...there aren't more important crimes being committed that require lots of police time to solve, eh?

Oh, but of course there is! the obviously **VERY** important crime of copying a CD or downloading an MP3 file. VERY VERY serious;

Thank goodness the police have their priorities right. Phew...

Sorry... what's that? No no no - you've got it wrong - these things are MUCH more important than burglary, murder, rape, assault, theft....

How were they dishonest? Did they claim they were only waiting for a bus? Or did the householder complain they they had refused to pay when asked?

I've just realised that I've been dishonestly enjoying the view of the flowers in my neighbour's garden. I even absorbed reflected coloured visual radiation from them for hours, without ever asking permission. Will I have to go to jail now?

Yeah, there's a rather large difference between operating a scheme like Fon and using your wireless router as it came out of the box and someone nicking your inet connection.

If you don't have permission you have to accept the risk (as low as it is) of getting nicked.

""However, this is an offence and people pay good money to get the internet in their homes. It is worth reminding people who use a wireless connection to ensure they follow the manufacturer's instructions when setting it up and make sure all security systems are in place to keep computers safe."

No it's not.

The police continue to ignore that the device requests permission and the router says 'yes' and gives them a session id. No different than when their telephone connects to a GSM tower, says 'can I register' and the GSM tower says "yes no problem, here have a session id"

If you say that permission is not enough, then how is it enough when the phone connects to the GSM tower???

It's the exact same thing and the person connecting has no way of telling if that router is intentionally open or not.

So now lets compare that with the METs response to an arrest warrant for an Israeli general. Something that pisses me off no end, since I've wanted to see one of those bomb happy generals on war crimes charges for years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7251954.stm

Attacking civilians is a war crime, and it's an arrestable offence in the UK even if it was committed abroad. The judge issued an arrest warrant. Then something strange happens, the person to be arrested is pre-warned of the warrant and stays on the plane. To pre-warn someone to avoid a warrant is a crime, even if it's done by the Foreign Office minister himself.

Then even stranger, the police decide not to go into the plane to arrest him. And now totally bizarrely strange, the plane is given clearance to leave the UK with the suspect on board. Permitting his escape to freedom.

It seems the police selectively implement the laws, straining interpretation to arrest someone for doing nothing more than using an 'intentionally?' open wifi connection.

So:

In the lobby is a wifi point 'lobby#4'. I assume it's an open wifi, so I use it. I assume it's provided by the company so I assume they put it there. But I don't know, it may be a neighbours wifi. There's no way to tell, the router says it ok, so I think it's OK.

NOT A CRIME.

Blowing up civilians homes, sometimes with them in it, dropping bombs on civilian targets killing lots of children.

CRIME.

Perhaps if I blew up the Wifi router, killing the inhabitants of the house, instead of simply connecting to the net, that this would be legal then? At least in the MET's region?

So here's a question...

If my Satnav/whatever says that I am in the area of a Public WiFi point and my laptop actually picks up a residential unsecure/unencrytped point instead am I breaking the law? I can see that if I carry some form of scanner to search for access and use some from of cracking to get in them I am clearly intending to get unauthorised access to the Internet (gosh what a heinous criminal I am) but if someone chooses NOT to secure their Wifi (and I understand that all WiFi boxes have some form of security as default) then is that not implicit permission for open access in much the same way as removing any clear boundary markers (hedges etc) for your garden blurs the distinction between public and private land?

Sorry for the length of that last sentence, just getting my hand in at long sentences

Mines the one with the arrows on it :{>

Y'know, so that while the 'murderers mislaid/ ignored/ forgotten' column goes up, the 'evil WiFi-stealing gnomes arrested, locked away for good' column can also increase...

If someone was piggybacking my wireless account I'd want the tigh-arsed little runt named and shamed. It's on the same level as low-life scum petrol-pinching or nicking milk of your doorstep. It's theft and the sarcy comments about looking at the neighbour's flowers miss the bloody point by a mile.

Whether plod have better things to do is similar rubbish. Let me put this another way to the likes of Rich; Are you advocating the persons should not have been brought to book for breaking the law? You even mention that the Police should be concerned with theft amongst other crimes some people commit. So what's this then, morris dancing?

