no reasonable expectation that the drinks would remain secure as it appears to the layperson passers-by that the drinks are being offered for free to the public.

Re:3 straight months!

[B'Trey]

What the hell are you talking about? No one is infiltrating any freedoms here. If you own the hub, you can set up any rules you want to who uses it. You have no constitutional right to open Wi-Fi signals provided by private businesses.

That's an open question. If you're broadcasting signals, what right do you have to tell me that I can't receive them?

My opinion is that it's up to you to at least indicate that this is a private network that you shouldn't access. You do that by at least setting up basic security. Sure, WEP is easy to break. So are most door locks. But if you enable WEP and I break in, then I'm knowingly trespassing where I don't belong.

And no, posting a TOS inside your business isn't the same thing. I can easily access the signal without ever seeing that TOS. Suppose I hang a picture up that's visible through my plate glass window, and beside it post a sign that says that I own this picture and if you look at it, you agree to pay me the sum of $100. If you walk by and look at my picture through the window, are you bound by those TOS? And if you're going to claim that that's different, you need to specify exactly why I should be bound by a TOS posted inside your business that I've never seen when I access a public, unencrypted signal.

Re:3 straight months!

[orim]

They can cuff you any time they please, as far as I understand even for just looking at them. But they also have to charge you with a crime within a very short time, or let you go. Otherwise, you sic your lawyers on them.

Could the police use trespassing or something on this guy? If not, and you're using a wide open Wi-Fi point, they really have no case. (IANAL)

Of course, in at least one foreign country I know, if you have a TV set, you have to pay montly subscription... regardless of it being public airwaves or whatnot. Otherwise, they come to your house and seal your TV off.

Re:3 straight months!

[mdwh2]

I'm pretty sure the article said he was sitting in the parking lot, and that is most definitely NOT public property.

If that's the case, then this makes it even more ridiculous. The shop sets up a wireless network for people on their property to use, and then someone is arrested because they didn't buy anything.

The shop have the right to tell him to leave their property, and if he refuses that would be trespass. Did they do this? It is not a crime to be on a shop's property that is open to the public, and to use their service which they make open to these people, just because I don't abide with whatever rules they have set.

Also, the article didn't say anything about whether or not the coffee shop had a TOS for their internet service. To say one doesn't exist is ridiculous. The person who owns the wireless hub and pays for the signal dictates what the rules are.

They get to dictate the TOS, they don't get to dictate the law.

If someone breaks the TOS, you ask them to leave. Breaking a TOS is not a crime.

What the hell are you talking about? No one is infiltrating any freedoms here. If you own the hub, you can set up any rules you want to who uses it. You have no constitutional right to open Wi-Fi signals provided by private businesses.

I think being arrested involves a loss of freedom. And yes, he may have no right to those signals, but the shop provided them to him. The shop has every right to not provide them if they wish.

By this logic, it would be okay for any shop to arrest any customer for trespass without asking them to leave first "because they have no constitutional right to enter an open shop".

Indeed, by this logic, all sorts of things would be illegal. You have no "constitutional right" to post on a private website such as Slashdot - do you say it's okay for you to be arrested if Slashdot wishes that?

Terrible Reporting...

[Chabil Ha']

"As it turns out, Smith is a Level One Sex Offender"

How is this a relevant detail to the story? Now, if this guy was using their connection to commit such crimes against other people, THEN it would be an important detail. Otherwise, IMHO, the story really doesn't seem that important.

NEWS FLASH! A 22 year old man was cited for jay walking on a busy street and as it turns out he's a sex offender! More details on KBS at 10!

-or-

NEWS FLASH! A 19 year old boy was arrested today for stealing a hand full of 5 cent bubble gum. During a news conference today it was revealed that he is also a statutory rapist!

You've all done it...

[Beefslaya]

So you visit Chicago, or some large city on vacation...You are looking for the nearest L or Tube station. You may even be in a bad neighborhood, or you dont' trust the directions that a local may give you.

