Singapore WiFi Thieving Teen Sentenced To Eighteen-Month Probation
from the password-protect-your-router dept
We've been tracking the crackdown on those nefarious WiFi freeloaders over in Singapore, where checking your email via an unsecured hotspot can now net you a three year prison term and $6,500 fine. The first person busted was a seventeen-year-old kid, the once murky details of his arrest now made clear with his conviction and sentencing. Apparently the teen tried to grab a WiFi signal from his front yard after his mom confiscated his modem. A neighbor saw the kid chatting, concluded he was up to no good, and turned him in to the police. While the young criminal mastermind avoided jail, he faces an eighteen-month probation -- part of which will be spent in a boys' home. Based on a social worker's assessment, the Judge also seems to think it would also be a good idea if he receives therapy for his video game addiction. He's also banned from accessing the Internet during those eighteen months, a generally ineffective punishment that makes working difficult -- since most jobs utilize some kind of Internet access. The Internet is just too tightly woven into our lives (VoIP connections, interactive IPTV, 3G phones) to make Internet bans reasonably enforceable. Of course, it's not clear how this WiFi freeloading issue is going to be handled in Singapore going forward -- since the government is planning to offer its own 512kbps WiFi for everyone to freeload on anyway.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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good result, shaky premise
An interesting comparison will be to see how this measures up against the US woman facing 40 years for a non-crime that she didn't commit.
In both cases though, there is still a huge issue to be dealt with. None of us know the exact details of either case. But there is apparently no mens rea in either case, which is unacceptable. Nobody can be guilty of a crime where they had no idea they were committing it. That's not the same as *ignorance* of a crime (knowledge of action but ignorance of criminality), it is where the person is absolutely passive in the crime, lacking intent, such as when a computer makes an "illegal" connection to a network by auto-discovery.
Going further - If the property of a person, acting on its own outside the control of its owner, causes a crime to transpire then should the owner be liable? In the case of a dangerous dog or a runaway motor vehicle then maybe the answer is yes. But with a computer, which can act independently of any expectation of the owner I think the answer should be no. And what is more, the manufacturer of the property should be liable, especially if that product is shipped without safety measures in place.
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Pity we didn't send Canter & Siegel to Singapore. A good public caning may have stopped SPAM in its tracks.
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Caining this is not!
Nah!
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Re: Caining this is not!
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stupid people and stupid things
Next we'll see a 65 year old woman thrown in jail because the laptop her grandkids got her, so she could e-mail them from her vacation to signapore, was set to auto authenticate to the best signal. Sucks to be her, she leeched, she deserves the time, and iggnorance doesn't excuse you from the law. God I love irony.
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Re: stupid people and stupid things
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Re: Re: stupid people and stupid things
*Rolls Eyes* We're talking about a kid connecting to an UNSECURED ROUTER to check his e-mail. He didn't hack into their home network and plant a virus on the connected PCs. He didn't copy personal data.. he just used the connection for 15k of e-mail and IM traffic. Was it morally wrong to go on someone else's network? Sure. But I don't think the damn government has any say in it. Like others have said. If you're the type of moron who's too stupid to SECURE your wireless network then you DESERVE to have "bandwidth thieves" logging in to your network. Seriously. I think it should be illegal for these IDIOTS to operate an UNSECURED network. Stupid is as stupid does. People why whine and cry about someone accessing their unsecured network is the same as those who get all upset when someone breaks into their house (or car) because they were too stupid not to LOCK THE DOORS. Cry me a river. If you're such a moron, you deserve to be stole from. Maybe it'll teach you a lesson.
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caning
Hanging drug smugglers isn't necessarily a bad idea either provided thare is no chance that they knew about the drugs (so that cases such as the corby case do not lead to hangings), which can be determined by the location of the drugs. If thy are in a bodily orifice, or strapped to the body, then you must know the drugs are there.
OTOH, locking up leachers is not right, and I have already made my views on teh subject well known on this site I hope.
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nezt on topic for social education :
ps : i will start issue licenses upon a brief class+test fora minimum fee of 5$, presence unnecessary :)
pay here ->
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Humans deserve misery
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How about...
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Re: How about...
s ok for anyone to take it? or if i find a bag of money with your name on the bag, it's mine now! seems it is ok to steal if the victim is either a large corp, or unknown to you, or u have more than a 75% chance of not getting caught. These are the new commandments of the 21st century, superceding "thy shalt not steal". ok.. works for me..
hope u don't get the karma of having your proprty taken from you, soon.
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Re:
Generally, there are 3 scenarios here.
Keeping your door open and telling ppl that"you may come in" - Broadcasting your network SSID and telling ppl it's unsecured
Keeping your door closed - Disable broadcasting your SSID
Keeping your door locked and say "you may come in if you have the keys' - Broadcasting your network SSID and securing it
I don't think there's any context for stealing if you are on the 1st scenario. If you attempt to prevent access and some1 breaks in, then that's stealing.
