If you shout, I can't help hearing it

This story about a man who was arrested in Illinois for piggy-backing on another person's Wi-Fi signal caught my eye because I do it all the time. The man was sitting in his parked car on a public street using his laptop when he was arrested. He was fined $250 and sentenced to a year's probation.

Now, it seems to me this is insane.

I travel frequently with my laptop. Usually, when I boot it up when I am staying at a friend's house, the laptop automatically recognizes a nearby Wi-Fi signal from a nearby house (if the friend doesn't have Wi-Fi) and goes online without my even being aware of it. In fact, I've found that there are very few places where you don't find an active Wi-Fi signal. One of those happens to be my mother-in-law's house. When I go there and want to get on the net, I usually hop in my car, drive two or three doors down the street, and turn on my computer. There's almost always a signal nearby.

This does no harm to the person I'm piggy-backing on. It does not even touch his computer at all, with the activity being confined to his router. While it may in theory slow his own response time while I am using his signal, the effect is imperceptible. I've never noticed any difference in response time when I have three or four computers accessing my Wi-Fi signal as compared with a single computer. And, further, I have no way (that I know how to effect) of eavesdropping on anything the owner of the signal is doing.

The person whose signal I am accessing could very easily protect himself if he did not want someone else piggybacking on his signal. Every router I've seen comes with easy instructions on how to protect the Wi-Fi signal with a password so others can't access it. The people I am piggybacking on obviously took no steps to do so, and I think it's reasonable to infer from that that they did not care if someone piggybacked on their signal (or at least did not care enough to protect themselves). Obviously, I did not take any active steps to break their password, since they didn't even try to protect the signal with one. There's no breaking and entry here.

So the fact is, I am sitting perfectly legally in a public place, or in my friend's house. The Wi-Fi signal from someone nearby has invaded (I don't mean that in a derogatory sense) my space. The person who is sending that signal has taken no steps to protect it from being used. I have taken no steps to hack into a protected system. I am not eavesdropping on private communications. No harm is done to anyone. And, frankly, I didn't do anything other than turning on my own computer to effect the connection. The link could have been established without my even being aware of it. [I'll note here that occasionally, even in my own house, my next door neighbor's signal is stronger than my own Wi-Fi signal when I'm in a far corner of the house. On those occasions, my laptop will sign on to the neighbor's signal without my being aware of it, and against my wishes.]

I don't see why that should make me a criminal. If it does, something is wrong with the law.

Is it illegal for me to overhear it when the next door neighbor shouts to his dog outside his front door while I'm sitting on my back porch? It seems to me the situation is roughly analogous.


I'd be interested in hearing counter-arguments.