"A Michigan man is being prosecuted for using a cafe's free WiFi... from his car. Sam Peterson was arrested under a Michigan law barring access to anyone else's network without authorization, according to Michigan TV station WOOD. Since the cafe's WiFi network was reserved for customers, and Peterson never came into the cafe, he was essentially piggybacking off of the open network without authorization."
The arrest came about because Peterson apparently showed up to the Union Street Cafe to use its free WiFi from the comfort of his car, and he did so every single day. A police officer grew suspicious of Peterson and eventually questioned him as to what he was up to. Peterson, not realizing that what he was doing was (at least) ethically questionable, told the officer exactly what he was doing. "I knew that the Union Street had WiFi. I just went down and checked my e-mail and didn't see a problem with that," Peterson told a reporter.
Michigan has a Fraudulent access to computers, computer systems, and computer networks law which would could have landed the guy 5 years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines - just for checking his email. If you have a business with free wifi and you expect only customers to be using it, it's super easy to setup a web portal such as a web page showing a terms of use policy. Without such, these cases are laughable, but scary at the same time.
The scariest part? (italicized below)
"Coincidentally, the cafe owner that Peterson was leeching WiFi off of didn't even realize that what Peterson was doing was a crime at the time. Neither did the police officer. "I had a feeling a law was being broken, but I didn't know exactly what," Sparta police chief Andrew Milanowski told the TV station."
So you can get arrested now on a hunch? Think about that.
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