Geeklawyer uses wi-fi quite a lot. He has it wired into his own home but because it allows connection to the Internet on his bill he has it locked down. Nothing would be worse than having someone come along and use it to swap kiddy porn or engage in spamming. But not everyone does the same. Some people make a conscious decision to allow others to access their network and others find it easier to use a low security network that is easy to connect to with no password. Geeklawyer does this at one of his addresses which is suburban and not highly likely to be abused. At his primary house he does and the password is long and confusing so it would be tempting for the less geeky to cheat by setting no password as option for access.
It was with interest therefore that he saw the news that an individual arrested for accessing someones unsecured wi-fi network. A man was seen in the early hours lingering in a car with the windows blocked out with cardboard to disguise the glow of his laptop screen. He was unsuccessful and neighbours called the police who arrested him. was offered and accepted a caution for “dishonestly obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid payment.”
The problem is that there is no such offence. What seems to have happened is that the police felt he was ‘up to no good’ and flailed around for any likely offence to accuse him of. And they lit upon the analogous crime of abstracting electricity with the intention of avoiding payment. However this is a specific statutorily defined offence created for the very particular reason that no prior statute nor Common Law was able to deal with the issue ‘theft’ of electricity. This alone would suggest that the suggested offence was bogus.
It may be that they though that there was a general accusation of theft and dishonesty, in the Ghosh sense, which was appropriate. In any event they didn’t caution him for this but had they done so Geeklawyer suggests that it would have failed. The use of an insecure network cannot properly be said to be dishonest when there are so many very good, objective, reasons to suppose that an open access network was deliberately made so or at least adverted to and accepted by the network owner.
Geeklawyer would have advised D to reject the caution and to ‘offer the police out’ and see if they were prepared to back-up their opinions. If D was lucky Ruthie would have been prosecuting him and Geeklawyer, in an novel step into infra dig areas of practice, defending him.
Update:
memo to self: “Stop talking about criminal law”. Stop or do research first. Communications Act 2003 section 125(1). Mind you on the facts Geeklawyer remains of the view no offence was committed and the thrust of the post was right that that there was no dishonesty enabling a conviction.
That phrase...
Agreed. Surely the “obtaining electricity dishonestly” argument revolves around the concept of deprivation and loss — that by taking this service, he has deprived the owner of something identifiable or caused them extra cost. But apart from an indistinguishable amount of bandwidth, nothing has actually been permanently taken — it’s not at all comparable to an electricity company being cheated out of payment.
There must be some kind of recent statutory provision to cover this, something regarding illegal network access and so on?
I have two broadband connections - one password protected.. the other ‘open’.
It does not bother me that locals use my broadband…. I am a bit rusty on the Criminal law… but… s.13 Theft Act 1968 canot possibly apply… (Misuse of Compueters legislation?? - surely, we must have something on this?) I am happy to ‘consent’ to others using my wi-fi…. It is a fairly straightforward matter to trace IP addresses - is it not??
I suspect a degree of ‘consent’ may arise? We are not, after all, talking about nailing body parts to bits of wood…. and even a judge with a mission to make new law, ignoring the law makers of what is left of our democracy, would be hard pressed to regard using broadband as aa serious offence…. or feel the need to step in to stop consenting adults enjoying themselves.
Mind you… if I saw someone sitting outside my house, with cardboard shielding his / her laptop - I would be more concerned that it was a member of the US military who has strayed into our territorial waters, had painted my house with al aser, and was about to call in a bit of friendly fire.
On the other hand it could be a Lib-Dem candidate doing a bit of research on me to see if I had, after all these years of disappointment, decided to change my vote from Labour….
It is also… improbably possible… that it could be an England cricket selector - after the 19 over farce today against South Africa…. checking my emails to see if I was prepared to come out of retirement and ‘raise my bat’.
Yes…. time to go… Zebeddee… said Dougal….
Communications Act 2003 section 125(1). It is a specific offence.
Only if dishonestly obtained with intent to avoid payment of a charge.
So what if done with the presumption that an unsecured wifi network is open? Dishonest?
So what if it is an unlimited bandwidth internet account? What charge?
It might cover it, but might not.
Well, it’s entirely possible he had a defence, that’s true of almost any criminal charge. The fact he accepted a caution indicates not (and sitting in your car with the windows taped up is evidence which will convince most mags, or juries that you’re being dishonest, I’d suggest).
The point is, dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service, which is what the charge appears to have been, is a specific criminal offence, and he accepted a caution on that charge rather than claiming he wasn’t dishonest, wasn’t obtaining an electronic communications service, or wasn’t intending to avoid payment of a charge. Frankly I think that was quite wise as he’d have had a snowball’s chance in hell with any of those possible defences and the penalties go up to five years for a trial on indictment, though that would be unlikely.
