UK Man Convicted For Wi-Fi Piggybacking

CatrionaMcM tips us to a BBC story reporting that Gregory Straszkiewicz, a UK resident, was fined £500 and sentenced to a conditional discharge for 12 months after being caught using a laptop from a car parked outside somebody else's house. '[H]e was prosecuted under the Communications Act and found guilty of dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service.' A separate BBC story notes that two other people in England were arrested and cautioned for sharing Wi-Fi uninvited.

Invitations

[$uperjay]

If you leave your access point open, you are inviting people to use it. If you don't want people to use your access point, put a password on it.

Re:He asked to use the network

[tinkerghost]

You really don't pay any attention to the details of the protocols do you?

He *tried* the door handle. The door opened. Does this mean he had an automatic right to go inside?

According to the RFC's governing DHCP, yes he does have an automatic right to use the service. Per the standards, it is the responsibility of the server owner to restrict access. The failure of the server owner to lock down the DHCP server no more changes the proper useage of the protocol than a store owner forgetting to lock the door & flip the sign at closing time. The DHCP client asks for & receives permission/configuration details. A customer walks into a business with an open door. Both are default allow scenarios, you don't knock on the door of a business, you try the door & walk in if it's open.

Re:Crime to use open wifi?

[drewzhrodague]

There is no 'invitation'.

Actually, there is. Your access-point broadcasts it's SSID, and an invitation for clients to connect -- about 10 times per second (IIRC). This is part of the specification. Most modern APs will allow you to change some of these parameters, including to prevent SSID broadcasts. Otherwise, most APs do actually invite clients that are within range to connect. Most of them, signal permitting, will do just that.

Re:2005 story

[kt0157]

Except for the recent cautions.

Tip: don't accept a caution in the UK. The police in most cases are just trying to bully in order to get their "detected crime" statistic up (this is the GOSPLAN metric by which the police are being judged in the UK). Chances are if you push back and get assertive they will cave. They are like an insurance company that automatically rejects all claims, then offers 50% settlements, then eventually pays out to persistent people.

Re:In other news

[kt0157]

http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_artic le/article1668405.ece [timesonline.co.uk]

£85 fine for using the bathroom at a filling station without buying gas.

Re:Open AP?

[Dragonslicer]

Or are we talking about legal system where one does not need to prove suspect to be guilty beyond reasonable doubt in order to convict him?

If it's a civil case about copyright infringement, then yes we are.

Re:Open AP?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not possible to "accidentally" set up a DNS server or web server to offer content (maybe you could offer the wrong content through misconfiguration)

Yes, it is possible, and it is not at all uncommon. You might want to look into "Google hacks". People have gone to court over this and lost: It is legal to access unprotected web content, even if the server owner did not intend to make it public.