A man was last week fined £500 after a British jury found him
guilty of using a neighbourhood wireless broadband connection
without permission. Gregory Straszkiewicz, 24, was also sentenced
to a 12 months conditional discharge after he was convicted of
dishonestly obtaining an communications service and related
offences at London's Islewoth Crown Court last Wednesday (20th
July).
By John Leyden for The
Register
This article has been reproduced from The Register, with
permission.
The case – brought under the Communications Act 2003 – is the
first "war driving" prosecution in the UK, according to the
police. Officers caught Straszkiewicz hunting for "free" net
connections in a residential area after complaints from locals.
Straszkiewicz deliberately set out to borrow bandwidth from his
unwitting benefactors but there's no evidence he had any hostile
motive beyond this – so his sentence seems harsh. It's unclear
whether anyone who accidentally jumped onto another party's net
connection (easy to do if a host is using an unsecured connection
with no encryption) might also risk prosecution.
© The Register
2005
