Slashdot Mirror
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."
If someone leaves a hose running into the street is it wrong to take some of that water?
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Which is obviously why these charges must be based on some kind of complaint or cooperation from the owner of the access point. There's really no way for the police to tell you're doing anything wrong if you're just on a wireless connection of some kind.
That being said, the owner of the access point is entirely within their rights to both improperly secure it, and to attempt to pursue those who improperly use it. The analogy of the home with the door left open applies somewhat well here.
The intention of access point owner must be known to the user ahead of time. If the network is completely unsecured, it should be assumed that it's public access. If it is secured, however improperly - 40 bit WEP password of "welcome", mac check, hidden network id - access is illegal without explicit consent of the owner. If you build a water fountain standing in the open, don't be surprised if people drink.
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
This metaphore is deeply flawed. It doesn't contain any cars.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
All these analogies are pointless anyway. If the local legislature enacts a statute imposing a fine for unauthorized access to an unsecured network, and you get caught doing it, you can be fined. It doesn't matter in the least what network access is "like". Network access could be like skiing down the Swiss Alps or biting into a Peppermint Patty for all that it matters. We're not talking about a law regulating access to land being imaginatively applied to network access. We're talking about a law explicitly regulating network access.
And yes, people should secure their networks if they don't want to deal with casual intruders. But people should also stop taking advantage of the ignorance of other people, too.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The subtleties of "stealing" wireless access, would, in my mind, require the owner to somehow make the user aware that their use was not acceptable before any charges could be brought.
I would think it should be the other way around. Do not use unless you know for sure that you are allowed. An SSID of "UseThisWiFi" or similar.
A bicycle unattended in my front yard is not express permission for you to take it. A sign that says "Free bike" is.
It's not yours to use without express permission.
Given the circumstances of the arrest and the description of the law, there is no way this is (or should be considered) an illegal act.
If the fellow was wealthy enough to this to a high court, or possibly the European court, they would win hands down and the law would be struck off the books. As an English person myself I can tell you that the UK has a strong propensity for these kinds of knee-jerk fascist laws that often stay on the books for years both because of the tendency of the average Brit to knuckle under to the cops and because rich people are rarely charged with such offences.
The law (as described in the article), says that "Dishonestly obtaining free internet access..." was the crime. Yet it's a long established legal principle that merely adding the word "dishonest" in front of something does not actually make it a crime. You can't just say that driving a car is alright but "dishonestly driving a car" is a crime. This is patent nonsense.
The crime should be correctly defined as "stealing broadband access," and stealing requires both knowledge of wrong-doing and an intent to deprive the victim at a bare minimum.
There is no deprivation here, and nothing has been lost. The man in question seemed to have no way of knowing that the owner of the broadband connection did not want people to access it. Some people have wireless and leave it open on purpose. I know at least four of my neighbors do this.
To top it all off, when the police saw him sitting on the wall and asked him what he was doing, he freely admitted it and apparently didn't see anything wrong with the practice. A good argument could be made that he was "Honestly obtaining free internet access" and not being dishonest at all.
Unless there are facts not in evidence in this story, like the broadband being secured with a password, there simply is no crime here at all. Unfortunately the way the justice system is both in the UK and in North America, this unjust, ridiculous law will hang around bothering people for ages before someone with enough political power or money decides they are tired of it.
I am also British but I do not agree with your analysis. Firstly, because "Dishonestly obtaining free internet access is an offence under the Communications Act 2003 and a potential breach of the Computer Misuse Act." The offence is specifically stated in the law as it is currently written, although not using that particular phrase. The use of the word 'dishonest' does not make a law valid, but it is the correct usage to indicate that a crime is believed to have been committed when the charge is being written. After all and as you have pointed out, without the word dishonest then it appears that there has been no crime. Unfortunately, TFA has not used the specific wording from the act but has quoted what the individual has been charged with. The case could, I suppose, fail on this technicality but I suspect that the judge will accept it. Secondly, any unauthorised use of someone's computer equipment, which includes a network, is covered by the Computer Misuse Act. If the owner has not given specific permission as required by this Act, then an offence has been committed. Of course, we will not know until the court case is heard whether the owner had given such permission but the accused did admit to "using the owner's unsecured wireless internet connection without permission" so it looks quite likely that the Act was contravened. Thirdly, if the ISP account allows x Mbs to be downloaded and this individual was downloading y Mbs, then deprivation of that bandwidth did take place. Whether the owner would have noticed it is not relevant in law. Just because you are not driving your car at any particular time does not give me the authority to drive it. Furthermore, if the account was capped, then the legal user of the network has also been deprived of a specific amount of data that now cannot be downloaded during the relevant download period. Fourthly, you might leave your network open and free to all users but, unless you have advertised it as such, then no-one can use your network without your 'specific permission'. That is why airports have the signs announcing that a wifi is available. It is the legal authority for others to use it. Simply leaving it unsecured does not fulfil this requirement as far as I understand it. The law in the UK, rightly or wrongly, does not accept that an open network implicitly grants permission for anyone to use it. You might like it to be so but it is not currently what the law believes to be a correct interpretation of the appropriate Acts. The police have reasonable grounds for suspicion that the law has been contravened and have thus acted appropriately.
Despite my analysis, the judge may decide that there is insufficient evidence here to prove guilt beyond all reasonable doubt or there may be, as you have already acknowledged, further facts that have not been included in TFA. We will all have to wait to see whether the judge or CPS (although I do not think that they will be asked for a judgement in this case) thinks that the police acted correctly and whether the case leads anywhere. Regardless, the outcome could well clear up any misunderstandings that might currently exist as to what it, and what is not, permitted by law in UK with regard to unsecured networks.
Finally, I do not agree that this is an 'unjust' law - but IANAL. It addresses a specific problem, in fact a series of problems, and I personally support it. The title of TFA is, in the usual Slashdot fashion, a gross exaggeration of the truth - a single person has been charged, there is hardly a 'crackdown' on broadband theft.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
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.