Re: Interlopers on the WLAN

["Frank O'Dwyer" <fod () brd ie>]

I think it ought to make a difference if an attempt has been made to
secure the network. Otherwise you are expecting people to read your mind
as to whether you intend the network to be private or not. For all its
faults, WEP is at least a fairly large clue that the network is intended
to be private.

But if you haven't even turned WEP on, then who's to say whether your
network is supposed to be for employees only, or an access hotspot for
anyone who passes by. It's not like you left your door unlocked or
something, it's more like you hung a big orange sign on your door saying
"welcome!". The very fact that you're broadcasting the ESSID with no
security measures whatsoever could be reasonably construed as a public
invitation to connect.

Similarly if you had a publicly accessible system which popped up
"welcome to the foo system" and logged you straight in with no password,
(rather than "this system is private property and unauthorised access is
not permitted", followed by a login prompt) then you would (and should)
have a tough time pressing charges against anyone who connected.

Cheers,
Frank

On Tue, 2002-11-05 at 08:23, Philip J. Koenig wrote:
> Please forgive if this has been covered before, I'm not reading the 
> group daily these days.
>
> Is it reasonable to assume that those who access WLANs without the 
> permission of the owner are violating the same cybercrime laws that 
> apply to any unauthorized access of a computer network?
>
> Some have recently argued this is not the case if someone doesn't 
> "enable the security features", but personally I don't see the 
> distinction between this kind of activity and anything normally 
> prohibited by laws such as California Penal Code section 502a and 
> various other cybercrime laws.  It doesn't seem to me that the law 
> makes a distinction about whether the network in question was secured 
> or not. (what does 'secured' mean anyway?)


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