Here’s an interesting article from a fellow blogger about his travails with a friendly neighborhood police officer about his “stealing” a wi-fi connection from a public library.
Very interesting now that police officers – some of which may be savvy of these things, but probably quite a few who aren’t – are now patrolling for random people with open laptops. My questions:
1. How did the cop know the person was using WiFi? And what’s more, how does he know which WiFi signal he was using?
2. Being a public library, wasn’t the signal available for the use of – look out now – the general public? If not, why not? And if the signal was for public use (which I suspect it was), what exactly is the difference if that public person was using the signal inside or outside of the building?
3. So he stopped using the connection, and the officer told him to put the computer away anyway. Since when was there a law against using a computer outside?
4. To totally put a wrench in things, I wonder how this same cop would’ve reacted if I had my setup out there. Considering I’d be online but not using anywireless connection at all (the connection would be 1xRTT over CDMA… basically using the cellular network like I normally do when no WiFi connection is available). I doubt whatever shaky ground he was on would’ve been far shakier in such a case.