In article ,
Bill Kearney wrote:

My home system is "1540 Jackson Ave" which is my address. The
assumption is that someone wanting to use my system can bang on the
door and ask permission. My office SSID uses the company name.

Which raises the question, if someone uses your access point without
permission are you within your rights to do whatever you please with the
packets (and their contents) you detect?

Seems fair, steal my airwaves and I'll steal your data in return.

As far as the FCC is concerned, I suspect that the usual "third party
reception" rules would apply. If the communication is transmitted
over the airwaves but is not intended for you, you're permitted to
intercept the communication but *not* to make gainful personal use of
what you overhear.

There was one company which tried to prosecute some local "wardrivers"
who had publicized the fact that the company was running an open
wireless network. The FCC not only refused to pursue their complaint
(pointing out that the company had created the problem and failed to
mitigate it by turning on WEP), but cited the company for running an
illegal Part 15 network (they were using external high-power
amplifiers on their APs).

I'm reasonably sure that any criminal actions you implement with the
use of such data (e.g. making any unauthorized access to a protected
computer system, etc.) would *NOT* seen as legitimate by The Powers
That Be, even if you gained knowledge of that data by scarfing it off
of your own access point during an unauthorized use thereof.

As I understand it, there isn't any standard interpretation (even in
under U.S. laws) as to what rights-of-usage apply to an open access
point, in the absence of a statement by the AP's owner as to what the
rules are. The FCC doesn't appear to consider this aspect of the
wireless problem to be part of their jurisdiction.

I believe that in some areas, using such an AP without having received
some explicit form of permission is considered to be a tort (a civil
wrong) and the owner could file suit against you. Using the AP to
break into a computer network (e.g. accessing files, etc.) could
easily qualify as a prosecutable "computer crime".

I've read that some municipalities have passed a rule which says that
the act of setting up an insecure access point, and broadcasting
beacons "to the wind", counts as something akin to an open
invitation... enough so that the use of the AP without explicit
permission isn't considered a crime, or (I think) even a tort. This
might especially be true in the case of those APs/routers which come
with a WEP password pre-installed (the 2Wire models are one example)
and in which the owner must explicitly disable the security feature if
s/he decides that this is appropriate.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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