So you power on your iPaq and (blink!) there is a free wifi network at the local cafe, apartment building, or local library. You quickly reference a city map, find out the station is 2 blocks south, and you are on your way. The day is saved.

Should I go to jail for some dumbass leaving his wifi unsecured? NO.

If you put a drinking fountain on the public sidewalk attached to your water meter, you can't expect that only your friends or people that visit you will only drink from it.

There are 100 different ways this coffee shop could have secured the network. Heck...spend more then 100 bucks on your WAP router...and you could even have rotating WPA keys. Come in...pay for your coffee...and get a key for the rest of the day.

The fact this guy is a sexual offender is irrelevant. That's making the assumption that he was out looking for trouble on MySpace. Unless you have the log files to prove where he was and when he did it, that shouldn't even matter.

I would recommend this guy get a lawyer, and go after this coffee house when this nonsensical bullshit is over. He should get at a minimum, free coffee and internet for a year.

Re:I do it too...

[mdwh2]

That's just the kind of attitude that this generation of Stallman/Lessig influenced, wannabe hippee-communists has developed.

Before this degenerates into a communist-bashing argument, I should point out that I'm pro-capitalist and think communism would be a bad system. It should also be noted that there is nothing inherent in capitalism that says such things should be illegal.

So many people think that everything ought to be free and open that they forget to actually be free and open themselves. Look at it like this, am I free to just walk into your house just because you left the door unlocked? No, that's tresspass.

Similarly, though several magnitudes less, using a coffeee shop's open wireless network, or anyone's for that matter, just isn't right.

So, they are going to prosecute all of the people who entered the shop and used their wireless?

Although both private property, there is a big difference between a shop and a private home. Are you free to just walk into a shop just because they left the door open? Oh wait, you are. It's only trespass when they tell you to leave and you refuse.

The idea of providing an open AP is to encourage you to scratch the back of the coffee shop, not just abuse the service that they provide. When a business provides free access to some service there is an IMPLICIT understanding that one ought to throw some cheddar to th business for providing the service. This shouldn't be a question of law

We agree it shouldn't be a question of law. But I'm not even sure it's a moral issue. If someone hands out freebies in order to tempt people along, it's fair game that people might take the freebies without becoming a customer. Maybe it's nice to occasionally buy something if you really like it, but I don't think it's morally wrong to not do so (and do we know that this person never ever bought something from the shop?)

Re:3 straight months!

[plague3106]

They can cuff you any time they please, as far as I understand even for just looking at them. But they also have to charge you with a crime within a very short time, or let you go. Otherwise, you sic your lawyers on them.

I wonder if he could turn around and sue for wrongful arrest. It is kinda a big deal, and if they don't know a charge up front, it doesn't seem like they should be able to pick over everything to find something..

Re:I do it too...

[giorgiofr]

This shouldn't be a question of law, it ought to be a question of common decency

You're exactly right, unfortuntely in today's world you have to turn everything into law, as people will simply disregard common decency (and then they'll probably break the law for good measure). I always think anarchy would be bliss, but at the same time I don't want it NOW because people would simply not be ready for it. Now watch this anarchist shake his head at people's stupidity and almost approve of law - watch his head explode :D

Re:3 straight months!

[Kadin2048]

It sounds like (my reading of TFA anyway) that they only found out he was a sex offender after he was arrested. So that could not have been the reason used to arrest him in the first place. People keep bringing it up as a kind of ex post facto justification of what happened, which isn't really relevant to the whole internet/AP argument or to his actual arrest, although it'll obviously be a key factor in what happens to him.

So I suspect that the police probably found some other grounds to arrest him on originally, and then once they made the ID and found out he was a sex offender (jackpot!), they can now charge him with all sorts of other good stuff -- violation of the terms of his parole or of a court order, probably.