But yes, you would also expect plod to have better things to do. It's a simple collar and it will help their stats, don't forget that.

Seems strange that the owner of this wifi was not bright enough to secure it, yet was able to identify that it was being used by an.other and work out who that was?!

What enquiries are they continuing with? Is it not an open and shut case of, were they using a wireless point illicidly, yep.

Does the wireless owner wish to file charges? Its not stated in the article.

And Neighbourhood Inspector Shazza stating "This is a very unusual offence". Umm, not round here it ain't, if anyone would care to check their AP logs...

I'm off to Berwick where apparently the local fuzz don't have the problems of hoodies, terrorists and other ne-er do wells and can spend their time protecting dumb people who should consider their actions before being allowed to try this majicalistic wireless-fi.

How is someone supposed to know if a Wi-Fi connection is open and free or not? That and alot of devices will connect to any open Wi-Fi connection (like my phone).

Surely it's up to someone to secure it. If it's hacked - that's a different matter all together.

there is no truth in this story whatsoever!

please implement scare tactics as soon as possible!

A nice common sense rule would be that if a WiFi configuration has no security on it is reasonable to assume that it is intentionally made free access (some people do that, although I wouldn't recommend it).

After all, the criminal law requires that to be found guilty then it has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Clearly if you crack the security system then that's clear evidence of intention. As an analogy, trespassing is not a criminal offence (except in a few special cases like on railways), but breaking a lock in order to enter is.

Perhaps if the police (and courts) followed this common sense rules the police can do something useful - like tracking down the people who have compromised my credit card security twice in three months.

Well, my own network is only 'secured' by WEP (because of the kid's WEP only DSs), so is trivial to crack. But I *do* know how to spot someone nicking my bandwidth.

WEP, as insecure as it is, does serve one major purpose (and is why its better than no security at all). A WEP based network is clearly private and, therefore, anyone accessing it without its owners permission is very likely in contravention of the Computer Misuse Act and, possibly, the Wireless Telegraphy Act too.

Illegal access of an insecure network *may* be harder to prove. If you are broadcasting an SSID of, say, "Hi Everyone" on an insecure network, then it could easily be construed as public. An SSID of "Smith Family", (though possibly not smart to put your name in the SSID), indicates that the network is *probably* private.

I would imagine that not broadcasting the SSID would be construed as a good indicator that the network is private, too.

Agree with all your point, but can't help but point out that you can't really pre-warn someone. You either warn them or you don't.

I'm afraid I have to turn down the kind invitation of those across the pond to stick pre in front of everything to make it sound more exciting. I think I'll only accept pre if you can post it as well (not in a post box clearly).

So, I'll allow pre-paid because you can post-pay but you can't have pre-planned because you can't post-plan (unless your a government spin doctor).

"If you freeload off someone's FLOWER GARDEN, you know damned well that a)they've paid for it and you haven't, b)unless specifically authorised to do so you're not supposed to, and c) that it's illegal to do so. Look at flowers all you want, Steve; you're not depriving anyone of anything, but when you consume a service that someone else has paid for, you're either depriving them..."

Well your depriving them of nothing because they agreed you could use it.

I pull out my iPod, there's a Wifi point 'TSS-Public'. Now you can say that TSS Public is a WiFi point of a charity that desperately needs maximum bandwidth to save dying puppies. But I reckon it's the petrol stations public Wifi point because they're all competing to provide free connections here.

Even if their connection was called 'TSS-Public' I have no way to tell if that 'TSS-Public' is *their* 'TSS-Public' since the names don't even have to be unique.

Well one way to check, I'll try to connect to it and see if it accepts my connection. Oooo look it does. I asked, they accepted.

If they stuck a tap in the middle of the street, labelled 'TSS Public' would you be happy for me to use it? Here (south France) there are taps in the street for people to drink from. I am not stealing when I drink the water, but I don't have permission to use it. I assume I have permission because it's there in public.

With Wifi it's one better than that, not only is it there in public, the iPod asks to connect before actually using the connection! Imagine that! It asks first!

"In Holland if you leave your car door/window open and something is stolen it is YOUR fault, because you gave free access to the thief and nothing has to be broken."

Fibber.

