Interesting case and a very interesting interpretation of the laws of Holland which lead to this decision which means the Dutch can hack in Wireless routers legally.<\/p>\n
We published a story about the ethics of jacking open Wi-Fi connections way back in 2006, when a supposed ethics expert said it was ok: Jacking Wifi is \u2018OK\u2019 say Ethics Expert<\/a>.<\/p>\n The main differentiation being that a router isn’t a computer and as long as the intruder doesn’t access any of the computers on the internal network – he’s within the law.<\/p>\n A Dutch court has ruled that hacking into Wi-Fi connections is not a crime providing any connected computers remain untouched. However Wi-Fi freeloaders would still lay themselves open to civil proceedings.<\/p>\n The unusual ruling came in the case of a student who threatened a shooting rampage against staff at students at Maerlant College in The Hague. The threat was posted on 4chan, the notoriously anarchic internet image board, after the student broke into a secure Wi-Fi connection. The unnamed student was caught and convicted of posting the message but acquitted on the hacking charge. The miscreant was sentenced to 120 hours of community service.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It seems like somehow 4chan<\/a> was involved in this case and perhaps the Anonymous<\/a> bunch too.<\/p>\n The interesting part for me is their definition of a computer and the part where the router falls down, they define it as a machine involved in the “storage, processing and transmission of data”. That sounds like a definition of a router to me, but for them – the router only stores the data in a transient matter as long as it needs to carry out its current task.<\/p>\n