This is ridiculous:
Police officers arrested a man on suspicion of stealing a wireless broadband connection after spotting him using his laptop in the street.
The move is the latest example of police cracking down on a crime that did not exist several years ago when wireless internet access was relatively rare.
Using an open wifi is insecure and potentially dangerous enough without the police getting involved. This is user beware kind of thing and it really doesn’t help to have governments creating laws to that effect. They are notoriously clueless when it comes to the internet (or indeed anything).
Techdirt points out:
If the guy isn’t physically trespassing and the owner of the WiFi has it open, then what’s the problem? You can’t assume that the owner wanted it closed. If they did, they would have closed it. It’s the access point owner’s own fault if they’re not securing the WiFi. Since all it is is radio waves, we’re again left wondering if police will start arresting people who use the light shining from inside a house to read something out on the street. After all, that’s basically the same thing: making use of either light or radio waves that were emitted from within the house, but are reaching public areas.
So what about companies like Fon? Or about all the wifi enabled phones and handhelds?
alecm
on Aug 24th, 2007
@ 15:20 pm:
I know this will open a can of worms, but I believe that – legally speaking – the owner’s wishes don’t come into it.
I am drawing on a bunch of explanations held in slightly fuzzy memory here, but IIRC the guy is doubly screwed:
- the police see it as use of service to which the accused is not entitled, thus a form of theft
- the lack of entitlement is enforced by [either law or contract, I forget] that telecom services delivered to the property are for the use of the owner, his family and guests or somesuch. The wishes of the householder are not taken into account because domestic “consumers” are not allowed to offer a “public service” without registering themselves as a Telco and signing up so that Plod know who to go to in order to get phone taps, etc…
Collaborative wireless network access / meshes have been tried in London before, and they are likewise somewhat illegal for the same reason.
Not that I know any of this stuff from past research into the legality of phone phreakery, no, no, of course not.
I also suspect that the Government like it this way – it constrains the ability of folk to communicate amongst themselves.
Once everything goes digital – including the radio spectrum – I shall truly fear for the ability to have unmediated communication.
We’ll have to re-institute UUCP[1] but with crypto, to get around it – which is actually rather like how Skype works, I suppose.
*However* that still does not solve the mediation of broadcast traffic, and blogs aren’t broadcast, they’re searchcast…
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[1] A peer2peer mesh network based upon telephones and modems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uucp