Several newssites reported and linked to an article of DeStandaard newspaper (subscription required) describing the sentence of a wireless drifter.
On the 7th of April we reported the case of a 22-year old man that got arrested for using the open access point (Security4all) sitting in his car.
Last week, that person was convicted under the Belgian (Hacking) Telecom law, even if he used an unsecure wifi network. He was found guilty and could have gotten up to three years of jailtime. But the judge (luckily) suspended his sentence.
A lot of people commented on this case, for example on the ZDnet.be website. There were several points in this case.
The first one: is the owner of the network responsible for securing his network? In Belgium, you can get a fine for not locking your car. But not for not securing your wifi network.
The second one: does casually surfing on the access point of your neighbour merit a possible jailtime of up to three years? There are a lot of real crimes that often only get up to 6 months of jail.
I think it's clearly wrong to illegally use the wifi of others and a person should just get fined for this kind of action. But jail time should be reserved for real crimes. If the suspect uses the open network to transmit child pornography of to hack websites, that's a whole other matter. But let's not open that can of worms.
Matthias Dobbelaere from the University of Ghent wrote a whitepaper on all the aspects and legal references related to accessing (unsecured) wifi networks that are not your own. A must read!!
If you need free wireless access that bad, there are several legal possibilities. Don't break the law.
Related posts:
- Is it dangerous to know the most popular hotspots?
- Looking for Hotspots in Antwerp
- First court case for wifi stealing in Belgium
- Belgian Wireless drifter arrested
- Karmetasploit 3 documentation available. Karmetasploit = KARMA + Metasploit 3
- Forget wardriving, now you have warcarting and warballooning
- Netgear provides alternative opensource router
- Wireless Auditing Toolkits
- Rogue access point at Dutch Airport
- New version of coWPAtty 4.3 and some wireless tips
- HowTo extend your WiFi range
- Ultimate Geek Shirt
- 50% of Belgian Wifi networks are unprotected
- Public Wifi at Blackhat and how to defend yourself
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1 comments:
You say let's not open that can of worms. But I think when it comes to Law making, we really need to.
While I don't think it's right to give a prison sentence to someone simply surfing, if it comes to thinks like Child Porn, then I do.
So maybe they need to elaborate their laws, or add different clauses. One for using someone else's WiFi connection, and one for using a WiFi connection for illegal activity?
But in my honest opinion, open wan = free for all.
In the UK, if a WiFi connection isn't secured, it's fair game. If you leave your network open, it's assumed you don't mind people connecting to it.
If it's illegal to join open networks, then it should, like you said, be illegal to leave a network open. But I think this is silly, because it would make things awkward for companies like Coffee shops.
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