No, but if you take some of the flowers from his yard, you are.

When you hack into someone's wi-fi and use it to get on the internet, you are using up bandwidth inside his house. You're not just grabbing electrons that he let out into the air, you are actually using up bandwidth and thus preventing him from being able to utilize it himself.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

THe way the law interprets use of unsecured networks is not unlike the way the law would view someone hotwiring cable TV by slipping a coax cable into an unused outlet.

You aren't paying for the access, its not yours to use (without permission).

The only difference between this and how I described stealing cable is the lack of jury rigging needed to pull it off.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Possibly a better analogy would be using your neighbor's garden hose without permission.

Sure, the hose is just laying out on the lawn. The spigot is outside where anyone can get to it and completely unprotected by any security devices. And let's even say the house has its own artesian well so you don't have to worry about increasing their water bill. Still, I think using their hose to water your lawn would be questionable.

Agreed. Even if you leave the door to your house unlocked, if someone enters without your permission, it's tresspassing.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

When my wireless card is detecting my network it also detects my neighbor's network. How dare he send his signal into my apartment, using my electrons to put the name of his network on my computer screen? I wanted to use those electrons for something else.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

You're just being deliberately obtuse now, aren't you?

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

I'm just pointing out that wireless internet is not entirely like a garden hose or a car.

If I weren't using a wireless network to full capacity I would let others use it. If anyone else doesn't feel the same way they can prevent others from using theirs easily enough.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

It's still their wireless network, and even if they're capable of putting a password on it they aren't required to, and common courtesy would still dictate that you should ask before using it.

But it's entirely like smelling flowers? Which do you think it's more like?

And if you don't want somebody else driving your car, you can prevent it easily enough (by locking the door).

The fact that you don't lock it doesn't mean you're giving permission for others to use it. And if others use it without getting your permission first, they're stealing.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

I might not know where it is. Common courtesy on their part would be to make it easier for others to tell that it's not open to the public by not allowing public access.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

Technically, the network isn't leaking anything. To access the network, you have to send signals yourself to carry on a two-way conversation with that network. Nothing is being "thrown away". That argument is even less valid that similiar arguments about stealing power "through the air".

While it would take a lot of rambling to explain the details, if you have a long stretch of property (we're talking a couple miles) it is possible to capacitively couple with a HV transmission line and steal power. It's been done and there have been court cases where the argument was the power company is leaking their field all over adjacent property and if they don't want someone to make use of it, they better shield it.

The courts did not buy that argument. The physics of that argument don't even hold up. Power lines don't radiate energy, save for a tiny little bit that is insignificant. If it were easy to radiate 60Hz, power lines wouldn't be very efficient as you'd be wasting wads of what you were trying to transmit. They do have an extended EM field around them, but that is not a radiation field. When one capacitively couples to that field, one *alters that field* to pull energy from the line. One is actively changing the system to cause it to transfer power.

Many people don't understand this, even those who should. One big scare tactic with HV power lines is to hold long fluorescent tubes under them and demonstrate a glow. Some of the big ones will do that. The claim is then that energy is leaking out, and just imagine what it will do to a human body etc. Well, the same principle applies. The tube is coupling to the ambient field and pulling energy out that wouldn't otherwise leak.

And likewise, when one accesses a wireless network, one is very actively altering the field so to speak by sending your own signals to cause the network to give you access and transfer your information back and forth.

Now where I would draw the line is with true leaks. That is, if you're just passively listening to things actually radiated, thrown away, then I don't hold that as theft or eavesdropping. But the law sees that differently, I think as well.

-Richard

So, the term cracker didn't come about because most of them were white?

Hmm, So the neighbor is emitting photons that are being intercepted by you through some means. The law varied depending on the frequency. IIRC, some freqs are illegal to intercept, such as some phones. Other frequencies are illegal to emit, such as x-rays, gamma rays, and visible light especially if it's been reflected off of certain parts of one's anatomy.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

It's not like smelling flowers and it's not like stealing a car.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

I'm not sure it's illegal for you to take internet from a neighbor who says it's okay. All you are doing is logging onto his local network to use his local resources. If you use the internet and he has not specifically say that you shall not, then any breaking of the ISP contract should be on him.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Some people might want to allow others to use their wireless networks. Should that be illegal just because someone who doesn't want to is doing it anyway?

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

Fun fact about computer networking: Access to a network is established by transmitting an explicit request for access to the network, followed by receipt of an explicit grant of access the network.

It seems to me that the real problem is that people are still far too enthusiastic about reasoning about computers by means of analogy, instead of recognizing that computers have their own paradigm and their own implications, which are not amenable to comparison with other, more familiar things like cars and houses and streets and flowers.

We can split legal hairs all afternoon, ladies and gents, Blind Justice has a full head of hairs being fed by the brainrot of reactionary legislation to work with.

Can we agree that the bottom line here is that boosting internet access on unsecure wireless is currently illegal?

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Sorry, Chuck, I don't think "common courtesy" is on your side on this one.

Default position is "not yours to use." Unless somebody tells you it's yours to use. And, no, neither your computer nor theirs counts as "somebody."

No, of course not - not on you, anyway, although they may be violating their provider's terms of service.

But you are insisting that you can assume they want to allow it, unless they explicitly deny it. You can't. You assume they don't allow it, unless they explicitly allow it.

Somebody can invite you into their house, and it's not illegal for you to then enter. But an unlocked door (or even a door standing wide open) does not constitute an invitation, and it is illegal for you to enter.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

I believe it depends on the situation. I'm pretty sure listening in on your neighbor's phone conversations is illegal in the USA, whereas using a police scanner is not. Assuming that's true, I'm not sure of the legal grounds for the distinction.

