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A quiet day
Jan. 7th, 2007 07:35 pmI did nothing exciting or notable other than making dinner: salad, corn bread, chili, and jell-o. ;p
Did routine animal chores, answered e-mail, read parts of the Sunday papers.
One brief article noted an arrest in Love's Park (a suburb of Rockford) of a man who was sitting in his car outside a non-profit agency with a laptop computer, using their wireless internet connection. Police charged him with "accessing a private computer system without permission from the operator" which is apparently against state law. He did not fight the charges. A judge fined him $250 and sentenced him to a year of court supervision.
I'm inclined to agree that this sort of activity is unethical. It's the same as hooking your garden hose up to the neighbor's house and watering your grass or washing your car on their water bill rather than your own. OK if they give you permission, but the fact that there wasn't a padlock on their water spigot doesn't excuse you for doing it without asking permission first. Whether existing laws can really be used to prosecute it though, I have questions. The law forbidding users to "access a private computer system" was written to stop hackers from breaking into computers. Stealing bandwidth from someone's wireless router without their knowledge does not really constitute breaking into any computer system.
Most routers can be locked down in several different ways, so there is really no excuse for allowing this sort of thing on your dime. That's what it amounts to. Since DSL and other access agreements are often limited to a certain bandwidth or a certain number of bytes transferred per month or week, unauthorized users can indeed be eating your lunch. Oddly enough, most home users of wireless LANs don't seem to take this seriously or for that matter even realize that it is possible, and neither do many businesses and organizations. I suppose there's nothing wrong with giving away wireless access to anyone who happens by if you feel like doing it, but at least be aware of what is happening rather than blissfully unaware of the implications.
Oh, and while we were sitting at dinner, rain started spattering on the kitchen skylights and roof. At first we didn't recognize the source of noise. Both of us thought something was boiling on the stove, but it was all turned off. It rained hard for about ten minutes. Neither of us thought there had been any chance of rain in the forecast, so we turned on the NOAA radio to see. They were declaring a "chance of flurries" for tonight. At the time, it was snowing in Wisconsin, they said. Since the temperature here was still 40° F., flurries were pretty unlikely. Another case of the NWS looking at their computer simulations instead of the actual conditions being reported.
Did routine animal chores, answered e-mail, read parts of the Sunday papers.
One brief article noted an arrest in Love's Park (a suburb of Rockford) of a man who was sitting in his car outside a non-profit agency with a laptop computer, using their wireless internet connection. Police charged him with "accessing a private computer system without permission from the operator" which is apparently against state law. He did not fight the charges. A judge fined him $250 and sentenced him to a year of court supervision.
I'm inclined to agree that this sort of activity is unethical. It's the same as hooking your garden hose up to the neighbor's house and watering your grass or washing your car on their water bill rather than your own. OK if they give you permission, but the fact that there wasn't a padlock on their water spigot doesn't excuse you for doing it without asking permission first. Whether existing laws can really be used to prosecute it though, I have questions. The law forbidding users to "access a private computer system" was written to stop hackers from breaking into computers. Stealing bandwidth from someone's wireless router without their knowledge does not really constitute breaking into any computer system.
Most routers can be locked down in several different ways, so there is really no excuse for allowing this sort of thing on your dime. That's what it amounts to. Since DSL and other access agreements are often limited to a certain bandwidth or a certain number of bytes transferred per month or week, unauthorized users can indeed be eating your lunch. Oddly enough, most home users of wireless LANs don't seem to take this seriously or for that matter even realize that it is possible, and neither do many businesses and organizations. I suppose there's nothing wrong with giving away wireless access to anyone who happens by if you feel like doing it, but at least be aware of what is happening rather than blissfully unaware of the implications.
Oh, and while we were sitting at dinner, rain started spattering on the kitchen skylights and roof. At first we didn't recognize the source of noise. Both of us thought something was boiling on the stove, but it was all turned off. It rained hard for about ten minutes. Neither of us thought there had been any chance of rain in the forecast, so we turned on the NOAA radio to see. They were declaring a "chance of flurries" for tonight. At the time, it was snowing in Wisconsin, they said. Since the temperature here was still 40° F., flurries were pretty unlikely. Another case of the NWS looking at their computer simulations instead of the actual conditions being reported.