From an internet-law perspective, it's too bad the guy turned out to be a sex offender because the interesting legal point of whether he was actually committing a crime by using the AP while sitting on the street and not going into the business will never be addressed; it'll almost certainly be overshadowed by more serious infractions this guy has committed. I'd wager that they never bother to charge him with theft of services or anything, if they can get him on more substantial parole violations. (Because theft of services wouldn't carry much of a penalty and would be a weak case to begin with, while the parole violation can probably land him back in prison without trial, just a hearing before the sentencing judge or parole board. From the police's perspective -- "how do we put the creepy guy away with the least amount of effort/expense" -- that's a better outcome.)

Re:3 straight months!

[Anonymous Coward]

"When deputies told Smith to knock it off, he came back and is now charged with theft of services."

It's not some kind of discussion about whether he was doing this deliberately, or without warning or on an access point he thought he might be accepted on. The AP was someone elses property. He had been asked to stop. He had been asked to stop by the Police. He continued, apparently without protesting to the police that what he was doing was legal. Even if it wasn't against the law, he should be arrested for stupidity.

Re:3 straight months!

[PhoenixPath]

It would be interesting to know if the owner of the 'property' in question ever gave the man notice that he was did not have their permission to do so. Cannot one assume, in a parking lot, that unless told to leave, you presence is tolerated?

Did they do such a thing, or did they just call the cops?

How hard is it to walk up to the car, tap on the window, and ask the guy to leave?

NOT ABOUT CHILDREN

[OctoberSky]

There are 4 or 5 posts in here that speak of children. Does the article say he is a child molestor or a sex offender?
I say this because not all sex offenders are into children. If I walk through the mall and grab your mothers boob as she walks by and I have a record and a shitty lawyer I will probably become a Level 3 sex offender.
But I aint into kids, I just like grabbing Mrs. Butterworths titties. I hate when people assume that every sex offender is a child molestor.

Re:3 straight months!

[cloak42]

Um... On a public street?

You maybe could make a case for vagrancy, but that's REEEEAAALLY reaching.

As much as I say that the fact that he's a sex offender is COMPLETELY irrelevant to the story, I do have to wonder why the guy couldn't just use internet at home to surf. I mean, if it's just a question of money, that's one thing, but if he was restricted for some reason from using the internet, well, that's another question altogether.

Re:3 straight months!

[honkycat]

Could the police use trespassing or something on this guy? If not, and you're using a wide open Wi-Fi point, they really have no case.

I think it may be more complicated than his simply using an open access point. According to the article, this guy had previously been asked by the police to move along and stop using their wireless network. Thus, he didn't just stop his truck and find an open network that seemed to be inviting him in. Rather, he was continuing to use a network that he had been instructed at least once he was not welcome to use. Even if you hold that a network's being open is generally reasonable permission to use it, this guy knew he did not have permission.

Re:3 straight months!

[honkycat]

They may well have done that. Heck, the cops had already been there before and just told the guy to get lost. He came back after that, which is of extremely questionable wisdom.

Re:3 straight months!

[tolkienfan]

Sadly, breaking a TOS can be a crime. The fact is that accessing a computer or network without authorization is now a serious crime. A recent decision (which I can probably dig up if required) held that not obeying the publicly posted TOS on a website amounted to accessing the computer without authorization.

You might argue that this is not the same or that there is no "standard" way of posting a TOS; but the courts could quite possibly go either way.

Re:It's different when you're supposed to use it..

[Dun Malg]

Because it's not given away freely. Its a service provided by the Coffee shop to its paying customers. Complementary only applies to patrons.

"Complementary" is still free. Interior lighting is "complementary" and intended for patrons, but there isn't squat they can do if I'm sitting on the bus bench on the sidewalk reading Crime and Punishment by the light coming out their windows. If they don't want their light used, they need to block the windows. If they don't want their free wifi used by anyone but patrons, they need to put some sort of access control in. Even a simple "gateway" page that pops up in your browser the first time and says "intended for patrons only" would be better. You can't just stick a Linksys router on the counter and then get all huffy and call the cops when people using it aren't abiding by your unwritten, unspoken, "intentions". This is the 21st century. Bandwidth is cheap enough that you can find open wifi nodes all over the place. The presumption that an open node that communicates no TOS and just hands out IP addresses via DHCP is, in fact, open is not an unreasonable presumption. It's essentially equivalent to installing a drinking fountain at the sidewalk and getting angry because passers-by are drinking from it.

