Dumb Criminal Proves Again That Open WiFi Doesn't Mean Everyone Gets Away With Everything

from the open-and-shut dept

For as long as people have been discussing the strategy of offering open wireless connections as an incentive to customers, there has been a rather silly debate about whether this would allow all the criminals to get away with all the crimes. It won't, of course. There's nothing negligent about offering open wifi and we've already seen cases in the past in which criminals using open wifi still, shockingly, manage to get themselves caught. The reason for this should be obvious: criminals are generally fairly stupid.

Here to drive that point home is this convicted child-porn-loving asshole who thought he could go to a Starbucks to download more child porn and get away with it. Turns out he couldn't.

Detectives on Saturday arrested a registered sex offender while he was allegedly downloading child pornography at a Hillsboro Starbucks, the Washington County Sheriff's Office said. The lead detective in the case arrested Robert Dietz, 59, for similar crimes in 2009, according to Sgt. Vance Stimler.

Detectives arrested Dietz at the Starbucks located at 1st Avenue and Main Street while he allegedly tried to download child porn using free Wi-Fi, Stimler said.

Dietz has since taken up residence in prison because he's an idiot for thinking this would work out well for him. It turns out that open wifi connections can (gasp!) be monitored by the companies that offer them. Couple that apparently not-obvious fact with the notion that traditional police work, such as gathering leads and information from the public, still totally exists, and it's hard to imagine how Dietz could think he wouldn't get caught.

But we should stop a moment and thank Robert Dietz, two-time child porn offender, for providing us advocates of open wifi with another example of how offering it doesn't suddenly render all police work useless. Thanks, Bob! Now back to jail with thee!

Filed Under: criminals, detective work, police, wifi