UK Police Cracking Down on Broadband Theft

dubculture writes "A 39 year-old man in West London was arrested for dishonestly obtaining free internet access" from an unsecured wireless router nearby. The article discusses a couple of other cases, including one where a fine of £500 (~US$1000) was handed out for, essentially, taking advantage of someone else's inability (read: apathy) towards securing their home network."

Comments

No problem

[lukesky321]

I have an unsecure network, and I really don't care if anyone uses it as long as nothing illegal is performed.

Re:No problem

[KudyardRipling]

There are those out there who get their kicks from ruining other people's lives. If they can't steal one's identity from an insecure wireless accesspoint, then they will plant all sorts of illegal stuff. Bomb making instructions, pamphlets critical of the American way of life, we can't forget the most effective life-destroying plant--CHILD PORNOGRAPHY. Of course, one needs to install a botnet rootkit that goes on all the chatrooms saying "my name is Pederast Peroxyhexamine, my IP is WWW.XXX.YYY.ZZZ and I got bomb tools, Marxist literature, and of course yottabytes of Das Kinderporn, BUST ME! BUST ME! RUIN MY LIFE PLEASE!"

Re:No problem

[Mr Abstracto]

If I take your bike, I am denying you the use of your bike for however long I have it.
That isnt the case with wireless access.
Whoever came up with the water fountain analogy above was right on the money.

Re:No problem

[SL Baur]

A bicycle unattended in my front yard is not express permission for you to take it. I left an unlocked bicycle unattended in my front yard in Tokyo for over two years hoping someone needy would take it (I lived near a woman's university and I truly didn't understand Tokyo at the time) but no one did. It's Japan, so the bicycle is probably still sitting there unlocked even though I moved away 4 1/2 years ago. Not enough other dang gaijin in that neighborhood I suppose. (Bicycle theft is epidemic in places like Tsukuba where there are a higher percentage of foreigners).

Japan is the place where you can buy a bag of CDs, accidentally leave them in a nearby ATM and then later pick them up from the nearest koban where someone dropped them off after they saw you left it behind. I didn't do that, but I witnessed it. Can you imagine the same kind of thing happening in the US? I can't, I'm a native american.

A coworker in Japan was telling me about the time she visited New York with her husband and after buying some things went to a restaurant, left her bags at the table and went away for a moment. In Japan, Nothing Happens when you do things like that, but that was New York and the bags were stolen.

On another occasion when I was living in Tokyo, but working in Kobe (about 5 hours by train after you factor in the local trains) I accidentally left my apartment unlocked for an entire week unattended. Nothing Happened.

The US isn't civilized and hasn't been for a long time. If you look away, you should have the expectation that whatever it was you're not looking at will disappear, because it will. And no, I'm not happy about saying this. I used to love living in California and the USA. It wasn't so many years ago that it used to be safe to leave a car with the keys inside (remember the "lock your car, take your keys" ad campaign?).

So yes, I admire your sentiments, but anywhere outside of the best places in Japan, I've never seen them in practice. I've never been to the UK, but I presume they have worse problems than the US given all the surveillance cameras they've felt the need to install in recent years.

Re:No problem

[BillyBlaze]

Well, you obviously shouldn't use as much bandwidth (or water) as possible. But if you just need a drink, or to check your email, it's not a big deal. How do we determine how much is too much? Instead of arresting everybody seen with a laptop, we could wait for the owner to complain? Heck, the owner could just ask the leech to lay off, or secure his network, and we don't have to get the police involved at all. Much cheaper, plus we don't have to worry about our computers automatically making us criminals.

And it's been said before, but - the leech did ask first, and permission was granted. I haven't seen a convincing argument why automated electronic permission, given as configured by the network owner, in the absence of any information to the contrary, is insufficient.

Re:No problem

[julesh]

Other than the bicycle analogy, why should we assume the default state is "I don't want you using my WiFi"?

Because that's the assumption that causes the least harm.
Because that's the assumption that's correct in a large majority of cases.

It's quite easy, really.

Stealing light

[TheWizardTim]

If you were to sit in your house and read a book by the 1000 watt light on my house, would you be stealing? Now if I built an 8 foot tall fence and you hopped it, or broke it down, then yes you would be breaking the law. Otherwise it's not a crime if I do nothing to protect my light or wireless network.

Re:Theft is theft

[peacefinder]

Then stop stealing my sunlight, ya daft bastard! ... what? Sunlight can't be stolen, but 2.4MHz EM signals can? It's all EM radiation.

Unauthorized use?

[Jorgandar]

Rubbish law. When you log into a network, so long as you're not hacking it, you politely ask the router "may i use this network and have an IP address?". The router says "yes", on behalf of you, the owner. Therefore it is authorized.

Its NOT the same as leaving your front door open in your house, or your car unlocked.

It IS the same as leaving your front door open in your house, having a visitor stop at the door and ask "may I come in?" and you replying "yes". You can't then turn around and sue for trespassing.

-J

So inability is apathy?

[dircha]

"taking advantage of someone else's inability (read: apathy) towards securing their home network"

This is an awfully arrogant assumption, and hopefully sheds some light on why many Slashdot commentors apparently see nothing wrong with this practice.

