wardriving a crime in Florida?

[D. Joe]

On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 08:44:51PM -0500, Don Erickson wrote:

> I frankly don't see why wifi networks that advertise their existence and 
> give out free IPs are viewed ANY differently than any other internet 
> service that allows access.  

I think this goes in a direction opposite of what you're getting
at, but I'd say the difference is that an internet service that
*allows* access is doing a lot less to actively publicize its
availability.  An open wifi port ADVERTIZES its availability, it
BROADCASTS it.  It pretty much goes and and says "USE ME" and
then when a DHCP client obliges with a request, it ACTIVELY
fills that request with a lease.  

Sure, if someone has advertizing turned off, or has WAP or other
security enabled, has DHCP turned off or has MAC filtering on,
and someone spoofs or steals or guess and IP number to connect,
that's a different thing.  The intent of the AP operator is much
more clear in that case.  

> The only explanation that I can think of is that it all
> happens within one legal jurisdiction with wifi.  Sort of like
> looking under the lamppost for the missing keys.

A very cogent point.  Network services like open web proxies or
SMTP proxies or whatever can be accessed from just about
anywhere in the Internetted world.  The RF portion of an open Wi
Fi is limited pretty much by the range of the radio.

-- 
D. Joe          http://www.etrumeus.com/~deejoe
"DRM [...] is to copyright law as a machine gun on                                          
a motion detector is to real estate law"  -- Don Marti