The Legalities of Wireless

By: Mr. Wilson on February 5, 2008
4 comments
Richard Bagby of Lincoln is all in a lather over the Journal Star's advice:
Stealing wireless Internet service from a neighbor is suggested in “A few serious and not-so-serious money-saving tips” (LJS, Jan. 31). That’s outright criminal. It’s not at all funny to list criminal activity as a way to save money, even if tongue in cheek. ... You owe the community an apology.
This may be a stupid question, but is it actually illegal to "steal" wireless internet service from a neighbor's unsecured network? Unethical, yes, but illegal? Does Nebraska have such a law on the books? Does this all fall under the broad definition of wiretapping? Regardless, if you don't have your network secured, shame on you.

Comments

See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.

Mr. T
February 5, 2008 at 3:06PM

I would be surprised if just using someone else’s wireless signal to surf the net was illegal. When people initiate a wireless connection and don’t secure it, they have or should have a reasonable expectation that people within proximity of the signal can access it.

Dave K
February 5, 2008 at 5:25PM

The LJS suggesting you use your neighbor’s wireless internet pales in comparison to them glorifying recreational alcohol consumption, as they also did last week.

The only time I would consider it stealing from your neighbor is if they have it secured and you hack into it.  If you’re going to argue that using your unsecured wireless connection is ‘stealing’, then I’m going to argue that you beaming your wireless signal to a place that I can reach it is an invasion of my privacy.

 

I doubt such a law is in the books.  States are far behind digital legislation, and I wouldn’t expect Nebraska to be ahead of the curve.

CP
February 5, 2008 at 7:15PM

If my recall of past news items is accurate, I believe that it is illegal in Florida, Colorado, Alaska, and a few other places.

Philisophically, I happen to agree completely with the article Karin posted. (She beat me to it.)

As a matter of practice, I happen to secure mine.

When I lived in a townhome community in Denver, I made it over a year of being broke and not being able to afford web access of my own by mooching off of the 5-7 unsecured wireless points I could see from my living room at any given moment. I felt like a fugitive from the law the entire time. I went out of my way to be polite about minimizing my bandwidth use to checking email, though there wasn’t much more to do on the internet in those days anyway…

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