The charge he’s avoiding is the charge he would have to pay for obtaining internet access: how the person whose bandwidth he’s using pays for their access is irrelevant. I suppose he could claim he could have gone to Starbucks but then he’d have had to buy some of their vile excuse for coffee.
No. What *is* the charge he would have had to pay? Is there a general ability to pay for an ad-hoc access to the net (Starbucks apart)? NO ISP provides such a capability - one needs to be a resident somewhere. There is no service he is avoiding payment of. The resident of the house would be liable to such a charge if, say, he moving to the property and hacked the phone line to get free broadband.
A few years ago, a usenet group I used to read (a remarkably civilized, literate and witty usenet group) went over this question a few times. It was thought that, given that a wifi router is a computer, connecting to a wifi network without permission could fall under s.1 Misuse of Computers Act.
How far do you want to argue ‘not secured’ = ‘general implicit permission’ given the general level of not being able to set the DVD recorder/secure the PC against becoming part of a botnet?
But this remains a hypothetical.
And Charon - the problem with the IP address is that it would be yours that would be being used on t’interweb by your hitch-hiker. The ‘guest’ on your wifi would have only a temporary IP address in the local range, dished out by your DCHP server. From the logs, no-one could even tell it wasn’t you, on a laptop you have conveniently ‘lost’ or the logs of which have been recycled.
I believe, but am too lazy to look it up, that there has been a stateside case with someone ending up in a lot of trouble for things done through their internet connection, with the drive-by surfer being effectively untraceable.
My Wifi used to be open 4 years ago, but I’ve since locked it down.
As a geek even more geeky than the man himself (he’s only talking about writing blog software, I’ve done it) there are a few points about the access on to a wifi network.
Most of the security on wifi access points is essentially worthless for keeping out any other than casual intruders.
What this means in practice is that if somebody wants to use your internet connection then they will be able to get in. Without a lot of arcane knowledge and ability the only way to stop somebody from piggy backing on your connection is to keep it turned off.
I don’t know anything about legal reasoning here, but if a self-confessed geek like Geeklawyer had his security broken it may be quite hard for him to convince a court that it was an outside intruder as there would be no evidence to show that it had in fact been broken - there would be no broken lock, to use a physical analogy. He may be better off leaving it open to allow some form of plausible denial.
Here is a link about eavesdropping (hard to stop): http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/01/wifi_eavesdropp.html
And another about how quickly the FBI can break into a protected network (lots of technical details for the geeky): http://www.informationweek.com/management/compliance/160502612
Clearly… I know absolutely nothing of any practical value about criminal law - and I was ‘overcome’ by the cricket fiasco!
Nearly legal… point noted about my IP address… better button down the hatches!
So… if I leave all the doors and windows unlocked while I am in my house, am I deemed to have given tacit consent to the casual intruder helping himself to whatever he finds therein?
I’m not sure that is the right analogy. Image if you have some land and the police find bomb making equipment there.
If you had put a big fence around the land with guards it will be hard to convince anybody that the equipment isn’t yours.
If you leave the land open and unguarded then it is hard for anybody to prove that whatever they found was actually yours.
I don’t really know how this should be interpreted, I’m just saying it could be interpreted either way. Who’s up for a test case? Or was there one already?
Josephine…. of course, you are absolutely right…. In so far as i referred to consent…I was, clearly, talking complete nonsense in my comment - it can be fun sometimes - and I was ‘distraught’… five England wickets fell in just 19 balls…. it was more than i could bear, M’Lud. http://blog.geeklawyer.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif
What we need is more CCTV cameras so the police can keep an eye on our streets to ensure no pedo’s or evil terroists upto mischieve on our networks.
Yes, and Telescreens in every Party house…
What with Ruthie’s post yesterday, it looks like Nineteen Eighty-Four is upon us once again.
I think Big Brother has been watching over us for some time now. The trick to stop people complaining is to keep them in Fear, the source of which doesnt matter overmuch: terrorists/paedophiles/nutters take your pick. And with modern surveillance techniques no need to bother with the hassle of running informants.
Theres an argument that some liberty must be sacrificed for security. But its difficult to assess whether it is necessary and to what extent if the threat is misrepresented.
Well i’m not going to be losing any sleep over this ‘threat’!
Oddly I agree with Ruthie. This is clearly the technique. I think she may be alluding to Benjamin Frankin (?) who said something like “those who sacrifice liberty for security will get neither’. Not completely true but significantly so.
Hello,
Not long ago, I had a problem at my jobsite. An employee had noticed a statment about a particular circumstance that envolved our company. However, my former boss is accusing me of the situation. I advised him that I had a unsecured wireless router and anyone could have used it by parking a car in front of my house while I was unaware of their of the activity. If this was happening and they were not using their home computer or library, then would I be able to find out who did this? If not, then what is the solution?