$400, 40 hrs. of community service, and 6 mo. probation
This post was published 2 years 5 months 7 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.Who should be point fingers at first – the barbershop owner, the police officer, or the judge? A volunteer firefighter receives a somewhat irritating / harsh reminder that we’re living in paranoid times.
A Michigan cop, who’d obviously been hit over the head with a billy club one time too many, levied criminal charges against a man who used an open, public Wi-Fi network outside the cafe that was running it.
The dastardly computer criminal, Sam Peterson II, of Cedar Springs, Mich., chose to pay a $400 fine, do 40 hours of community service, and stay on probation six months.
Peterson has no criminal record. He’s a 39-year-old toolmaker, volunteer firefighter, and secretary of a bagpipe band.
Personally, I’ve gotten to the point that when open networks exist, that means that a) owners are too uneducated to know the perils of forgetting to add security, or b) network owners want to share.
This story is just ridiculous! Come on… What happen to warnings? Not like the guy knew he was breaking the law! If i were a judge I would just throw this case out.
I leave my wifi open for two reasons, 1) I don’t care who uses the internet 2) just another way the RIAA can’t prove it was me, if they show up on my door step. :)
He didn’t exactly use illegal methods to get onto the network did he? Why is it a crime? If we find say, $100 on the floor, it’s not exactly a crime if we keep it, is it? If a network is accessible and advertised and we use a simple hotspot scanner to access it which you can buy anywhere in the uk or us, that can’t be seen as illegal… ?
I keep my network open as I wish to share. I did get annoyed when teachers at a school behind my garden started using it over their own network, though, so I banned their MAC addresses.
This is why I do not broadcast an SSID on my wireless network.