I have been offline for a couple months as my wife and I made some major transitions: we have moved from Belgium back to the USA, I have started my own small law practice in Denver, I teach part time at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and my wife and I are expecting a new child next month. Whew! Lots of changes. Happily, in spite of the craziness, things are starting to get arranged into a more settled program and I expect to blog more regularly again.

Most readers aren�t interested in my personal life, so I�ll dive in with a topic that I blogged about earlier this year: wardriving. This is the act of searching for open wireless networks and, sometimes, publishing them (warchalking) either on street corners or on the Internet. Is wardriving legal? It declares itself to be so. I sought to answer the question in an article that was published last week on the topic (cited below). This article has incited a frenzy of responses. I have received several dozen emails from hackers and wardrivers agreeing with the premise, and links to it have been posted across the web (GrepLaw, MIT, and many other places � I am flattered). In sum, I argue that wardriving is legal, so long as it is (a) limited to the relatively innocuous act of finding and accessing open WiFi sites, and (b) if strict ethical guidelines are adhered to. Thus, it is illegal if an additional criminal act is committed � e.g., accessing an open network and *then* downloading private data, or sending spam, or viewing child pornography. This may seem pretty straight forward and obvious. Why would accessing an open wireless network be illegal? However, others have disagreed.

I would be most interested to know the view from readers of this blog. My analysis is mostly based on the activity from a U.S. perspective. I have found no successful prosecutions for �pure� wardriving in the U.S. The only successful prosecutions include, for example, the conviction of the two men that downloaded credit card information from Lowe�s computers while �wardriving.� (I discuss the case in my article). I argue that this is *not* wardriving, but instead, criminal theft like any other form of theft. In order to guide wardrivers, I have found that there is a fascinating process in place involving the development of a coherent ethical code and disclosure policy. It is my hope that this code will continue to develop.

Is this a narrow view or are there others that agree? What is the situation in Europe? Has anyone had a personal experience that they would like to share? Please let me know: ideally through the comment function here, or privately to me: pryan /at/ pryan /dot/ net.

Patrick S. Ryan, “War, Peace, or Stalemate: Wargames, Wardialing, Wardriving, and the Emerging Market for Hacker Ethics,” Virginia Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 9, No. 7, Summer 2004.