UK Police Cracking Down on Broadband Theft 672
dubculture writes "A 39 year-old man in West London was arrested for dishonestly obtaining free internet access" from an unsecured wireless router nearby. The article discusses a couple of other cases, including one where a fine of £500 (~US$1000) was handed out for, essentially, taking advantage of someone else's inability (read: apathy) towards securing their home network."
No problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Stealing light (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Theft is theft (Score:3, Interesting)
Unauthorized use? (Score:5, Interesting)
Its NOT the same as leaving your front door open in your house, or your car unlocked.
It IS the same as leaving your front door open in your house, having a visitor stop at the door and ask "may I come in?" and you replying "yes". You can't then turn around and sue for trespassing.
-J
Re:No problem (Score:2, Interesting)
So inability is apathy? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is an awfully arrogant assumption, and hopefully sheds some light on why many Slashdot commentors apparently see nothing wrong with this practice.
How would you, you should ask, tell inability from apathy? What if the person running the router really does not know how to secure it? I know plenty of people who have no clue at all how to secure their wireless routers. Do you think that if they knew you were using it they would be alright with that? That doesn't seem very unlikely.
"Mrs. Smith, we found this man outside your house access your home wireless network." And you expect us to believe Mrs. Smith would be fine with this and tell the officers to let the creepy guy parked outside her home continue? Seriously. That's just bullshit and you know it.
It's no wonder we keep seeing more legislation cracking down on these sorts of activities. It's precisely because people don't accept them, and precisely because they don't know how to protect themselves against them.
BS (Score:3, Interesting)
This is ridiculous. Simply because Joe Sixpack doesn't know how to secure his wireless does not mean he doesn't care about whether or not it is secure. Most 'techs' can't secure a wifi network properly. Further, even if we assume that caring would automatically mean the network would be secured (not a safe assumption) we certainly couldn't assume that Joe has any reason to believe his wifi isn't secure out of the box. After all, Joe bought the middle priced unit, not the cheap crap.
Even if Joe both cared and knew his network was insecure that doesn't mean Joe is technically literate enough to resolve the issue himself. Anyone who has conversed with Linksys tech support knows they can't help Joe. If Joe can't afford to pay a technician to secure the network (IMHO all setup of wireless networks, computer networks, internet connections, computers, printers, and software should be performed by competent technicians but that is another story) then Joe is basically stuck having an unsecure network or no network. Now, choosing to have an unsecure network over no network might be called a degree of apathy but only by a purist.
Re:What a bunch of morons (Score:3, Interesting)
Harsh? That is just how it is and how the courts have decided it. And it is fair.
BUT LIFE ISN'T.
Re:No problem (Score:2, Interesting)
That isnt the case with wireless access.
Whoever came up with the water fountain analogy above was right on the money.
Re:If it's illegal to use an unsecured wifi networ (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe a mode could be added where the base station doesn't continually broadcast "Hey, there's an open connection here with the name LINKSYS". Oh wait, they already do, the user just has to enable it! Never mind, let's just make it so instead of being able to open one's laptop within the range of a WiFi access point, you instead have to look around and find where it's located, find the owner and ask permission, then be sure the one you're looking at is the same one you're trying to connect to. (just agreeing with you and ranting further)
Re:No problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan is the place where you can buy a bag of CDs, accidentally leave them in a nearby ATM and then later pick them up from the nearest koban where someone dropped them off after they saw you left it behind. I didn't do that, but I witnessed it. Can you imagine the same kind of thing happening in the US? I can't, I'm a native american.
A coworker in Japan was telling me about the time she visited New York with her husband and after buying some things went to a restaurant, left her bags at the table and went away for a moment. In Japan, Nothing Happens when you do things like that, but that was New York and the bags were stolen.
On another occasion when I was living in Tokyo, but working in Kobe (about 5 hours by train after you factor in the local trains) I accidentally left my apartment unlocked for an entire week unattended. Nothing Happened.
The US isn't civilized and hasn't been for a long time. If you look away, you should have the expectation that whatever it was you're not looking at will disappear, because it will. And no, I'm not happy about saying this. I used to love living in California and the USA. It wasn't so many years ago that it used to be safe to leave a car with the keys inside (remember the "lock your car, take your keys" ad campaign?).
So yes, I admire your sentiments, but anywhere outside of the best places in Japan, I've never seen them in practice. I've never been to the UK, but I presume they have worse problems than the US given all the surveillance cameras they've felt the need to install in recent years.
Re:No problem (Score:4, Interesting)
And it's been said before, but - the leech did ask first, and permission was granted. I haven't seen a convincing argument why automated electronic permission, given as configured by the network owner, in the absence of any information to the contrary, is insufficient.
Whatever happened to priorities (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Police enforcing people's "non-will"? (Score:2, Interesting)
In this case; pretty much. The man was apparently http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6958429
Re:No problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Because that's the assumption that causes the least harm.
Because that's the assumption that's correct in a large majority of cases.
It's quite easy, really.
Authority has lost the plot in the uk. (Score:2, Interesting)
Costless middle class crimes which they _can_ enforce.
Seems like the Uk will be type of place where you can stab someone to death, but god help you if the drop the knife.
You'll get done for littering.
"[PUBLIC]" in SSID of open hotspots (Score:4, Interesting)
If you INTEND to make your wifi open access, then you should signify this by including the key word "[PUBLIC]" or [PUB]" at the start (e.g. "[PUBLIC] Joe's Wifi" or "[PUB] Megaboob, Inc").
That makes the intent crystal clear (some other key words could also be included to provide flexibility).
I agree that any open wifi spot ought to be assumed to be public in the first place, but since the law seems to disagree, I believe my idea is the next best alternative. Software that searches for hotspots could be updated to look for these key words to indicate if the hotspots are intended to be public or not.
Long term, it would be nice if the wifi standard were updated so that a bit could be toggled which would indicate whether the hotspot is intended to be public or not. In the configuration menu it could be right next to the "Make SSID Visible" checkbox.