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Re: Re:
This is a case where the door is kept open but there are signs (laws of the country) outside the door that say "no entry to any form of open/closed doors".
If you still enter, is that not called stealing?
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America is going down the toilet
The man stopped has never broken a law in his life. He has never even smoked a cigarette. Yet, without even a warrant, his car is stolen from him and recked. He has no legal recourse because the police are just doing their jobs to make us safe.
How the fcuk is this not stealing? We need to lock up the cops who pull crap like this and leave poor kids alone.
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Re: America is going down the toilet
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At best this is trespass...
If you want to analogize about it, it’s more like trespass. It's like a kid taking a stroll across your lawn to shorten his walk home, or standing on your lawn chatting to friends across the street. Is it illegal? Technically, yes. Is it punishable by years in jail, a heavy fine, and probation? No, especially not on the first offence.
If you have a yard (wifi) and care about such things, you can post the land to warn people you don't want them there. (Disable SSID broadcasts.) If you really care, you can erect a fence to keep people out. (Enable WEP.) And if you really, really care, you can lock the fence and put barbed wire on it (WPK2 and MAC filtering with shared key). But to do nothing and then not expect an occasional person to wander through is just dumb.
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Re: At best this is trespass...
I believe that sometimes, pple that arnt too tech savvy will stumble onto other's network, like me for instance, when i setup my wireless, i didnt know which network to choose...so many available unsecured networks around... but maybe in this case, the guy is NOT ignorant, he knew it was someone else's network and he did it because he wanted to.. so guilty as charged...
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Re: At best this is trespass...
if that jurisdiction says "hang em high", then cowboy u better not steal anything. calf included , golden or not!
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someone who lives in this rotten country
i got a summon, appeal and got a "cut n paste" reply. well of course nobody feels good about it so i replied again, asking for a few answers. this time i put someone important in cc. guess what? no replies after that. Freedom, you say this country is rotten. Well it's not only rotten, live here and you'll know it's more than rotten.
so basically what they say is what we MUST follow. if they say it's wrong then IT IS WRONG. if they say "mee siam mai hum" then you may just see people start selling mee siam with "hum". why? because we cannot say things like "there's no hum in mee siam".
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someone who lives in this rotten country
they set up channels, forums etc saying they will listen. but all they ever do is just listen. our CTE is forever packed with vehicles, they build an ERP gantry to collect money from whoever uses it and said it'll be better. now if eel it got worse, almost 11pm and it's still slow traffic. so is the main purpose to lessen traffic? or isit this road is a potential revenue for them?
well the kid got sued, it's the first case we ever had. so just count him unlucky. it's a case of killing one to warn all others.
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fair enough that freeloading on a private wifi is illegal but to PRESS CHARGES against a harmless kid for doing do?????? i cannot accept this fact. that some moron, instead of letting off the kid with a stern warning, he had to go PRESS CHARGES against him! that was downright evil. doesn't that moron have a conscience? i sure hope that retribution will fall upon his own kid when they freeload of others network.
Does that moron realise that he has scarred and ruined an innocent kid for life over something this trivial?
yes that kid was wrong in tapping an unsecured network but seriously, ask yourself this, would u press charges on a kid who taps ur unsecured network for chatting???
i dont understand how the government can be so heartless to hand down such a penalty for such a trivial case.if it was some MP/Minister's son doing it, i'm sure the other party, the moron, will get charged for having an unsecured network.
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Ok, so what if it's illegal? This type of crime usually passes off as getting caught drinking below the legal age or littering.
I mean, if the kid was taking someone else's WiFi just to access his e-mail and instant message, then what's the harm in that? As mentioned a hundred times over, he never meant any maliciousness.
If I wasn't informed of his punishment, I would've just thought the goverment would slap him wit a small fine, a slap on the wrist and a first warning. This is what everybody would assume. But no, his punishment's been much much worse.
How can the government even come close to slapping him with an 18 month ban, probably a heavy fine and a huge scarring for life?
If anyone can answer me this, then please enlighten me. What is the government doing? Making an example out of a young boy for the "good of the nation"?
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In both cases, we see a misjudgement due to the lack of technical knowledge on wifi hardware.
These 2 cases are highly debated. and if im the boy and rich enough (and provided im old enough to defend). The local court stands no chance.
It is because the duty of care also lies with the person owning the property.
Though there is no physical boundary to wifi. and there should be a lock to everyone's wifi. It should be taken as that the owner of the wifi had opted out for a lockup of his wifi and thus offered free loading of his internet
So in this case, i would believe the judge is too emotional towards the boy's compulsive habit (gaming) than over the essense of the case, which is Free loading of un-protected wifi.
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IGNORant people...
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