Re:The things a coffee can do

[notaspunkymonkey]

I use unsecured Wireless spots all the time - AFAIK in the UK the person who is responsible for the wireless link can be held accountable for the activities of people using it which is why at most places you have to accept a policy before you connect (hotel lobbies and service stations etc) If the coffee shop staff wanted this guy to stop surfing using their link they should have secured it - or over the course of the 3 months at least have the balls to go outside at tell the guy to get lost. My next door neighbour came round about 3 months ago and asked me if I was surfing using his link.. he seemed a bit pissed about it at the time - when I told him I used to but his bandwidth sucked so I bought my own wireless router to let me surf in my lounge instead of using his... he was more pissed off than before.

Sex offender status not relevant

[Skynyrd]

I'm not condoning sex offenders, but it had no relevance to the story.

They are trying to imply that he was doing something wrong by simply being on sex offender list. Perhaps he was surfing kiddie porn, or perhaps he has a "no internet" clause in his parole - or perhaps he just didn't want to pay for internet access.

In any case, I think this is really sleazy reporting to mention his status, unless it has something to do with the case.

Re:3 straight months!

[Hrothgar The Great]

But if you choose not to, then take steps to make it clear that it's not an open access point. If you don't, then I'm perfectly justified in assuming that it's an intentionally open spot, just like thousands of others all across the US.

You mean, for instance, by telling the guy in the article that they didn't want him to use it anymore?

My head hurts

[Cervantes]

There is so much wrong with this, I don't even know where to start...

-You're providing a free service, then complaining when people use it?
-You want to limit it to customers, but you take no technical measures to limit it to customers?
-Why in the blazing flames of Hades are you wasting the time of 911 over someone using your WiFi? Seriously, aren't there laws against abusing 911 services with REALLY STUPID PROBLEMS?
-"Theft of services"? The article alluded to the fact that he'd previously been requested to leave by deputies, so I could see "trespass" if he was still in their parking lot... but how can you "theft" a free service?
-Was he caught browsing child porn? Was he wanking when the deputies came up to the car? No? Then why harp about how he's a "registered sex offender". Oh no, be afraid, run away, the evil sex offenders are using your WiFi! Obviously he must have been up to no good, because he's a Registered Sex Offender. It couldn't be that he can't afford high-speed because he doesn't have a job because he has to tell everyone he's a Registered Sex Offender. Couldn't be that at all.
-"He was creepy". Yeah, that's a good reason to call 911. Oh, wait, he's a Registered Sex Offender... you must have been scared, poor Shop Employee. I hope you get counselling and a book deal for your brush with a Registered Sex Offender.
-"No way to tell if someone is using your WiFi, says computer expert"... I didn't realize the reporters 9 year old son now counted as a computer expert. Seriously, does no-one, anywhere, bother to double-check facts anymore?

I'd love to watch this get kicked out of court... but he was Creepy, and he's a Registered Sex Offender, and it was somehow computer related... so an out-of-touch, luddite judge is going to conclude he was Hacking, and sentence him to 10 years in pound-me-in-the-ass prison, where he'll make lots of new friends when they announce "Here is prisoner 65851579, we just want to let you know he's a Registered Sex Offender".

There are 2 possible extremes of this case.
Option 1) He went streaking, or got drunk and groped his equally drunk date and she had second thoughts, or shagged his 17yo girlfriend when he was 18, or something equally as relatively innocent... and now, he's poor, discovers some free WiFi next to his house instead of his poor-ass dialup, and like most of us, gets hooked on the speed and forgets to not be 'creepy'.
Option 2) He's a dangerous, kiddy poking asshole, who just last year shagged some preschooler whilst dressed like Barney. He drives all the way across the city to sit all day in this parking lot, wanking off to his vast underground network of kiddie porn. He likes to spend hours staring at the employees in the coffee bar too. He's a threat to everyone around him, dangerous, obviously "on the sly", and must have been doing something illegal.

