Florida Man Arrested for Using Open Wi-Fi Access Point

In what has to be one of the most perfect examples of technical ignorance and technophobia, a man in Tampa Bay, Florida has been arrested for parking outside a house and making use of an open Wi-Fi network. The story in the St. Petersburg Times is here.

Aside from the sheer lunacy of the charge itself, I strongly recommend reading the article for an example of yellow journalism. Some of the scare words used are phenomenal:

• Police say Benjamin Smith III, 41, used his Acer brand laptop to hack into Dinon’s wireless Internet network.
• But experts believe there are scores of incidents occurring undetected, sometimes to frightening effect.
• People have used the cloak of wireless to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats
• “I’ll guarantee there are tons of people out there who have their wireless network being exploited but have no idea,” Breeden said.

I could go on with the language in this article, but I’ll stop. Clearly this piece is intended to scare the technology novice away from Wi-Fi and breathlessly describe a new horror sweeping the nation. It’s some pretty weak journalism.

The real kicker with respect to the arrest has to be that the guy who owned the wireless access point knew that he should encrypt his signal and employ a password, but simply didn’t bother:

The problem, security experts say, is many people do not take the time or are unsure how to secure their wireless access from intruders. Dinon knew what to do. “But I never did it because my neighbors are older.”

So what have we learned today from the St. Petersburg Times?

• Anybody who uses an open Wi-Fi access point is a criminal of the worst sort
• Those who own Wi-Fi access points are excused for any element of these crimes they apparently enable not only on the basis of ignorance of the technical means of protecting that infrastructure but also by sheer laziness
• You shouldn’t worry about exploits of your network infrastructure if your neighbors are “older” people, because “older” people don’t know anything about technology

With more pieces like this one we’re likely to see more public support for bills put forward by incumbent telcos opposing municipal Wi-Fi projects. If the general, uninformed public can be convinced that Wi-Fi is the domain of child pornographers and identity thieves, then grassroots support for the opposition to muni Wi-Fi will be a synch.