The first case of this I have seen:
Police have arrested a man for using someone else’s wireless Internet network in one of the first criminal cases involving this fairly common practice.
Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony.
Police say Smith admitted using the Wi-Fi signal from the home of Richard Dinon, who had noticed Smith sitting in an SUV outside Dinon’s house using a laptop computer.
The practice is so new that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement doesn’t even keep statistics, according to the St. Petersburg Times, which reported Smith’s arrest this week.
Innocuous use of other people’s unsecured Wi-Fi networks is common. But experts say that illegal use often goes undetected, such as people sneaking on others’ networks to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information, and send death threats. Security experts say people can prevent such access by turning on encryption or requiring passwords, but few bother or even know how to do so.
I am sure we can expect more of this in the future.
washerdreyer
The article is quite vague, does anyone know more about this? For instance, what are the elements of the crime he is being charged with, and is it a crime under Florida law (which is what I assume from references to local police and the fact that most criminal law is local) or under Federal law?