WiFi connection = felony

At one point, I was sharing a house with two of my brothers, and we had about 4 internet-connected computers among us. We decided to try replacing our wires and wired router with a wireless router and wireless nics. Among other problems, we discovered my brother's windows box (the only one of our 4 computers that ran windows) would automagicly connect on boot to the internet via a neighbor's wireless router rather than ours. For months we tried to find a better solution than reconfiguring it every time it was rebooted, but we never found a solution, despite some work by several computer professionals of various sorts.

Neighbor (whoever it was) never complained, nor secured their wireless. Eventually we abandoned wireless networking. I should add that my brother's illegitimate internet connection worked just fine through the neighbor's wireless router, and I suspect folk with ordinary computer literacy would never have suspected anything was wrong, and never known.

Why is it legal to send your wireless signal outside of your own home? My laptop connects to someone's wireless. without me even asking it to connect.

llewelly:

Sounds familiar. I am paying for wireless but can never seem to connect via my router; meanwhile, every time I turn on the computer, it automatically connects via somebody else's wireless. Weird, but I've given up agonizing over the situation.

Uh oh. I'm writing this from my grandparent's house using some neighbor's wifi. I also did exactly what this guy did several times over the last few days.

I'll go turn myself in.

So if the cafe set up their wifi so it had a splash screen saying, "this is a public network," he would have been ok? This is so dumb. It's like they were playing music inside the cafe, and someone got slapped with a copyright violation for sitting outside listening to it. Wait, don't want to give the RIAA any ideas...

I provide a wireless network with its own box and computer for my patrons at the airport. It is protected, but as a result of attempts at hacking they now have to request access and we log their information in.

Revere... This isnt a tempest in a tea cup. Picture yourself say sitting in the terminal at Reagan and some guy comes blowing in and logs on and on his computer he has say sensitive or classified information. He logs onto the network for simple access in a cafe and depending on the firewall on his computer its now open season. You can do the same from wireless computer to wireless computer on a plane.

DoD now requires two firewalls minimum on all their laptops and password protected hard drives. Once you are into their system its pretty easy to get to upper level computers and the put some of the most important information into back space storage on the hard drives.

Would you want people to have information coming out of Ft. Detrick or Los Alamos? Of course not. But I agree, this guy shouldnt have been trying to circumvent the system but to fine him 400 bucks? Sheyit he could have gotten DSL or cable for that. They dont serve breakfast though on DSL/Cable systems.

Geez.

The law under which he appears to have been charged is Section 752.795 of the Michigan compiled laws.

This provides in part "A person shall not intentionally and without authorization or by exceeding valid authorization do any of the following:

(a) Access or cause access to be made to a computer program, computer, computer system, or computer network to acquire, alter, damage, delete, or destroy property or otherwise use the service of a computer program, computer, computer system, or computer network."

There is nothing in this statute to specify that the authorization needs to precede the act, though obviously it would be wiser to obtain such authorization beforehand.

The cafe owner said if asked she wouldn't have minded. This certainly can be construed as authorization. Under the circumstances it is highly surprising that authorization wasn't construed and that he was charged at all.

Also, note that the act requires intentional conduct; thus, the person whose computer logs on automatically, would be protected.

MRK - I am continually amazed at your vast knowledge. Understanding the network layers of the DoD computer network is just the newest addition.

Revere, I couldn't agree more. And Monson is right. Perhaps leaking wireless connection points outside property lines should also be a crime?

Is this the full story, do you think?
I know that cops, like a lot of other people, can be pretty stupid at times, but they seemed intent on charging this guy with something. Why is that?
The barbershop rang the cops and it seems that they did so because they thought he was stalking a woman who worked there. The cops say that they ruled this out, but maybe that really isn't the case. Maybe they suspected that he was stalking her, but had no evidence.
What do you do in a situation like this if you're a cop? Find something else to charge him with.
There must be some back story to this that we are not getting because this isn't a law that they would have been initially aware of. They had to do some work to find it, so they seem pretty intent on charging him with something.

Kieran: What you say is not impossible, but there is no indication from the news report (which I linked to and you can read in full) that this is the case. This story is now over a week old so if there is more to it I would think it would have come out. As it is, it sounds pretty straightforward and the only thing that is out of kilter is the police response. What the guy did sounded pretty plausible. If you find, let us know.

M. Randolph Kruger, it's true that $400 would have paid for a year of cable---that's by design. A fine for stealing is always more than the cost of the stolen object.

I disagree with Revere's disgust. A priori, the wifi-user has *no idea* what is the value of the thing he's stealing. Is he taking one of the 6 IP addresses on the cafe's cheap base station, shutting out one customers? Is he downloading DVDs over a metered connection at $0.10 per gigabyte? Is he maxing out their data rates, slowing down access for everyone else? Probably not, but he *had no idea* and *didn't try to find out*. He just saw the "free" sign and decided that it was open season. Every day. I mean, surely he knew that cafes have WiFi in order to attract customers---it's not a novel concept---not as a gesture of goodwill to the nearest few parking spots.

