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Two People Arrested In England For WiFi Theft

by mtippett | April 17, 2007 at 10:17 pm

322 views | 10 Recommendations | 6 comments

Someone is trespassing in thin air...

We've been following stories about people being arrested for "stealing WiFi"
for some time now, and we're still unsure of exactly what the crime is.
If a person is accessing an open WiFi network without physically
trespassing, should that be illegal, or should it be the network
owner's responsibility to secure their network?

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Markus Schlegel

at 04:06 on April 18th, 2007

Indeed, the British treatment of this topic in this case reminds me of an old TV series some might remember. It was called "Catweezle", about a man catapulted from the middle ages to the 1970's. Sadly enough, some members of the British police seem to be catapulted from the 1800's to the new millenium. The question really is: Can non material things be stolen. A lot of the lawyerese nonsense we have seen over the past years revolves around exactly that question. It is time we took a new approach in that theft has to be coupled back to the actual damage done. The hocuspocus part about today's interpretation seems to be that we go more and more by the standard of what maximum damage could have been done and judge that rather than what has really happened.

ricknight

at 05:14 on April 18th, 2007

One could argue that the individual is stealing "access" and "bandwidth". Both of these items have a measurable cost sometimes charged by the bit used. Also there could be the ssue of trespass. If I leave my house unlocked, is that carte blanche for anyone to walk through it even though they "do no harm"? Mind you, the dogs might do them some harm.

Jordan Yerman

at 06:40 on April 18th, 2007

It's not so much someone breaking into your house and stealing your television, but more like someone walking through your unlocked front door, putting their feet up on your couch while watching your premium cable, and making a snack from your fridge... not true theft, but usage of resources. Some WiFi users have no problem with this, and are happy to share, and even advertise this fact. Some users do not understand what network security means. Some lock their broadcasts with passwords.

CARLOS62

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 09:56 on April 18th, 2007

The Law is a Strange device indeed ?

While reading this Story` I found myself thinking WHAT IF someone picks up a device like this and simply wanders into someone`s network and does NOT know what they are doing ? .. is THAT a Crime too !!!.

Are these people " Techno Geeks " or simple " Hackers " ?

I say there is STILL too much of a " Grey Area " to be Honestly sure.

This is a wonderful story and it really makes the reader think

ricknight

at 12:10 on April 18th, 2007

Besides the aquaducts, the Romans gave us the principle that ignorance of the law is not and excuse for breaking it. On the otherhand, there is also the legal notion of "intent", so pick a hair and split it ;)