how-to block ads
|
slash616
Premium
join:2002-05-16
Holland, MI
| Re: I love to war-drive! who doesn't! Show me a legal precedent that supports this. One of my best friends (Paul Timmins) was charged with a federal misdemeanor for connecting to an access point he mistakened for a starbucks hotspot for checking his e-mail. (Lowes was next door to the starbucks).
If you trespass on my property, I have every right to record you, just because I don't put up "no trespassing" signs does not suggest I allow trespassing on my property. | |
|  
calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| Re: I love to war-drive! who doesn't! Well, gee, according to the article you linked to, your friend Paul Timmins is charged because he supplied some of the Wi-Fi gear AND KNEW OF THE INTENDED CRIMINAL ACT.
In any event, read my comment again. I said "if you are deliberately leaving your AP open for others to use...." Lowes wasn't deliberately leaving their AP open.
As for legal precedents, the legal field always draws precedents from what has gone before. If you invite people on your property, or build sidewalks so they'll come on your property, they aren't trespassers.
If you leave your front yard unfenced and someone strolls over and sits down and starts talking on their cellphone, they aren't trespassing until they receive notice you don't want them there and they refuse to leave.
And you still need to read my response yet again--I didn't say you'd be in trouble for "recording" the packets passing your network (in part because if that's all you did, no one would ever know) but that you would be in trouble for BOTH sniffing the data AND using it illegally. Your argument that you're entitled to criminally use data that traverses your open network is as valid as a fast-food manager claiming he has a right to use credit card data that was left behind in a purse in his store. No merit at all.
Face it--your "friend" Paul Timmins was arrested and charged because the cops thought (and apparently still think) he was in cahoots with hackers who wrote and used a program to steal credit card data--not because he "accidentally" stumbled onto a Lowes AP next to Starbucks. The weakness of your argument is highlighted by the differences from the article you linked to at:
»www.securityfocus.com/news/8835
Frankly, I'm tired of people getting caught doing bad things and then trying to fault the law by claiming they were innocent.
BTW, if you come into my unfenced front yard or store and have the intent to commit a criminal act (such as window peeping, shoplifting, or burglary) they you ARE a trespasser--reasonable consent is not presumed to have been given to those with criminal intent.
See? While Wi-Fi may not yet have been covered in great detail in the law, your not-very-clever excuses and evasions are no different than those used by common criminals for ages--and the courts won't be spending huge amounts of time believing them, either.
Finally, think what your Mother would say. She would no more approve you (or Paul) accompanying guys probing an AP for credit card theft and then giving them Wi-Fi equipment than she would approve you accompanying guys scoping out a burglary and then giving them gloves. The law doesn't either. You may be as fascinated with hackers as some folks are with gangsters, but when you cross the line and start assisting them, you become a crook. Keep your nose clean and hang out with the right people, slash.
calvoiper
--
VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! | |
| |
slash616
Premium
join:2002-05-16
Holland, MI
| Re: I love to war-drive! who doesn't! said by calvoiper  :And you still need to read my response yet again--I didn't say you'd be in trouble for "recording" the packets passing your network (in part because if that's all you did, no one would ever know) but that you would be in trouble for BOTH sniffing the data AND using it illegally. Your argument that you're entitled to criminally use data that traverses your open network is as valid as a fast-food manager claiming he has a right to use credit card data that was left behind in a purse in his store. No merit at all. Agreed, and not at all what I meant. First off, the point I was trying to make was that it's trivial for anyone to capture wireless traffic. People who make use of someone's access point with default configurations to get "free wireless" are just as vulnerable as the people they are stealing from. Their traffic (presumably with the individual who started the thread) will be traveling over the air unencrypted.
And yes, it would be illegal if I were to use the sniffed data for illegal purposes. However, that is not my intent.
The reason I sniff the traffic coming through the access point I purposely leave open is to:
1. see who, if anyone, is using my connection
2. what they are using it for.
Someone else noted that they use SSH tunneling -- good for them. I'd prefer more would do it that way, because if they are SSH tunnelling to a cracked server, I might be able to tip off the owner. If they are SSH tunneling into a system they own, good for them -- their source IP address won't be mine, and I still have the SSH server's IP address incase I want to take further legal action.
The point is, The moment someone commits a crime using my internet connection through my wireless network, I have evidence. Do I honestly care if someone uses the AP to check their e-mail while in the neighborhood? Not really. But, regardless of the leecher's intent, it's still technically breaking the law.
said by calvoiper :Face it--your "friend" Paul Timmins was arrested and charged because the cops thought (and apparently still think) he was in cahoots with hackers who wrote and used a program to steal credit card data--not because he "accidentally" stumbled onto a Lowes AP next to Starbucks. [...] Well, gee, according to the article you linked to, your friend Paul Timmins is charged because he supplied some of the Wi-Fi gear AND KNEW OF THE INTENDED CRIMINAL ACT. This was the article I intended to link to:
»www.securityfocus.com/news/9281
Believe what you want, but I know much more about what happened than you do, and Paul most certainly did not have anything to do with that crime. The only reason he was charged was because he was originally misidentified due to piss-poor surveillance by the FBI. I only brought it up because the charge he did plead guilty to did set a legal precedent. | |
| | |
calvoiper
join:2003-03-31
Belvedere Tiburon, CA
| Re: I love to war-drive! who doesn't! Well, the second article is more favorable to Timmins than the first, but in a way it explains even more with this Timmins quote:
"I tried to discourage Adam several times," says Timmins. "He kept saying, 'They won't catch us.' I'm like, 'Whatever. Don't do it here.'"
He was part of the initial intrusion, he knew how that information was being misused, and he did nothing. In many states under traditional law that would satisfy the definition of conspiracy. Timmins got a more favorable plea (misdemeanor instead of felony) because he was less culpable, but under even traditional law, he was culpable.
Let's look at a comparable non-Wi-Fi situation. Paul and Adam are out riding bikes one night and, without realizing it, ride down what they think is an alley but is really a private driveway. Paul leaves his fingerprints several places in grease where they last a long time. They find a drinking fountain and drink some water. Then, they see a bunch of supplies lying around and realize they've found an unintentionally unlocked entrance to a construction company's storage yard. They leave. Six months later, Adam and Brian come back and start helping themselves to stored equipment. Paul checks out their loads and tries to discourage them, but makes no effort to report them or even to anonymously inform the construction company that they're being ripped off through an open gate.
The cops run a stakeout, check the prints, and initially think Paul is in on the theft. Later, after everyone is charged and they learn what else went on, they offer Paul the opportunity to plead to a misdemeanor trespass count as he, while aware of the theft, was not really part of it.
Viewing the above situation, I'd say justice was done in both cases.
Now, I may sound skeptical--but that's partially because I can't really believe that Timmins really mistook Lowe's for Starbucks, in part because Starbucks isn't "next door" to Lowe's in Southfield, it's across Telegraph Avenue, which is a multi lane thoroughfare that resembles a freeway more than it does a street.
Overall, there's just too much "stretching" of the truth going on here. Every time there seems to be something exculpatory for Timmins, he admits at least knowing what was going on.
But, have a chuckle about this over drinks at Ginopolis down at 12 and Middlebelt. I was drinking there before Paul Timmins was born, back in the days when it was a converted gas station before they tore it down and built the "new" one that's there now.
calvoiper
--
VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies! | |
| | | |
|
