Legality of using neighbor's unprotected WiFi internet access?

Great Debates
101

To be strictly fair, Bricker, there isn’t any authority for the proposition that it doesn’t, either. At best, this is an untested area of the law. Per the part of that Slate article you quoted, the fact that so many Wi-Fi connections are left open precisely for the purposes of allowing the general public to use them might make it tough for an individual to claim he didn’t want the world to use his access point.

While I agree that the risk-averse stance – and thus the proper legal advice – is to proceed as though you can be prosecuted for this, I cannot agree that it is the clear-cut slam dunk you think it is. Until a case has been brought and a court has applied the statute in question to wardriving (or warcouching, or whatever) we cannot say we have a definitive answer to the question.

The Lowe’s guys’s conviction was a plea bargain, so we don’t have judicial application of the statute to the facts just yet. You’re probably right, but not inevitably so.

102

Absent judicial interpretation, I contend the only reasonable approach is to read and apply the law.

If you:

  1. Access,
  2. knowingly,
  3. a computer,
  4. without authorization,

then you’re guilty. I did allow that “authorization” and “knowingly” were questions of fact, and certainly agree that a court may come along and say that as a matter of law, authorization may or may not be presumed from a given set of facts. But that’s true even in situations for which there is already case law: a new decision may add or remove circumstances from the reach of a particular law.

In other words, we already HAVE the law. Additional judicial interpretations may change the law, as they may for any law. But to suggest there is ambiguity because no court has ruled on the application of this law thus far is not right.

103

Thanks for that clarification!

104

Actually, it is. As one of my old law profs used to say, a statute is of little value until it’s interpreted by a court. Until it is, the best we can do is make an educated guess as to how it will be interpreted.

Ergo, your view is almost certainly correct, but not necessarily so.

And you’re right, in this case, the key phrase is “without authorization.” A court may (and probably will) read connecting to a private-but-unencrypted access point as “without authorization.” But it might not: there is a reasonable argument to be made that leaving an access point open constitutes authorization, or at least creates an inference of authorization. Until there is some judicial exposition on that point, we cannot say we have a definitive answer, though we can say that based on analagous situations we know the most likely answer.

105

I should point out that what I’m doing right now with Bricker is the lawyer’s equivelant of counting angels on the head of a pin. As a practical matter, anyone who banks on the “authorization defense” is a damned fool.

106

Right – and on the other side of the coin, any defendent that didn’t raise such a defense at trial would also be a damned fool.

But here’s why I consider your old prof’s comments incomplete: how far would I get raising a void for vagueness defense because there was no existing judicial decision interpreting the law?

107

What about the argument that the thing you’re accessing isn’t a computer? The scenario isn’t that you’re using his network to get to his computer, you’re using it to get internet access.

108

A wireless access point is a “computer” under the definitions of most computer trespass laws.

109

Heh. Of course, it’s just an aphorism. And his point was made in the context of teaching legal research and writing, the moral being “cite a judicial authority for everything, even if it seems really fuckin’ obvious.”

110

So wait. My SSID of “(buncha numbers and periods).nsa.dod.mil” isn’t a huge welcome sign? Darn.
:wink:

111

In that regard, I can hardly say he’s wrong… but that’s not quite on point with saying that statutory law is valueless in the absence of a judicial opinion constructing it… which is, in turn, not exactly what you said either.

Having clarified that 238 angels may dance on the head of this particular pin, I think we’re good. :slight_smile:

112

From a technical standpoint, any device that performs computations is a computer. Even if the WAP is wide open to the public, it has to break data into packets, add error checking bits, determine the source and destination, and a bunch of other stuff, all of which involves computation.

113

So if I leave a calculator on my porch and my neighbor decides to use it without my permission, he’s technically guilty of computer trespass?

114

Perhaps I should have said “from a technological standpoint”. A calculator is a very limited form of computer, but I very much doubt it would fall under computer crime laws.

115

What if I left my palm in a public park, on a perment pedastool, just hanging out there all day long?

