No, a sane person runs inside and powers off his AP, and worried about securing it later.;)
Me, I'd run inside see what he was doing, and then lock him out. (Not that I'd run an unsecured wireless in the first place.)
But, yes, telling someone 'stop doing that' and then walking off for four hours is idiotic.
However, I'm worried that this actually became illegal the second the owner told the guy to stop. (Despite the fact there was no proof he was the owner.) Someone can't use the excuse 'There wasn't a no trepassing sign up' when you've explicitly told them not to come onto your land, so he might have broken the law there.
And that this will set a precedent that will make people think all access without explicit authoritzation is illegal, when it fact it's just accessing a network after you have been told to leave. (Which is what is supposed to be illegal.)
OTOH, if I were that guy, I would have said 'Fine. Now please make your AP stop accessing my computer via SSID broadcasts.'. Hey, if he can order me to stop accessing his stuff via the public airwaves, I can order him to stop accessing mine.
If Florida actually outlaws accessing open APs, the next obvious step is putting an AP in a van, driving up next to businesses that have people arrested for accessing their open network, and setting your SSID and channel to the same as theirs, and just waiting for them to get on your network.
No, to be loitering, you have to be somewhere without a reason.
He had a reason...he was using an internet connection. Duh.;)
Anyway, you can't loiter inside your own car in a parking lot. Loitering is when groups of people stand around in public for no apparent reason, not when someone sits inside their legally-parked car doing something.
Um...or he was doing something sensitive on his computer.
The obvious thing there is 'porn', which is still legal in These United States, but, hell, it could have been anything.
Maybe he had some personal email on the screen. Maybe he had some bank info up and is worried aobut identity theft. Maybe he was playing a computer game and knew closing the lid would suspend the game so he could deal with this fool who was walking up to harrass someone parked in a public parking lot.
And you are begging the question by assuming it was illegal in the first place.
You may have done that, but they did the same thing. If it's illegal for you to access their computer, it's illegal for them to access yours. They don't have some magical authority over that part of the EM spectrum just because they own nearby land.
And, hell, they started it, by broadcasting the SSID.
I don't even know why we're talking with this obvious felon.
He needs it immediately post proof that he has permission to access slashdot.org.
And, no, the TOS or AUP doesn't cut it unless he can get access to them in some way besides connecting here without permission and asking for them.
Either that, or he can realize that 'asking permission' works exactly like physical trespassing laws. I can walk up to someone's house, knock on the door, and ask to come inside, I can (metaphorically) walk up to someone's web server and ask for a page, and I can walk up to someone's WAP and ask for an IP.
If they refuse, and I try to sneak in, or get past by force or making up false credentials, then I am trespassing.
Yes, yes, they were probably using some sort of induction, which actually does suck power away. If it was legal to induct power from people, you could steal all the electricity you wanted as long as you put a transformer on the line! (Which you have to do anyway, heh.)
However, radio waves are, themselves, energy. Crystal radios convert this energy directly into electricity. (And then into sound.)
However, I don't know if, legally, anyone can be said to 'own' a radio wave, so maybe that's not important.
OTOH, I'm not sure if a law creating a difference between the ownership of magnetic fields (Which is what induction uses.) and the electro-magnetic spectrum really make a lot of sense.
While your front yard is private property, people can walk through it without permission.
Otherwise no one could ever knock at someone's door.
To be trespassing, you either have to be somewhere that's obviously private, usually by being inside a barrier, like the walls of a house. Or somewhere that's labelled as you not being allowed to go, or you being explicitly told not to go there personally.
For an nice, vague example, if you go into a restroom in a public building, and there's an open ceiling access panel and you climb up in there and wander around, you are trespassing because no reasonable person would think they were supposed to be there, even without signs.
Open access points are front yards or front porches or whatever.
And closed ones are locked doors.
Unlike normal trespassing laws, however, there are no clues as to whether or not it's a store you're strolling around in the front yard of, or a private residence. And if it's a store, whether this is an actual entrance or an employees-only back entrance.
There aren't any clues at all. Barring any sort of 'This area is not open to the public' indication, the default is that it is. (This is why 'no trespassing' signs have standard placements, so that there is an indication.)
Anyone trying to say someone was trespassing in an open access point should be treated the same as someone who has a pulloff on a road with a trail leading down to the river, and didn't put any signs up, and catch some picnicers down there one day...they'd be laughed out of court. How were the picnicers supposed to know that was private property?
