Man Charged With Felony For Accessing Public WiFi

[Edi]

It should generally be obvious to people that if they are leeching off someone else, be it a wireless network service or not, it is not okay. If there is a law prohibiting it that the leech doesn't know about and he gets whacked with charges, boo-hoo, screw him. He was already engaged in unethical behavior, so he does not have much of a leg to stand on. The fact that the world is full of arseholes does not change the ethics of the situation at all. That said, anyone who does not protect their own WLAN is a moron for more than one reason.

As far as it being legal to listen in on wireless and cell phone communications without permission, all I can say that US laws seem to be ridiculous. Just attempting that will result in felony charges here and the authorities WILL pursue that all the way to the end. WLANs are different, because a lot of people don't know how to protect them or even what network they connect to (I see this every day at work, that being customer tech support at an ISP), but if you report somebody using your WLAN, they get whacked.

It really does boil down to a user of technical equipment having a duty of care to know the relevant regulations and act according to them. It doesn't matter if the person is the CEO of a telecom company, a police officer or an ordinary citizen, the duty of care exists, though it is arguably more demanding in the first two cases and thus any dereliction should be judged more harshly in such cases. Personal irresponsibility is no excuse.

And, as I said previously, police corruption and things related to that, such as breaking civil liberties laws, are a completely different topic. The way the police department setup, their funding and the "justice" system work in the US is frankly worthless. To describe my own opinion of it, the term "utter contempt" is being charitable.

But in this case, there isn't much gray area surrounding the issue.

• a) Cafe owner sets up WLAN intended for paying customers only
• b) There is a law against unauthorized network access
• c) Man uses the WLAN without paying the cafe owner
• d) a+b+c = illegal action on the man's part
• e) The neighboring barber shop has had a problem with one of their employees being stalked
• f) The man's actions from c) appear to be the activities of possible stalker
• g) e+f = reasonable cause of suspicion, which leads them to report the man to the police
• h) Cops investigate the situation, with reasonable cause and determine that there is no stalking but suspect some law is being broken nonetheless (not actually an unreasonable assumption)
• i) Cops check laws, refer to prosecutor for advice
• j) Man gets charged with the felony

That's the way this case happened, and I really cannot find any fault in the actions of the police. Some perhaps on the part of the prosecutor, but hat depends on how much leeway if any he had, which is not apparent from the article. If police, during the investigation of a possible crime, find evidence of an unrelated crime having been committed, they are not free to ignore that. If they do, they could end up being charged with crimes themselves.

The facts of this particular case are fairly crystal clear if the article is correct and reliable. Other cases where police corruption and lawbreaking play a part are not relevant to this thread. They deserve their own separate topics.

[Atrocities]

So the operative point of view should be, if your getting it for free, your stealing it. In that case they take the risk and if caught, pay the fine and do the time.

[Edi]

More or less.

If they're getting ot for free without asking for permission or checking that it really is meant to be used by all and sundry without conditions, then yes. If they check that it's okay or fulfill the conditions (e.g. buying that cup of coffee anbd thus becoming a paying customer), then no foul.

WLANs are a fairly new phenomenon, which is why there is so much ignorance about them and the laws governing them, but existing laws pretty much have it covered in most places if you just apply the same principles. Due to this fact, I'd have been inclined to let this guy off with a warning, had I been that prosecutor and had leeway. He was obviously harmless, and it isn't exactly the most ethical thing to make an example of him this way when the consequences of having a felony conviction can be as severe as they are in the US (somewhat depending on location, of course).

On the other hand, it is becoming more and more common for e.g. pedophiles leaving their WLANs unsecured, so if their activities are uncovered, they can try to weasel out of trouble by claiming that they had no idea someone else was using their WLAN to surf for child porn, for example. There have actually been at least two court cases like this in the US that I know of and fortunately in both of them the perverts got themselves a judge's gavel square on the forehead. Of course, in both cases there was other physical evidence besides the ISP access logs that indicated the WLANs in question being the source of suspicious activity. I could probably come up with more creative excuses to get off the hook for various other sorts of things regarding WLANs if I were of a mind to put effort into it, so being too lenient is not a realistic option.

Telecommunications security and confidentiality are thorny topics, as is their relation to civil rights and how far in what directions you can go. It's a fine line to walk and sometimes the outcomes are less than optimal, like in this case. But given the maximum possible penalty, the man can count himself lucky to have been let off lightly. Had he actually been guilty of more than a stupid, thoughtless mistake, the outcome would have been VERY different, if my grasp of the practical side of the American system is anywhere near accurate.

I hope that helps you understand why I took the tack I took. Having studied the field as a major subject, having a vocational degree in IT and telecom stuff and working at an ISP, I've had occasion to keep an interest in the subject and to actually know about it, because if I screw up and step on the wrong side of that divide at work, I'll get a bootprint on my backside. That's a fairly strong motivation.

[Serenity]

Yeah its really hard to draw the line, I agree with Edi on that.

However if you play music on street, and people listen to the music, they are not obligated to pay you; it is knowingly made available to others through lack of any restrictive measures such as having the music contained in private apartment or a festival area, and thus can be considered your own neglicence.

Only thing separating these 2 examples is the fact that a internet access is limited and everything others download/upload is in theory taken off of your current capacity to dl/upload, but which I imagine is practically unnoticeable considering the place is full of people using internet which is shared.

[Edi]

If you play music in the street as you're walking along, or in your front yard while doing something else, you're not doing it for money and you are not doing it to advance any kind of business venture (such as playing music in stores to put customers in a better mood to buy something), so there is no conceivable valid argument for charging you for anything. Rather impossible when no violation or even potential violation has occurred with those parameters.

If you're talking about street performers, that's covered by other sorts of rules. So it's a bad analogy all around.

[CUnknown]

Wow, this is some serious BS. I think a polite, "Please do not do this anymore" would be sufficient. Charging him with a felony is ludicrous. He was checking his f'ing e-mail. Is he not going to be able to vote anymore? If he applies for a job, will he have to check "yes" when he's asked if he was ever charged with a felony?

Let the punishment fit the crime, my god. Is there a law making this a felony? I suppose there is. But -should- doing this be a felony? Hell no, that's insane.

[Edi]

CUnknown, yes, it's harsh, and the reason it ended in such a clusterfornication is basically outlined in the a-j in my post above. The followup of it is either the prosecutor being an arsehole or the laws not giving him any leeway.

In recent years there has been a very disturbing tendency in American legislation to eliminate any and all power of consideration and leeway from various laws, regulations and statutes, which can then lead to cases like this, so it is a very real possibility.