Hooking up to unsecured WiFi in VA? You might be breaking the law.
For some reason, today I thought about the news story about the Michigan man who was prosecuted for wardriving, and it made me wonder if the same sort of thing was illegal in my current state of residence, Virginia. While the answer is a definite maybe, there are some things you can do to make sure you don’t run afoul of the law. Here’s the scoop.
Virginia law makes it illegal to “willfully obtain computer services without authority.” The law defines “computer services” pretty broadly, including internet access, email service, text messaging, and pretty much anything else that requires a CPU cycle or network bandwidth.
This statute, like many others dealing with computer crimes, suffers from ambiguity because of the rapidly changing pace of technology. For example, its pretty clear that you’re “willfully obtaining computer services” if you hack a WEP-encrypted wireless router or take some physical action to connect to an unencrypted one (like clicking on the SSID and hitting “connect” in your WiFi GUI). Its much less clear if you set your iPhone to automatically connect to any unsecured connection.
The “authority” bit is where it really gets murky though, because it depends on a third party’s state of mind. If your next door neighbor leaves her WiFi connection unencrypted, does that mean she wants anyone to be able to access it or that she wants it to be secure, but doesn’t know how to do it? These are questions that a court would answer, but if you’re getting that far, that means you’ve already been charged with the crime.
In a nutshell, be careful. If you’re surfing at a coffee shop that advertises free WiFi, you’re probably safe; if you’re decrypting someone else’s WEP, you’re probably not. For your neighbor’s WiFi, its a good idea to ask beforehand.
Think of radio stations – could WTOP say, “everyone can listen to our station except Ryan – despite the fact that we are transmitting our signal into his house.” If they had an encrypted sideband running on the same carrier (i.e. a Muzak station) that, to gain the encyption key you needed a subscription, then I would agree that they have made reasonable efforts to protect their “product”. However, if they tried to limit access to their unencrypted morning traffic update, (which I can demodulated by readily available commercial products) I would think the radio station would be in the wrong. You can think of an unencrypted router the same way. Your neighbor’s router is transmitting information into your apartment. They have the ability to reduce the transmitter power on the router, but opt not to. They have the ability to encrypt, but opt not to. I still wouldn’t want to be the test subject in a court room, but an interesting topic.It is an interesting question. The point you are making is a good one (i.e. having open WiFi comes with a presumption that access is authorized). However, there are the cases where a technophobe gets a wireless router with their cable service, doesn’t intend for anyone to access their router, but doesn’t know that they’re leaving it open. In this day and age its probably getting ever rarer, but it makes the “authority” part of the statute a little more ambiguous.Leave your response!
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