How would you, you should ask, tell inability from apathy? What if the person running the router really does not know how to secure it? I know plenty of people who have no clue at all how to secure their wireless routers. Do you think that if they knew you were using it they would be alright with that? That doesn't seem very unlikely.

"Mrs. Smith, we found this man outside your house access your home wireless network." And you expect us to believe Mrs. Smith would be fine with this and tell the officers to let the creepy guy parked outside her home continue? Seriously. That's just bullshit and you know it.

It's no wonder we keep seeing more legislation cracking down on these sorts of activities. It's precisely because people don't accept them, and precisely because they don't know how to protect themselves against them.

BS

[shaitand]

'taking advantage of someone else's inability (read: apathy) towards securing their home network'

This is ridiculous. Simply because Joe Sixpack doesn't know how to secure his wireless does not mean he doesn't care about whether or not it is secure. Most 'techs' can't secure a wifi network properly. Further, even if we assume that caring would automatically mean the network would be secured (not a safe assumption) we certainly couldn't assume that Joe has any reason to believe his wifi isn't secure out of the box. After all, Joe bought the middle priced unit, not the cheap crap.

Even if Joe both cared and knew his network was insecure that doesn't mean Joe is technically literate enough to resolve the issue himself. Anyone who has conversed with Linksys tech support knows they can't help Joe. If Joe can't afford to pay a technician to secure the network (IMHO all setup of wireless networks, computer networks, internet connections, computers, printers, and software should be performed by competent technicians but that is another story) then Joe is basically stuck having an unsecure network or no network. Now, choosing to have an unsecure network over no network might be called a degree of apathy but only by a purist.

Re:What a bunch of morons

[The Living Fractal]

That's the answer these days isn't it? Any doubt? Let's make it illegal! Let's protect idiots from themselves. Let's circumvent evolution and allow them to breed.

Harsh? That is just how it is and how the courts have decided it. And it is fair.

BUT LIFE ISN'T.

Re:If it's illegal to use an unsecured wifi networ

[noidentity]

"Seems to me that the law should clearly state the legal difference between an "open" and "closed" wifi network, presumably with password protection being the key difference."

Maybe a mode could be added where the base station doesn't continually broadcast "Hey, there's an open connection here with the name LINKSYS". Oh wait, they already do, the user just has to enable it! Never mind, let's just make it so instead of being able to open one's laptop within the range of a WiFi access point, you instead have to look around and find where it's located, find the owner and ask permission, then be sure the one you're looking at is the same one you're trying to connect to. (just agreeing with you and ranting further)

Whatever happened to priorities

[blahdeblah2000]

Quite frankly violent crime and yobbish behaviour seem to be rising at quite an alarming rate where I live and commute. The local off-license has been hit 3 times this year, there have been 2 local murders, I personally saw an assult in broad daylight last month and someone threw a punch at my bus driver this morning. This is in an area where 250000 pounds might just get you a 2 bed flat/house. On top of this we see news today of an 11 year old shot dead by some youth on a bike. Celebs constantly getting away with drug or dangerous driving offenses. So then someone was using someone uses broadband wifi without their permission - simple solution - just give the victim a weblink showing them how to secure their connection (overall cost £10 max), give the guy stealing bandwidth a talking to and then get on with some real police work - dumb solution - Arrest the evil doer and drag him through the courts (Overall cost - Thousands) Actually this reminds me of when I was living in South Africa, 1 day there were 2 stories on the same page of a national newspaper, in 1 story someone bizarrely got away with a 500 rand fine for killing someone, in the other someone got a 1000 rand fine for not having a TV license. The obvious joke then did the rounds - If you don't have a TV license and the inspector comes - just kill him, its cheaper.

Re:Police enforcing people's "non-will"?

[Nenya247]

Is the police in the UK wandering around and randomly arresting people with laptops on the streets?

In this case; pretty much. The man was apparently http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6958429. stm spotted by Community Support Officers. They were apparently on patrol and spotted him using the laptop outside the house and admitted when questioned that he was using the unsecured wireless. CSOs do not have power of arrest but are used (in theory) to patrol our green and pleasant land watching for trouble and calling in the big boys if it is anything more than a rather minor offence. The fact that he was charged at all would imply that he willingly went to the police station.

Authority has lost the plot in the uk.

[Smid]

With a spate of people being shot and stabbed to death recently in the uk, what do the police focus on?

Costless middle class crimes which they _can_ enforce.

Seems like the Uk will be type of place where you can stab someone to death, but god help you if the drop the knife.

You'll get done for littering.

"[PUBLIC]" in SSID of open hotspots

[adrenaline_junky]

My idea never seems to get traction, but I still think its a good one and will repeat it once again:

If you INTEND to make your wifi open access, then you should signify this by including the key word "[PUBLIC]" or [PUB]" at the start (e.g. "[PUBLIC] Joe's Wifi" or "[PUB] Megaboob, Inc").

That makes the intent crystal clear (some other key words could also be included to provide flexibility).

I agree that any open wifi spot ought to be assumed to be public in the first place, but since the law seems to disagree, I believe my idea is the next best alternative. Software that searches for hotspots could be updated to look for these key words to indicate if the hotspots are intended to be public or not.

Long term, it would be nice if the wifi standard were updated so that a bit could be toggled which would indicate whether the hotspot is intended to be public or not. In the configuration menu it could be right next to the "Make SSID Visible" checkbox.