If you’re a geek thinking of moving to Michigan, I suggest you keep looking. A Michigan man was recently fined $400 and ordered to perform 40 hours of community service. Damn, he must have assaulted a police officer or something, right? Actually, the dude was just using a cafe’s Wi-Fi connection to check his e-mail and surf the web. A nosy police chief confronted the gentleman about it and eventually booked him on fraudulent computer access.
Michigan’s computer access law apparently states that using a Wi-Fi connection without authorization is a felony. Yeah. You could spend up to five years in jail and be fined $10k for using a Wi-Fi connection that doesn’t have WEP or WPA on it. I guess the police in the town of Sparta are a bunch of straight up jerks. God forbid they spend time, ya know, fighting real crime.
Wi-Fi Poaching Draws Fine [PC World]
The best part? After checking the Michigan statutes, the chief swore out a complaint of fraudulent computer access. The officer didn’t even know if it was illegal or not.
This is so lame — I need more details about what took place, but geeze — I’m honestly annoyed by this story…a felony?!
It does seem a bit unreasonable. If people leave their Wi-Fi open shouldn’t it be assumed it is available? Yes, it should be utilized responsibly (not downloading torrents), and router manufacturers should do a better job of helping consumers implement WPA encryption.