4 ms·

I can't think of a case where this was addressed, so I agree that one might think of it as up in the air, but are you aware of any prosecutor who maintains or e

by schoen 5y ago

I can't think of a case where this was addressed, so I agree that one might think of it as up in the air, but are you aware of any prosecutor who maintains or expresses this position? Closely related to this, why wouldn't this position create criminal liability for running an open wifi network, if it turned out to have been used by a criminal? How about for a public library that allows unidentified members of the public to use public computer terminals? How about for running a commercial ISP? Is the likely argument some kind of common-law imputed duty to not provide too much more privacy to network users than the average ISP does?

judge2020 5y ago
I think enough lawyers see this as an area to 'CYA' in, given the amount of hotels and other public wifis with captive portals that only require you to accept their T&C before you get access to 0.0.0.0/0, eg https://myhotels.com/guest-wireless_terms-conditions/ https://myhotels.com/guest-wireless_terms-conditions/ and https://mcdonalds.com.au/wi-fry/terms-and-conditions https://mcdonalds.com.au/wi-fry/terms-and-conditions . But you're right in that, in reality, police departments aren't going to blame a library or a fast food joint for letting illegal activity happen given they didn't know about it and that Wi-Fi is usually not used for such actions. I just think the law gives enough leadway for an extraordinary event to occur where [for example] some U.S. actor gets prosecuted simply for running nodes, likely as the only way for a state actor to take down some criminal enterprise in the event of there not enough evidence to convict of a major crime. I also did some case searches regarding public wifi and there are not many results in general. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=80006&q=%22public+wi-fi%22+OR+%22public+wifi%22+&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=80006&q=%22p...

by schoen 5y ago

judge2020 5y ago

I think enough lawyers see this as an area to 'CYA' in, given the amount of hotels and other public wifis with captive portals that only require you to accept their T&C before you get access to 0.0.0.0/0, eg https://myhotels.com/guest-wireless_terms-conditions/ https://myhotels.com/guest-wireless_terms-conditions/ and https://mcdonalds.com.au/wi-fry/terms-and-conditions https://mcdonalds.com.au/wi-fry/terms-and-conditions . But you're right in that, in reality, police departments aren't going to blame a library or a fast food joint for letting illegal activity happen given they didn't know about it and that Wi-Fi is usually not used for such actions. I just think the law gives enough leadway for an extraordinary event to occur where [for example] some U.S. actor gets prosecuted simply for running nodes, likely as the only way for a state actor to take down some criminal enterprise in the event of there not enough evidence to convict of a major crime. I also did some case searches regarding public wifi and there are not many results in general. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=80006&q=%22public+wi-fi%22+OR+%22public+wifi%22+&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=80006&q=%22p...