I believe this bloke was outside the house...and the owner got suspicious...went to talk to him, man closed laptop when he saw the owner coming.....owner asked him what he was doing, he said nothing...owner went back to house.
do this three times in the course of an afternoon....man still outside in car...looks suspicious...
Owner calls police, police arrest man.....(they probably would do that in ANY neighbourhood) I'm not sure what the charges were. Not even sure he was arrested for wifi theft.
Either way, internet newswires pick it up and turn it into "man outside house, minding his own business, checking email, 20 squad cars pull up and arrest him for illegal wifi theft"
edit: just checked, he was arrested for unauthorised access to a computer network" (3rd degree felony). Unless he was d/loading kiddie porn or something just as evil, I would love to be his lawyer.
Unauthorised is the key here....base station broadcasts ssid (invitation), man's laptop asks for dhcp addy (request) , base station issues dhcp addy (request granted). Nothing unauthorised there...
The argument may lie whether the owner of the base station intended folks to park outside and leech, and that would boil down to "why didnt he RTFM" and apply a good wep/wpa password....
From florida's state law, which applies to this case
815.03 (1) "Access" means to approach, instruct, communicate with, store data in, retrieve data from, or otherwise make use of any resources of a computer, computer system, or computer network.
Yup...guilty of "access"
815.06 (1) Whoever willfully, knowingly, and without authorization: (a) Accesses or causes to be accessed any computer, computer system, or computer network commits an offense against computer users. (2) Whoever violates subsection (1) commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
oops...theres that word again "without authorisation" (I dont do the "z" thing)...
edit 2:
Next weeks headline: man arrested for sending email through smtp compliant email server.