Man arrested for hopping on to home Wi-Fi network

OK,if you have ever doubted that Fla. has taken over the job of nut house for the US from Ca. you should check this one out ;(

By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service
July 07, 2005

A man who allegedly accessed a home Wi-Fi network in St. Petersburg, Florida, from a parked car got logged off the hard way: He was arrested and charged with a felony.

Benjamin Smith III, 40, was arrested on April 21 outside the St. Petersburg home of Richard Dinon and charged under a Florida law that prohibits unauthorized access to a computer or network, said George Kajtsa, the police department's public information officer. A pre-trial hearing in the case is scheduled for Monday, according to the state attorney's office for Pasco and Pinellas counties.

Dinon saw Smith sitting in a parked sport-utility vehicle in front of his house and wondered what he was doing there, then saw he was using a notebook computer, Kajtsa said.

"What made him suspicious was, every time he looked toward the car, the guy closed the lid on his laptop," Kajtsa said. Dinon called police. When they came to the scene and approached the vehicle, Smith closed the computer again. The police asked him what he was doing and he finally owned up to it, Kajtsa said. Smith was arrested and the PC seized and sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement as potential evidence. More

I know they have Cox cable down there,,are they going to bust all the users,who pick-up the network from down the street instead of their own?LOL,another dumb law that can not be used for anything useful ;)