Quote:
Originally posted by irwincur
Yeah, thirteen cases of wire fraud. However, the portion I worked on was the network intrusion. I was the one who caught the guy and found out who he was. The point is, yes, they can nail him on wire fraud, but that was ancillary to the orginal scope of the investigation, and that was him accessing the county network without permission. Unless you have posted warnings and discaimers somewhere on your network (the criminal does not have to necessarily see them, they just have to be somewhere) it is not a crime.
Furthermore, information broadcast over the air is even on more shaky legal ground. It is considered to be publicly accessible. And the assumption is that if you are not going to protect your network, it is not illegal. If the information is encrypted, then it is considered to be private, even though it is travelling over a public medium.
Some of that is true. An example would be DSS broadcasts, it is encrypted, but it is not illegal to capture it over your private property. This is why DSS can't prosecute anyone for cable theft. They (directTV) are willfully broadcasting a signal over your property and as such you can do what you want with it. Now it is a totally different story when it comes to stealing cable. You are tapping into a sealed system that is off your property.