Clueless Woman Calls Tech Show When Her Stolen Wi-Fi Disappears

[DontSayBanana]

There needs to be some aspect of dishonesty or disceit.  If someone leaves their wi fi open, and I log in without using any false password, how can I be said to be acting fraudulently?

You're deceiving the ISP into providing Internet access to your computer.

[Barrister]

There needs to be some aspect of dishonesty or disceit.  If someone leaves their wi fi open, and I log in without using any false password, how can I be said to be acting fraudulently?

You're deceiving the ISP into providing Internet access to your computer.

How?  What are you, as the leech, doing dishonestly?

[DontSayBanana]

How?  What are you, as the leech, doing dishonestly?

Let's stop using "router" and start using "wireless access point" for this.  The customer of the ISP has paid for the right to receive Internet service.  The customer uses the router to gain additional mobility within his own home.  The leecher has not paid for the right to receive Internet service.  The customer does not know the leecher is using his access point to connect to the Internet.  Furthermore, the access point masks the leecher's MAC address and instead reports the MAC address of the customer's computer to the ISP, and there's our deception.  The leecher is, therefore, using the customer's credentials to fraudulently obtain Internet service from the ISP.

[Admiral Yi]

Sounds like you want to charge the leecher for a fraud perpetrated by the access point.

[DontSayBanana]

Sounds like you want to charge the leecher for a fraud perpetrated by the access point.

Hardly.  Going back to the OP, the woman knew that Internet service costs money.  She knew that the network was not hers, but she wanted to connect again.  She stated that she did not want to pay an ISP, and she didn't have any contact with the owner of the wireless access point.  She wanted to connect to a network that she knew was not hers, without the knowledge of the network's owner, because she didn't want to pay an ISP.  That sounds like she wanted to use that network access to defraud the ISP of service, and the network's owner of bandwidth.

[Barrister]

How?  What are you, as the leech, doing dishonestly?

Let's stop using "router" and start using "wireless access point" for this.  The customer of the ISP has paid for the right to receive Internet service.  The customer uses the router to gain additional mobility within his own home.  The leecher has not paid for the right to receive Internet service.  The customer does not know the leecher is using his access point to connect to the Internet.  Furthermore, the access point masks the leecher's MAC address and instead reports the MAC address of the customer's computer to the ISP, and there's our deception.  The leecher is, therefore, using the customer's credentials to fraudulently obtain Internet service from the ISP.

Let me try again - at what point did the leacher lie?  At what point did they act fraudulently?

It may pain you to know this, but at least in Canada, it is not against the law to open your unlocked door when you are not home, pull a book off your bookshelf, read it, then place it back on the shelf and leave.

I can not see how a Wi-fi leacher is doing anything wrong until and unless you can show they are lying to get access to wi-fi.

[garbon]

However, it does appear to be illegal, in some if not all US jurisdictions.

Committing crime is so banal these days.

[Eddie Teach]

It may pain you to know this, but at least in Canada, it is not against the law to open your unlocked door when you are not home, pull a book off your bookshelf, read it, then place it back on the shelf and leave.

What if you are at home?

[Barrister]

It may pain you to know this, but at least in Canada, it is not against the law to open your unlocked door when you are not home, pull a book off your bookshelf, read it, then place it back on the shelf and leave.

What if you are at home?

Still not a crime.

The charge of break and enter is worded two ways: "break and enter with intent to commit an indictable offence, and break and enter and commit an indictable offence".

Merely breaking in to your house is not, by itself, a crime.  It is the civil tort of trespass, and you have the right to use force to remove a person from your house, but it is not a crime.

[Syt]

The image of juvenile crooks entering unlocked Canadian houses to sift through their book collections amuses me.

[Martinus]

The action may be trivial (just clicking "Confirm") but your computer wouldn't just join a free network without prompting you somehow (unless you configure it to do so, but then it is a positive action as well).

Not exactly. In fact, the first time I ever leeched internet was after I'd been visiting my aunt and uncle.  They didn't know about encryption and so there network was just setup with the default network name (in this case: linksys). As connecting to a network in windows sets it up to automatically connect whenever you are in range, my computer would then connect to any unencrypted linksys networks that it found in range. I did nothing.

Well you could argue that by doing so you are being negligent and this could be qualified as a criminal negligence - thus making you capable of committing a crime. Of course one would have to determine what the standard of diligence in such cases should be.

[Martinus]

There needs to be some aspect of dishonesty or disceit.  If someone leaves their wi fi open, and I log in without using any false password, how can I be said to be acting fraudulently?

You're deceiving the ISP into providing Internet access to your computer.

That's a bad argument. I agree that if the Canadian law requires the access to be "fraudulent", then you would have a trouble construing a criminal behaviour from simply joining an unprotected network.

However, the US statute someone else quote does not have that element, and as I said, intent does not need to be direct - it can be indirect as well (carelessness or negligence).

Edit: However, I am talking about a higher standard of intent here (i.e. excluding carelessness or negligence). A situation of the woman in the clip, joining a network while fully realising she is not authorized to do so, would count as fraudulent imo.

[Martinus]

It may pain you to know this, but at least in Canada, it is not against the law to open your unlocked door when you are not home, pull a book off your bookshelf, read it, then place it back on the shelf and leave.

Really? That's strange. In Poland we have a crime which is called something like "invasion of home's peace" (hard to translate as it is an old Polish word). This is obviously a smaller crime than breaking and entering, but essentially, entering someone's home without permission would be a crime.

[garbon]

Well you could argue that by doing so you are being negligent and this could be qualified as a criminal negligence - thus making you capable of committing a crime. Of course one would have to determine what the standard of diligence in such cases should be.

Would it really be negligent to have left on a default setting?

[Martinus]

Probably not but as I said you would need to establish the reasonable standard of care.

A more interesting case would be this: imagine you set your computer to connect on default, and if prompted for a password, feed in your own network password. Now imagine you come across a network by chance that uses the same password as your own password - would accessing such a network in a situation I described count as a criminal network trespass in your view?