Crime of the Century

Wi-fi is rapidly becoming a universal component in everyday life, but should it be shared? The internet is a free place, but it's not always free to access. Imagine a ship channel, someone charges you to put your vessel in but once you leave port you're left to your own devices. You pay for your ship and you pay for your port access but no one can own the sea. But just like the stow-always on sailing vessels, stow-always on the internet are just a prevalent if not more so. The only difference is that your port access fee is now your internet provider’s monthly fee.

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A large misconception of the internet world is that “stealing” Wi-Fi is a victimless crime. Much to my despair my neighbor tends to “piggy-back” upon my internet connection, and as an avid online gamer this causes my experience to suffer. Now it could be argued that since I refuse to lock my connection that I am allowing myself to be a victim, but is it to say that breaking into a car is okay just because it was left unlocked? We don’t take someone’s food out of the oven because it was left un-attended nor do we take money from a wallet just because it was left un-snapped. The big illusion is that a purse thief will be recognized in the street, he will have a reputation and people will treat him accordingly but when someone steals your internet access you cannot see them, you cannot hear them, you can’t even locate them. But to say it’s a victimless crime is a misnomer, if anything it has become a criminal-less crime. With no face or fingerprint and only a virtual crime scene most people will let it go unorganized until one day they just switch providers or tire of the dilemma and choose to lock their connection with a security key. 

What type of person would steal “free” Wi-Fi? I assure you that it is a crime of many colors, shapes, and sizes. I would have to group it as an ethics issue. If someone can justify stealing anything it would be internet access. Stealing a car is a big problem, the police get involved, and you may even go to prison. Stealing from the grocery store is a big problem, the police get involved, and you may even go to prison. Stealing “free” internet is a different monster all together. The police most likely

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will not be involved, you most likely will not be going to prison. Does that make it okay? No, but it does happen in spite of the small moral hurdle that lies in your path. Some people can rationalize it as sharing, some call it borrowing, and it has even been playfully denoted as “piggy-backing.” I’m not sure that “piggy-backing” will get you much cred in Cell Block D with murders and thieves, but hey, who’s to say that it’s any less wrong? Is it even actually illegal? Yes. In every state of the United States there is some law surrounding “unpermitted access to a private network.” The idea here being that even if it’s not locked with a password it still may be considered “private.” The charges span from a small ticket to time served, so basically it’s viewed as trespassing, which is completely accurate considering that what you’re doing is basically online trespassing. 

With the spreading virus that is online media slowly strangling the world’s society in to a choke hold that we cannot retreat from it is only a matter of time before the everyday hacker is viewed as an evil villain. As the online world becomes filled with more and more important and secret things specially finances and “private” information the world wide sale of ski masks and 9mm pistols will plummet. In the future a criminal’s mask will be replaced with a user name and his gun will be a smoking mouse and keyboard.