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Confessions of a Wi-Fi Thief
Michelle Shildkret from Time wrote in to tell us about a story about "the ethics of stealing Wi-Fi. Many of us been guilty of the same crime at one point or another — according to the article, 53% of us at least. But how guilty do we really feel? As it is officially a crime to steal wi-fi (Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47 of the United States Code, which covers anybody who 'intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access')."
Could you clarify, a wifi hotspot is classified as a computer? It's intentionally accessing a network for sure, but don't know about a computer.
Sigger than your average
Open routers have a policy of allowing authorization by default. As such, using an open router is not illegal under this act. If you have to crack anything, then it is illegal. But a simple open router is no different than an open anonymous FTP site, web server, irc server, etc.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
WiFi hotspots are all over. I've connected to dozens of them. That's what they are for.
So the only way a person *knows* it's not intended to be a public network is by having someone complain about it after the fact. Lots of people leave their WiFi open at home as a "public service".
It's different to intentionally circumvent protections that are in place, like WEP or restriction by MAC address. That's prying open a locked door so to speak.
Sometimes I think these article summaries are intentionally worded to get slashdotters cranked up. Okay, it worked on me.
Fresh horses and more whiskey for my men.
Windows is, by default, configured to automatically connect to new networks. Which means, it is configured to silently break the law, without your knowledge. The 53% of people who admit to stealing WiFi is probably really higher - many people don't know where thier bits are coming from.
The power went off in my house the other day - and nobody noticed. The four or five laptops in use all silently switched over to a neighbour's network. I can't see that being considered a crime.
I leave my access point open on purpose. Anyone can connect, and I even named my router "Open Access Point". If someone connects, I don't think they're stealing from me.
At some point, I think society would be better served by everyone leaving all of their access points open. I love the idea of mesh networks and eliminating the need for everyone to have a wired connection to the internet.
I don't see what's the drama with open access. I leave my AP open on purpose, with an essid starting with "free_" to reinforce the idea, and a simple QOS setup to give me priority over my neighbors. I can't even notice when they're using the net, and I counted more than 10 different MAC addresses so far. More people using the net == good. It's not like I need all my bandwidth 24/7...
in b4 "but pedophiles will get you jailed, think of the children!!" -- I'm no more responsible for that than the hot dog vendor in the corner would be if ninja terrorists employed his hot dogs as lethal weapons.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
I believe it is a lesser crime to enter without breaking in.
Now, if you use an open network, you only use bandwidth temporarily. If you leave the network, the bandwidth will still be there. So it's more like entering an unlocked house to take a sip from the faucet. The only crime committed is that you didn't pay for bottled water.
Stop the brainwash
By contrast, the purpose of a router is to ALLOW access. Only the encryption routines and MAC filtering are there to filter that access.
I believe it is a lesser crime to enter without breaking in.
Correct. Burglary is the act of breaking AND entering AND committing theft (logical AND; all three must happen). Theft is the intention to permanently deprive someone of physical property. Since accessing open WiFi does not involve depriving someone of physical property (neither permanent nor temporary), it is neither theft nor burglary.
Fraud covers many crimes such as obtaining goods or services through deception. Since there was no deception, there was no fraud.
A door does not reply with a message granting me access; the fact that it is open, closed, locked, unlocked, slightly ajar or otherwise is legally irrelevant - the important thing with burglary is that you had to break something to gain entry and then take something without permission, with no intention of giving it back.
An open WiFi router does specifically reply with a message granting me permission. The fact that it uses a particular protocol or particular encryption is legally irrelevent - the important thing is that it replied back with a message specifically granting me permission. Users are authorised.
(Declaration of interest: I run a deliberately open WiFi hotspot - albeit heavily firewalled and bandwidth-throttled. )
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Suppose you bought a used car lot, but not to sell the cars, just to have a nice inventory onhand for your friends and family who live nearby. You want to make it easy and convenient, so you get all the cars rekeyed so the same key will operate them all. You want to announce this service and distribute the keys, but it's too much trouble to look up each person's mailing address. So you get 1000 copies of the key made and bulk-mail them to everyone in the zip code, addressed to "Occupant", with an invitation that says "Feel free to borrow one of my cars!"
Naturally, you assume that only the friends and family you intended will use the cars. Imagine your surprise when you see strangers borrowing the cars!
Is this bad? Well, it's not doing anyone any harm... as long as you have enough cars left over for your friends and family too... as long as the strangers don't run over pedestrians with your cars and get the cops on your ass... as long as the local car rental company doesn't find out and come break your kees for stealing their business... Hmm, all in all, maybe it'd be safer to give the keys out only to selected individuals!
which is totally what she said