Any argument along the lines of, "the cafe should have configured their network differently" is invalid. If someone comes into a dime store every day and empties the "take-a-penny" tray into his pockets, no one would argue "they should have put security measures around the tray." Also, don't assume that the cafe owner is an expert, or that the necessary config changes are easy.

Now, WiFi is indeed pretty cheap, and it's nice for everyone to have access. I think we *should* have free municipal networking, and I love (and use) free WiFi in cafes. But it's only habit---and wishful thinking---that makes us treat WiFi as free by default.

For this particular guy---meh, you can argue whether $400 is too much, and whether he should have gotten a warning instead, and whether the cafe should have been allowed to drop the charges. But it sounds to me like he was distinctly in the wrong.

Why is it legal to send your wireless signal outside of your own home? My laptop connects to someone's wireless. without me even asking it to connect.

It's infeasible to prevent. If your wireless node is connected to the internet by wire, you could wrap your whole house in Faraday cage material ... nah, way too expensive.
Wireless signals radiate in all directions, and they penetrate a few feet of many kinds of common ceiling, floor, and wall material. The signals attenuate by the inverserse square law, so the signal never completely disappears - it just requires greater and greater sensitivity to detect, as one moves farther away. So there's no feasible way to reliably restrict the signals, other than to simply turn wireless off. Realisticly, a law against sending your wireless signal outside of your home would make nearly everyone with a wireless network interface a lawbreaker.
What's curious, is that every other OS I've worked with - Linux, BSD, mac, solaris, aix - makes it easy to configure a box so it will only connect to specific wireless access points in a user-configured list. Supposedly windows is able to do this too, but it only seemed to work until the box was rebooted.

There are any number of software solutions, (all PKE based as far as I know) which do not prevent the signals from escaping the domicile, but do prevent most accidental and/or unathorized access, but they all take some skill effort to set up and configure, and require some forethought in hardware purchases. The default is a total lack of security, perhaps because it is percieved as convenient - or perhaps because few people are aware that almost any modern (that is, post ~2001 or so) computer with a wireless nic can run software that can record, index, and database all traffic on any wireless network within about an acre or so, depending on signal strength and obstacles. Of course, I know all this, and have set up secure wireless in the past, and yet have used insecure wireless from time to time.

Patch-http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic…

You can email me at memphisservices@bellsouth.net if you need to have a full dissertation on the DoD systems. My AFSC was a 272X0 which is command and control systems and if you like we can chat on back channels as I do with Revere on stuff think that he has a need to know. Some of the things that I know but cant say anything about you can ask but I will just have to give you a blank stare if they cant be discussed.

Anyone got a picture of the hairdresser?

This irritates the crap out me, too. I pay for a wireless network from Comcast at my house and I intentionally leave it open for whomever to use. Why should everyone in the neighborhood be paying Comcast (or whoever) for something we could all be sharing? I understand that the cafe is a different situation, but I don't see how this guy was hurting the cafe in any way--taking advantage of it, yes, but causing harm, no.

Also, I never realized that having my wifi open might bother somebody whose computer was logging on automatically when they didn't want it to. I'm thinking that the comments suggesting illegalization of wifi leaving your house are a joke. Am I wrong?

I always wonder if these stories are real. (Seriously) And even if the dude did get busted (so the story is real), I sometimes think they bust someone as a test case so they can open up a can of worms and go after more folks. At 400 bucks a pop it's better revenue than catching speeders.

Sleeve -

Most internet cafes are all about people using the signal, whether they are a customer or not. Right now I am using the signal of a bar next to my apartment. They don't advertise as a wireless bar, because they just have the internet to stream their kareoke service. They actually bought a different router than the one their isp provided, so that it wouldn't be a secure connection.

I live in Portland now, where a lot of businesses and residents are trying to turn the entire city into a wireless hotspot. Before I moved out here two years ago, I know that a lot of businesses and residents in Lansing MI, where I originated, were trying to do much the same there. I try to avoid connecting on residential wireless, unless they are registered with one of the community maps, but even so, it is not hard to find signals.

This guy is a volunteer firefighter who plays bagpipes with some buddies as a part-time gig. He had been parking in front of cafe each lunch break for about a month. He'd check his e-mail and see if any info about band practices or gigs had changed.

He got the once over from the Cop, but he thought that was the end of it. . . then 2 weeks later got a notice from Lynn Hopkins, assistant prosecuting attorney saying report to "Diversion Program" or face a felony wrap with up to 5 years in jail and a $10,000 fine. . .

$400 fine and 4o hrs community service looked better than LOTS of legal fees. . . Never went before a judge. . . Never arrested. . .

NOW that it's in the public eye they hope that it will be dropped...

First off thank all you guys for the comments about this man Sam Peterson II. He didnt not know that using an wifi connection from this cafe was going to get him into all this trouble. My husband is a great guy and has NEVER been in trouble with the law EVER. Its nice to know that peoplke out there are there giving him support and for that I want to THANK ALL of you very much. We are hoping that we can get the DA s office to drop all this but the DA has to keep running because she knows what she has done was and is very wrong. The more people we talk to the better so call into the DAs office and tell them this is WRONG. Thank You