116

The neighbor is broadcasting a WiFi signal past his own property. He may have paid for the internet service, but he put the WiFi signal out there. Imagine a neighbor with sat. radio and the volume at 11. He paid the $10 a month, but I can hear it fine. Should I go next door and give him five bucks? Maybe he should put on some headphones if he doesnt want anyone else to hear his music.

117

With a palm device, you have to distinguish between one that was carelessly left out in the open, and the one mounted on a big fancy pedestal with a sign that says, “USE ME.” The first palm may or may not actually be intended for public use, but the second one pretty obviously is.

As for the neighbor’s radio, we covered this already. The sound waves coming out of the speakers are one way only, and you have no control over them. Wireless networks involve two way communication - your computer tells the WAP what it wants to download, and the WAP gets it, assuming you have access. For the radio analogy to work, you would need a remote control for the neighbor’s tuner.

118

Depending on how it was left, I’d wager that it could be considered abandoned property. Odds are that someone could pick it up and walk away with it without breaking a law. So, what was your point?

119

I think taking a strict legalistic perspective, while objective, is ultimately not of much use. There are many laws designed to be deliberately broad but to only be used in exceptional circumstances and, thus, do not reflect the actual reality of the situation. Under a strict legalistic perspective, Google is breaking the law with their Google cache system since they don’t ask copyright owners permission for duplication. In reality, people have found a way to deal with it without resorting to courts.

I think a similar instance occurs here where there does exist a broad based law that would theoretically make wifi sharing illegal but doesn’t really care either way in reality.

120

The problem with anologies is that unless they are apt, they are worthless. Let’s see how quickly I can stretch this stupid movie theatre anology that everyone seems stuck on to the point where it shatters in a million pieces.

The situation with wi-fi makes for some pretty strange movie theatres, that is for sure!

It is like there are 10 or 20 theatres on every block. They are all showing the same movie. Some charge admission, some let you in free, some are closed for private screenings. Some of the private screenings have a bouncer at the door, some do not. The only theatres with a sign are the ones charging admission, the others leave you to guess if the movie is free and open to the public, or if it is a private screening (unless they have a bouncer). All of the ushers are deaf so you can’t even ask. You know that a free theatre is called “Netgear” but five of the theatres have that name. The cab you are taking to the theatre might drop you off at any one of them, but you might be expected to walk to a different one, if only you could figure out which. Oh, by the way, inadvertantly walking into the wrong theatre is a major federal crime.

At this point, the only way to be sure of staying out of trouble is to either go to one of the theatres that charges money (but they aren’t on every block so you may have to travel a few miles away every time you want to see a movie), build your own theatre, or give up on movies altogether and crack open a book. Or you could pack up and move to Philly where there will soon be free theatres on every block that all have a sign telling you which ones they are.

If this sounds like a crazy way to run movie theatres, welcome to the wacky world of wi-fi!

I am glad we live in a world with no terrorists and an FBI with nothing better to do than investigate people who are just trying to see a movie.

This sorry state of affairs can be almost entirely blamed on the COMPLETE IDIOTS who want to reserve their theatres for private screenings, yet won’t take ten minutes out of their time to hire a bouncer that works for free (and who are probably so stupid they have never even heard of such a person), yet are willing to consume tens of thousands of dollars of other people’s money to have uninvited guests investigated and subjected to proscecution. It seems one of those idiots works for Lowe’s.

The only saving grace is that these people are usually blind as bats so they never even realize that you snuck in. They just scratch their heads when they can’t get a good seat in their own theatre and blame the film distributor.

The whole mess makes me want to scrap my 802.11 and get one of those Verizon cell modem thingys.

Look at the anology another way. I go to a theatre and knock on the door. The bouncer that comes with every theatre is always there, and what he does is under the control of the theatre owner. The bouncer can say “who the heck are you and what is the secret word”. Alternatively, the bouncer can stand aside, at which point the usher hands me a ticket that IS NEEDED TO SEE THE MOVIE. How do I know I was handed a ticket? Well for one thing it has this strange looking serial number on it made up of four sets of numbers seperated by dots…