Morons in Charge

This is completely insane. And clearly the Cedar Springs police department and District Attorney's Office have absolutely nothing else to do. This sort of shit should not be allowed unless the crime rate is zero and all old ladies have successfully been helped across the street.

1. A cafe offers free wireless.
2. During his business day, a man stops occasionally outside and uses the free wireless connection from his car and check his volunteer bagpipe group e-mails (nothing sinister).
3. The barbershop wonders if the guy in the car is stalking a hairdresser, but finds out he's not.
4. The police wonder if they can charge him with a crime anyway, and they use an odd anti-hacking law to charge him with 5 years in jail or a $10,000 fine; or he could enroll in the prison diversion program, which would require paying a $400 fine, doing 40 hours of community service and staying on probation for six months.
5. Man chooses the latter.

Excuse the profanity in this post, but how fucked up is this?!

• The cafe has free, unrestricted, open access, no password wi-fi.
• The cafe is fine with him driving up and using it.
• Using this signal is like tuning into a radio broadcast.

But because he did not have explicit permission from the network owner before all of this went down, he has to pay four hundred dollars, spend 40 hours picking up trash by the highway, spend six-months on probation, and get forever hindered by a felony record!?

I hope the EFF helps him with an appeal (Although I wonder if he can appeal as he opted against the trial to avoid 5 years in jail.)

This shows a complete misunderstanding of using wireless internet networks.

While this law is supposed to deter criminal hacking, bullshit moves like this only encourage retaliatory attacks. I hope the city/state/legislature gets a clue.

Another innocent taken down. Nice use of resources.