How many people have run into open wifi points reaching their houses and would have been happy to ask permission...if we could figure out who the fuck was operating them?
That happened in a dorm I was in. I even fired up samba to look at the computer names on the network, (not the shares, just the names) but they were no help.
I eventually said 'screw it' and used the network without any explicit permission.
Or people inventing things that are completely useless except in the unique position they are in.
For example, there are countries that have working power at certain parts of the day.
I don't know how they do it, but I can see that, for example, if you had a well, plumbing would be fairly different. You'd want to pump water up somewhere and let it down slowly.
And refridgerators. Storing the cold, so you can get things out during the power outage, might be more important than 'energy efficiency'. Yes, often that's the same thing, but not always.
I'm sure they've already thought of these things, but none of them are going to be vaguely useful in the US, where using X amount of power over the entire day is better than using 1.2X amount of power, but you only need three hours. (At least, if we're talking about fridges and water pumps. Cell phone chargers are another matter.)
Or steam power. There are places that are innovating in steam power, because they have water and trees and lack electricity.
And just like the discovery of electicity resulted in thousands of inventions, the invention of small cheap microchips will do the same thing, enough to hold us for another 100 years.
Our great-grandkids will grow up asking us what 'car keys' are, and why we just couldn't have them signal us when we lost them.
And they will be walking around with nanites in their hair they use to change the color of it randomly, and we'll mutter about kids and their fancy hair, and no one will realize that nanotech is going to give us new inventions for another 100 years...
Or something else besides nanotech. Genetic engineering? Quantum computers? Honest-to-goodness midair holograms? Antigravity? Who knows?
Well, it certainly wasn't a stretch back then, because they didn't know that lead and gold were atomically different and could not be changed to each other via chemical means.
I know, I was just making the point that countries had, until then, been a debate about how much 'important' people had rights vs. the right of the government to control them.
They said, screw that. All people have rights that the government cannot ever infringe, and these rights just magically exist, they aren't any part of any sort of social contract. If a government infringes these rights, anyone has the right to overthrow it.
Ergo, they were revolutionary fundamentalists. Human right fundamentalists, who said 'This is the way the universe works, we will make people bend to it.'.
Slashdot Mirror
Me, I'd run inside see what he was doing, and then lock him out. (Not that I'd run an unsecured wireless in the first place.)
But, yes, telling someone 'stop doing that' and then walking off for four hours is idiotic.
However, I'm worried that this actually became illegal the second the owner told the guy to stop. (Despite the fact there was no proof he was the owner.) Someone can't use the excuse 'There wasn't a no trepassing sign up' when you've explicitly told them not to come onto your land, so he might have broken the law there.
And that this will set a precedent that will make people think all access without explicit authoritzation is illegal, when it fact it's just accessing a network after you have been told to leave. (Which is what is supposed to be illegal.)
OTOH, if I were that guy, I would have said 'Fine. Now please make your AP stop accessing my computer via SSID broadcasts.'. Hey, if he can order me to stop accessing his stuff via the public airwaves, I can order him to stop accessing mine.
If Florida actually outlaws accessing open APs, the next obvious step is putting an AP in a van, driving up next to businesses that have people arrested for accessing their open network, and setting your SSID and channel to the same as theirs, and just waiting for them to get on your network.
He had a reason...he was using an internet connection. Duh. ;)
Anyway, you can't loiter inside your own car in a parking lot. Loitering is when groups of people stand around in public for no apparent reason, not when someone sits inside their legally-parked car doing something.
Who gave you permission to be on slashdot?
The obvious thing there is 'porn', which is still legal in These United States, but, hell, it could have been anything.
Maybe he had some personal email on the screen. Maybe he had some bank info up and is worried aobut identity theft. Maybe he was playing a computer game and knew closing the lid would suspend the game so he could deal with this fool who was walking up to harrass someone parked in a public parking lot.
And you are begging the question by assuming it was illegal in the first place.
You may have done that, but they did the same thing. If it's illegal for you to access their computer, it's illegal for them to access yours. They don't have some magical authority over that part of the EM spectrum just because they own nearby land.
And, hell, they started it, by broadcasting the SSID.
He needs it immediately post proof that he has permission to access slashdot.org.
And, no, the TOS or AUP doesn't cut it unless he can get access to them in some way besides connecting here without permission and asking for them.
Either that, or he can realize that 'asking permission' works exactly like physical trespassing laws. I can walk up to someone's house, knock on the door, and ask to come inside, I can (metaphorically) walk up to someone's web server and ask for a page, and I can walk up to someone's WAP and ask for an IP.