Perhaps its like smelling flowers through a garden hose from your car?

I'm confused. how do the dump trucks fit into all of this?

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"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

--Ambrose Bierce

http://threelittleboxes.com

Probably arbitrary legislation and common law jurisprudence.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Terrific, and that's generous of you.

But I think the conversation wasn't about giving away your bandwidth, but taking another's bandwidth without their permission.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

so i have a question.

how about reading or unencrypted information that is present in your own home?
like a transmitted signal?

say errant signals are infiltrating into your home,
would you have the authority to observe the signals?

i am not talking about transmitting and talking to say your neighbors wireless router or using a wifi connection.
but receiving a broadcast like from a satellite, radio station or what ever.
I wonder if there is a law that says that i cannot view information that has leaked into my home...

sometimes, i can hear my neighbors conversation on her cordless phone when i have my AM FM TV Shortwave radio on.

is it illegal to eaves drop? or just record it?

my neighbors wifi signal is super strong in my living room, can i use a spectrum analyzer and a packet sniffer to watch the data?

can i set up a dish and view the unencrypted satellite signals bombarding my house??


i really dont know.


hmmm...

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-work in progress--

The legal terminology is a "reasonable expectation of privacy."

Your neighbor, talking on his phone, as a reasonble expectation of privacy. That no longer holds, however, if he's out in his backyard, talking on the phone loudly, or worse, using a speakerphone, and you're in your backyard, laying in the sun, sipping tea, and taking all of it in.

Similarly, even though WEP is a cinch to crack, simply by using it, your neighbor has established a reasonable expectation of privacy, and if you then crack his stream and listen in, you're violating his privacy rights.

On the other hand, the jury's still out on whether or not he has a reasonable expectation of privacy is he's broadcasting in the clear. Personally, I think it's the same as a neighbor talking loudly in his backyard, but some would disagree.

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.

on a side note, i have FIOS (there is a single mode fiber optic line that runs directly to my house, it carries the phone, internet and TV on 3 seperate wavelengths of light) at my home with a 20 megabit connection.
i do believe that it is against the TOS to let anybody but me use it.

so technically, i cant even let my in laws connect to the wireless router when they come to visit.

but i don't think they (verizon) really care.

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-work in progress--

I would say no. It may be entering your house, but it's a signal. If you had an antenna that allowed you to pick up very weak signals, weaker then you would otherwise be able to detect that are now because you can detect them' entering your house', should you read those signals as well? No. It's an invasion of privacy. You can choose not to view them, so don't. It's not yours.

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Sorry, but it is more like smelling flowers and less like using water, provided you pay a flat rate for your internet service.

If I use one gallon of water from your hose, you will pay for that gallon. But if I use 1kb of bandwidth, or inhale X molecules of sent from your flowers, I haven't denied you the use of anything. It's possible that I *might* start downloading a DVD and thereby degrade your use of the network. It's possible that I might have a giant nose and suction up all the smell from your flowers, but it isn't necessarily the case.

Nobody is preventing anybody from doing anything. If you don't want someone to use your network, do not give them access.

Look at BAUT. It's a web site. What does it mean to be a web site? It means that a server is listening on port 80 of a particular IP address, and when I send certain packets to that server, it sends me a response. How silly would it be to claim that, "whoa! I only wanted Jay Utah to be able to read this web page. All you other people are hacking and stealing and costing me money!!"

Similarly, what does it mean to be a wireless access point? It means that a device is listening on a particular frequency. How silly of you to complain when a device that you set up and configured is used for a purpose in accordance with that configuration. If you don't want someone visiting your website, then configure it accordingly. If you don't want someone using your WAP, then configure it accordingly. If that's too hard for you, then don't run a web server or a WAP.

Note: I'm not suggesting that anybody go out and connect to an open wifi. There are plenty of things in the world that you shouldn't do, even if they were legal. But I am demanding that people use language that appropriately describes the situation. It's not stealing. It's not hacking. The worse thing you can call it is taking advantage of your neighbor's laziness.

i have always been of the mind that if it ain't encrypted and the information is inside of yours or my house, then is its ok for you or me to observe.

(not to forget that utilizing a wireless network is not just passively observing, but being an active part of the stream which involves transmitting and receiving, so in essence, your wireless signal is infiltrating the space where the wireless gate or AP is).

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-work in progress--

But it's more like the latter, provided you don't. Don't make assumptions.

Oh, yes, you might thereby degrade my use of the network. Just use your own network and not mine, and you don't need to worry about it.

Yes, you are. And, again, let's drop the passive "don't give them access" when what you're really insisting on is an active "prevent them from getting access."

Yes, it would be silly, because the purpose of putting a server on the Internet is to serve the Internet.

No, because the purpose of putting a WAP in your house is to serve your house. Not your neighbors'.

And, when you say it would be "silly" to accuse someone of accessing your server of hacking, you're presuming they're either retrieving data that you placed on the server or putting data on the server for you. What if, instead, they are using your Internet connection and your server for their own purposes, that have nothing to do with you? Would that not be, in fact, "hacking and stealing and costing [you] money," and is that not, in fact, what happens when somebody else uses your WAP for their own purposes?

If your neighbor's too lazy to lock his car, driving off in it is still stealing.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2009 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

If my neighbor is too lazy to lock his car and I drive off with it, he's denied access to his car. If he's too lazy to stop me from using his bandwidth he's not denied access to it because he can take it back at any time.

When someone sets up an unsecure network near me he's actively giving me Internet access. He's using a configuration that specifically allows others to use it. He can disallow it at any time. I see no reason to assume no usage to be the default rule.

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Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.