Now, after reading the article, which would you be more likely to pick? Yay for balanced reporting.

PS: I thought the reference to "LEVEL ONE" Sex Offender sounded ominous... I mean, he's a Level 1, that's gotta mean something, right?
Yeah, Google says Level 1 means you've the LOWEST chance to re-offend, and it looks like it's usually applied to girlfriend pokers, streakers, drunk-chick-touchers, etc... not to preschool-shagging Barney-wearing freaks. Sure was nice of them to mention what "Level 1" meant in the article, eh?

Re:3 straight months!

[forkazoo]

I think it may be more complicated than his simply using an open access point. According to the article, this guy had previously been asked by the police to move along and stop using their wireless network. Thus, he didn't just stop his truck and find an open network that seemed to be inviting him in. Rather, he was continuing to use a network that he had been instructed at least once he was not welcome to use. Even if you hold that a network's being open is generally reasonable permission to use it, this guy knew he did not have permission.

Yes, I think this is key. If I am driving around, and I happen apon an open access point, then it is reasonable for me to assume I have permission to use it, and it is reasonable for me to check my email and be on my way. Likewise, if I go to an internet address in my web browser, and I happen to connect to an Apache server on port 80, then I can reasonably assume that it is okay for me to read that web page.

Some people may disagree with me about it being reasonable to assume that I have permission to use the open access point. But, I think we can all agree that using it is ambiguous. It isn't clearly disallowed. But, if somebody notices me using their access point, and comes out to tell me that it isn't allowed, or they call the cops and have them tell me it isn't allowed, that is different. I can longer assume that I have implicit permission to use that access point. I absolutely know that I do not have that permission. By using the access point, I am willfully doing something that I know isn't allowed. I'd put it in the same moral category as breaking encryption keys on a closed WAP, or trying to hack into a webpage with password protection. The owner of the resource has clearly done something to make it clear that permission is not granted.

At that point, arresting the belligerent son of a bitch is probably perfectly justified.

Some people may say that the WAP was broadcasting radio waves into his vehicle, so he had the right to do whatever he wants with them. I'll agree to a point, but I don't think that makes it acceptable to use the WAP. Passively monitoring and analysing the radio waves that enter your property is, IMO, reasonable. I wouldn't do it, and I would consider it morally wrong, but I don't think that monitoring unencrypted radio transmissions should be illegal. If you steal a credit card number or something, *that* may well be illegal. But, I think that making it illegal to tune a radio is a horrible precident. Even so, tuning a radio is different from tying up CPU time of somebody else's WAP, and using bandwidth from their network connections. You are depriving the employees of the coffee shop and the customers from a tangible, finite resource (bandwidth, among other things). That's theft. Theft gets you arrested.

Forgive OUR trespasses AS WE forgive trespasses

[the_REAL_sam]

Is "Brewed Awakening" in for a rude awakening? Who's going to forgive THEIR trespasses if THEY don't even forgive those of a poor guy who lives in a van? "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Now, I can SEE why they'd be pissed off if he were using up scarce bandwidth, and their customers/employees were lacking, but I doubt he's using much bandwidth, and it's not COSTING them any extra. So, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO GOOD OLD FASHIONED KINDNESS?! Every so often, life provides us with the opportunity to help one another out. In the long run, we're better off if we take those opportunities.

Consider that the poor guy's circumstances. He's living in a van, for heaven's sakes! AND he has a felony conviction on his record. How's THAT help for finding employment? Internet is almost a fact of life these days, and how on earth do you think he's gonna get net access? If he doesn't have a land address, and/or can't afford wireless access, then it seems to me it's just the right thing to do to tolerate his trespasses.

Worried about his criminal record? If it were a junior high school I'd be concerned, but it's a cafe, and he's not in prison NOW, and he doesn't have warrants, right? Last time I checked, that meant he's a FREE MAN WITH FULL CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.

