On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 10:43:45 +0100, Alex Heney <me8@privacy.net>
wrote:

>On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 10:08:10 +0100, The Todal in message
><news:3krljuFvksnvU1@individual.net> wrote:
>
>> I often wondered whether it was legal to do so, having had neighbours hijack
>> my connection, and having discovered that my own kids were sometimes
>> inadvertently hijacking a neighbour's connection.
>>
>> Yet another way for law abiding citizens to find themselves in breach of the
>> law, then:
>>
>
>About bloody time!
>
>I have been arguing that this was against the law for years, and always
>get met with the response "where is the case law then".
>
>And it isn't a way for law abiding citizens to find themselves in breach of
>the law. It has to be done knowingly before it is illegal.
>
>When you are sitting in a car piggybacking on whatever open network you can
>find, that is obviously knowingly accessing without authorisation.

Not necessarily.

I know of several people who not only are aware that their broadband
connections are being piggy backed, but actually encourage it. This
guy does exactly the same thing

http://tinyurl.com/a7rsq

Its one way of spreading internet availablilty in small communities
where not everyone wants to invest in their own ISP account, although
I'm not sure whether the guys doing the "providing" are breaking the
T&CS of their own contract with their ISP.

It seems to me it would only be an offence if the person hijacking the
connection *knew* that their access was unauthorised. If a wireless
network is wide open from a security point of view, I wonder whether
you could mount a defence on the basis that you assumed it was done
intentionally (which, as I say above does happen), and had no reason
to assume otherwise. As I understand it, a prosecution would have to
prove that you knew it *wasn't* authorised, which isn't immediately
obvious if the security is wide open or non-existent

Brian