Unsecured wireless Internet

February 27, 2007
8:47 am
Posted in: Politics

A man in Alaska has his laptop taken by the police because he was using the local public library’s wireless Internet connection. The connection wasn’t encrypted or otherwise protected. It was being freely broadcast.

They’re considering criminal charges for “theft of service.”

It’s a good thing he didn’t go inside and try to read any books. Sure they’re sitting there on the shelves just begging for you to leaf through them, but that would be stealing. What do you think this is, the library?

This is madness… if a connection is being broadcast openly, it should be fair game. If you don’t want it to be publicly accessible, encrypt it.

Mark Jaquith

Hi. I’m Mark Jaquith (JAKE-with). I make the WordPress publishing platform and am a freelance WordPress consultant. This is my personal blog. You can subscribe to my feed or follow me on Twitter and Google+.

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