On the other hand if you ask the driver for a light and he gives you the light, you aren't stealing his fire. If his car had flames coming out the back and you lit your cigar on it, then you still wouldn't be stealing his fire.

You have implicit permission to light your fag.

In the case of WiFi it's simpler, you have *explicit* permission, the iPod asks permission first before sending any data and your router grants that permission.

My wifi signal can be a little bit weak at the far end of my house and my neighbour has an unsecured wifi connection.

I therefore imagine that occasionally I piggyback on their connection without knowing it.

Am I breaking the law and should I be arrested?

And what about the fact that my neighbour has "given me permission" to use their connection as my computer asks permission of the router, which then says yes.

Trespass is a civil matter. If the wireless network is unsecured there is no breaking and entering involved. If the law of the land were to be followed, these trespassing guys would be able to sue if their machine caught a virus.

What are the pigs doing getting involved in a civil matter? How could they prove the "offence" took place? Either they have no evidence or someone has equipped the filth with electronic surveillance devices and neglected to inform, er, anyone.

The law is divided into criminal and civil, if you start to make civil matters criminal that means the polis control civil interaction. How much fun is that going to be?

Do you leave your front door open as well?

There isn't a large pool of police that get dished out to the next crime, they tend to specialise, at least to a certain extent. I for one would not want a murder squad copper investigating a Tech Crime or vice versa, those complaining about 'don't they have better crimes to investigate' should probably consider this. Also if the police have had a crime reported to them (not made clear in the article), they aren't going to look very good if they don't bother to investigate it.

Now, the article didn't say weather or not the WiFi was secured, even if it wasn't that isn't an open invitation to use it, although would probably be accepted as a genuine accident if there were public free open access points in the vicinity. The article also doesn't say how the perps were nabbed, it is highly likely though, that they were using sufficient bandwidth to be noticed, or the owner of the access point noticed the access light flashing when they didn't think it was in use. You don't need to run monitoring to find this out.

As a further point, I'm not sure if this is still the case but, when I first got broadband it specifically and clearly said that no-one else, other than the inhabitants of the house are allowed to use it.

Also, how many OSes automatically connect to any WiFi access point that they can? My XP laptop certainly doesn't, I would regard this as a massive security flaw if it did.

If I leave my WiFi unencrypted, it's because I WANT people to be able to use it. If I don't want them to, I turn on the encryption. It's not that difficult.

Hopefully the police checked with the homeowner in question; I would think that the homeowner would have to press charges; they're the (possibly) wronged party. If not, IMHO there's no case.

if I'm going to have "look at me I'm base station NETGEAR, I'm accepting all connections, you're welcome" penetrating my skull at 2.4GHz I really fail to see why I'm beyond my rights to connect to this service.

This is not theft at any practical level. If I phone my neighbour and as such make use of their phone line rental and equipment am I committing a crime. No. Because by paying phone rental they have implied permission for others to connect to this service. As such leaving their base station totally unsecured expresses permission.

It should be plainly clear to anyone if they buy a wireless router then connect there equipment without any sort of authorisation that so can anyone else. If you are paying by the byte, its your responsibility to secure it.

So lets say someone has joined up to FON to offer Wifi connections to all and sundry, for a fee paid through FON. Lets say that offeror then decided he dont want to be one of FON's local hotspots anymore BUT by mistake left his connection open. What would the case be then if some poor unsuspecting FON user used his opne connection thinking he was still part of the FON network ??.

I think the law needs to be changed so the Pigs have to prove that the person using the connection knew that he was not allowed to access the open wifi.

....and all the other people assuming that the connection was open.

Go back and read the story.

Nowhere does it say the wireless network was open.

At the end there is a comment about people making their network secure.

But NOWHERE does it say the network was open.

If you turned off the 'broadcast my id' option, it's 1 checkbox, it's not even necessary to lock your connection with passwords and stuff if you don't want people connecting.

You connect what you want, then turn off your broadcasting of the invitation to join your network and bingo end of story. Your devices already know the id of your network and others don't.

Or you can specify only the devices you want to connect. Connect them, go to the Mac filtering web screen and click 'allow' the ones you want to connect, then click 'enable filtering' and that's it.

If you want to you can enable the password and lock the network too. Up to you, but these people just want to check their email on one of the half million open hotspots around the world.