If they refuse, and I try to sneak in, or get past by force or making up false credentials, then I am trespassing.
Well, yes, but by that logic you get permission to connect to a wireless network, because the DHCP server gives you an IP when you ask for one.
I suggest you move your front door closer to your house.
Yes, yes, they were probably using some sort of induction, which actually does suck power away. If it was legal to induct power from people, you could steal all the electricity you wanted as long as you put a transformer on the line! (Which you have to do anyway, heh.)
However, radio waves are, themselves, energy. Crystal radios convert this energy directly into electricity. (And then into sound.)
However, I don't know if, legally, anyone can be said to 'own' a radio wave, so maybe that's not important.
OTOH, I'm not sure if a law creating a difference between the ownership of magnetic fields (Which is what induction uses.) and the electro-magnetic spectrum really make a lot of sense.
Otherwise no one could ever knock at someone's door.
To be trespassing, you either have to be somewhere that's obviously private, usually by being inside a barrier, like the walls of a house. Or somewhere that's labelled as you not being allowed to go, or you being explicitly told not to go there personally.
For an nice, vague example, if you go into a restroom in a public building, and there's an open ceiling access panel and you climb up in there and wander around, you are trespassing because no reasonable person would think they were supposed to be there, even without signs.
Now if only we had a network protocol that let us ask 'Hey, can we be on your network?'.
Oh, wait. We do. It's called DHCP.
You don't know if it's a house or a store. Or if you're standing around in the common area or have strolled into the employee lounge.
Open access points are front yards or front porches or whatever.
And closed ones are locked doors.
Unlike normal trespassing laws, however, there are no clues as to whether or not it's a store you're strolling around in the front yard of, or a private residence. And if it's a store, whether this is an actual entrance or an employees-only back entrance.
There aren't any clues at all. Barring any sort of 'This area is not open to the public' indication, the default is that it is. (This is why 'no trespassing' signs have standard placements, so that there is an indication.)
Anyone trying to say someone was trespassing in an open access point should be treated the same as someone who has a pulloff on a road with a trail leading down to the river, and didn't put any signs up, and catch some picnicers down there one day...they'd be laughed out of court. How were the picnicers supposed to know that was private property?
That happened in a dorm I was in. I even fired up samba to look at the computer names on the network, (not the shares, just the names) but they were no help.
I eventually said 'screw it' and used the network without any explicit permission.
Watching unencrypted sat TV signals is perfectly legal.
I dunno what happens then, though. I guess they could switch and do it the other way around, but I think that would be a very slow game.
Maybe if the windows bounced off the area, and then the other guy had to bounce it back, and so on. That would be tricky to code, though.
That's freedom.
Phone line recorders have an output and a trigger line for tape recorders.
He managed to get a company to change its behavior or have people outraged, which would, duh, result in (i) or (iii) happening.
For example, there are countries that have working power at certain parts of the day.
I don't know how they do it, but I can see that, for example, if you had a well, plumbing would be fairly different. You'd want to pump water up somewhere and let it down slowly.
And refridgerators. Storing the cold, so you can get things out during the power outage, might be more important than 'energy efficiency'. Yes, often that's the same thing, but not always.
I'm sure they've already thought of these things, but none of them are going to be vaguely useful in the US, where using X amount of power over the entire day is better than using 1.2X amount of power, but you only need three hours. (At least, if we're talking about fridges and water pumps. Cell phone chargers are another matter.)
Or steam power. There are places that are innovating in steam power, because they have water and trees and lack electricity.
Our great-grandkids will grow up asking us what 'car keys' are, and why we just couldn't have them signal us when we lost them.
And they will be walking around with nanites in their hair they use to change the color of it randomly, and we'll mutter about kids and their fancy hair, and no one will realize that nanotech is going to give us new inventions for another 100 years...
Or something else besides nanotech. Genetic engineering? Quantum computers? Honest-to-goodness midair holograms? Antigravity? Who knows?
So they did, in fact, turn urine into gold? ;)
Well, it certainly wasn't a stretch back then, because they didn't know that lead and gold were atomically different and could not be changed to each other via chemical means.
They said, screw that. All people have rights that the government cannot ever infringe, and these rights just magically exist, they aren't any part of any sort of social contract. If a government infringes these rights, anyone has the right to overthrow it.
Ergo, they were revolutionary fundamentalists. Human right fundamentalists, who said 'This is the way the universe works, we will make people bend to it.'.