I can imagine why they might not want that van always out front, but Jesus said
"Love your neighbor as yourself,"
"Love your enemy,"
and be a good Samaritan.

Yes, I know, /. is full of athiests, but I'm sure they can appreciate the virtue of those ideals.

Re:Forgive OUR trespasses AS WE forgive trespasses

[Phroggy]

I'm a Bible-thumping church-going Christian, and I totally side with the coffee shop here. As I understand it, he parked his van in their parking lot and used their free wifi without buying anything, and they turned the other cheek for three months. Finally they asked him to leave and not come back, because he was using up a parking space and network bandwidth that was no longer available to the coffee shop's customers. He could have gone to some other coffee shop. There's plenty of free wifi around Portland. The Multnomah County Library has plenty of computers with Internet access open to anyone with a library card. No, he came back to the same coffee shop after being asked not to return.

Should they forgive his tresspasses? Sure, if he'll stop tresspassing. In the mean time, calling the police was entirely justified, although they should not have used 911 since this obviously wasn't an emergency.

Re:3 straight months!

[Oligonicella]

"The shop sets up a wireless network for people on their property to use..."

Nice way to trim the verbage down to fit your point of view. Alas, you are incorrect, the shop set up a wireless network for patrons to use.

Everything else you said that depends from that invalid supposition is also erroneous.

"It is not a crime to be on a shop's property that is open to the public, and to use their service which they make open to these people, just because I don't abide with whatever rules they have set."

Wow, number two. Yes sir, it is a crime to park you car in a business's publicly available to patrons parking lot in many municipalities. I'd check out my local laws first.

"I think being arrested involves a loss of freedom."

You miss the point on purpose, I think. The freedoms indicated are those prior to your pilfering.

"And yes, he may have no right to those signals, but the shop provided them to him."

You argue in his behest then, why? I would argue that the shop was ignorant of the securities necessary and he stumbled across a way to pilfer. Ok to pilfer from the innocent, but ignorant?

"By this logic, it would be okay for any shop to arrest any customer for trespass without asking them to leave first "because they have no constitutional right to enter an open shop"."

Another grand leap. No, it would not. Because "any customer" firstly, means a customer, and secondly would include first time entrants. This guy was a repeater, and knew and acted like he knew he was pilfering.

Your last sentence dives off into absurdity.

Re:3 straight months!

[God'sDuck]

I dunno -- I'd think after 3 months of a shady guy sitting in a truck outside my cafe, even if he'd been doing *nothing*, I'd be mighty suspicious. How many teenage girls hang out in coffeeshops? At some point, there's a "this guy is really freaking the customers out" justification for having the police stop in and see what's going on.

Re:3 straight months!

[LouisZepher]

Arrest: To capture and hold briefly.

Sounds like "arrest" fits the situation rather well...

Re:3 straight months!

[LouisZepher]

Although I'll agree with you in that pedophiles and rapists are scum, I think the reason why many rights apply to everyone is to avoid "throwing away the key" in the case of mistaken or some other form of wrongful conviction. To simply say (and act upon such sentiment) that sex offenders be handled like trash ignores the potential (albiet improbable with modern evidence gathering techniques) innocence of an individual.

Re:3 straight months!

[TheGreek]

Great. And you can make that argument at your habeas corpus hearing.

Which happens some time after you've already been arrested.

Re:3 straight months!

[Ohreally_factor]

No, you have the right not to be kept under arrest if there is no cause. It does not prevent your arrest.

Re:3 straight months!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a long time ago that all non-U.S. citizens enjoy the rights afforded by the Constitution. But that does not really matter since the United States is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions (and thus*, being a treaty the U.S. has signed, it is the law in the Unites States above any law passed by Congress). The Geneva Conventions apply to all parties to a conflict. There are no exceptions. The United States is in violation of the law with Guantanamo Bay. Your denials do not change this.

--
* According to the Constitution.