Singapore teen facing jail for surfing with NeighborFi

Seventeen-year-old Garyl Tan Jia Luo has the distinct honor of being the first person charged under Singapore's new Computer Misuse Act. The alleged crime? Piggybacking on his neighbor's WiFi connection without permission. This apparently wouldn't have gone so far had the neighbor (we'll call him Mr. Wilson) not lodged a complaint against the teen. While Tan was released on bail after a grilling by police, he's facing some serious consequences for enjoying his free ride, including up to 10,000 Singapore dollars ($6,425) in fines and up to three years in jail. Given Signapore's plans to blanket the entire country in free WiFi, however, you'd think they'd go a little easy on him for jumping the gun.

[Via The Register]

[Chris @ Nov 14th 2006 7:02AM]

Singapore has strong anti-porn laws which become more difficult to enforce or prosecute if people start using each other's wi-fi connections. My first guess is that this has something to do with their strong stance against sharing wi-fi.

[DarkMirage @ Nov 14th 2006 7:44AM]

Hi, I'm from Singapore.

Chris, you are mistaken. No one actually enforces the anti-porn law. The official government stance is that if you surf porn in the privacy of your home, they aren't going to do anything about it.

Anti-porn laws are targeted more at the distributors and media industry.

[bliz @ Nov 14th 2006 8:53AM]

DarkMirage, there is no such official stance. In fact the official stance is that possession of pornographic/uncensored files are not allowed. What this means is that even casual viewing is officially not allowed as most internet browsers will download content to the hard disk. Unless you are using a LiveCD or you have set your hard disk cache to zero.

[William @ Nov 14th 2006 7:57AM]

Lol, Neighbour from Hell.

[Chris @ Nov 14th 2006 8:09AM]

DarkMirage,

I stand corrected. What, in your opinion, is the reason for the hard stance on wi-fi sharing?

[Grizz @ Nov 14th 2006 8:16AM]

Dear Mr. Luo,

Come move to New Hampshire, where the WiFi owner is responsable for securing his network, and you cannot be held responsable if it was in fact unsecure.

[Panther_V @ Nov 14th 2006 8:19AM]

Its the stupid Neighbor fault since he didn't have an encryption on wifi access point. Stupid Neighbor and stupid government for even finning the kid.

[Oddmanout @ Nov 14th 2006 8:21AM]

Yeah...I think "Chris" is on to it. On the surface it sounds fairly byzantine, but based solely on the Engadget article we don't know what the kid was doing. Chances are if the neighbor even knew someone was using his connection
it wasn't as innocent as it sounds. I only say that because the vast majority of people wouldn't
bother checking the DHCP table, or the connected MAC addresses unless something was slowing down their own performance. If this kid was emailing/chatting with his girly or reading a tech blog or something else fairly inocuous,
I think a written warning, payment of one months internet access + the price of the wifi router (since he did use it), and a crash course in WEP/WAP/HAL/Firewall technology (for the neighbor) is plenty for a first offense. If he does it again, it's documented he was already warned, so throw the book at him then. But if he wasn't hurting anyone, give the kid a chance..

Consider, if you get two people who are not very tech savy it could be very easy to have someone inadvertantly connected to the wrong AP. One ignorant guy sets up his router and doesn't secure it. Another ignorant guy sets up a router and tries to connect to it and instead hits the first guys' stuff...and is blissfully unaware of it. I'm not saying that's what happened,
but given how easily that could happen, it would be nice if there was some kind of stop gap to protect dolts from $6000 fines and 3 years in jail just because the didn't RTFM...
1 time only though. After that it's not ignorance, it's negligence...

OTOH, if he was spamming or propegating kiddy porn or other illegal material, or commiting some other kind of e-crime, smack him down straight away. It's just like that kid who got cained there a couple years ago. Sure he may not have known corporal punishment was the penalty for vandalism, but vandalism was illegal in his own home country. He knew better than to be doing that. Same with this 'cracker'. If what he was doing with the purloined connection was illegal in and of itself, he should know better...the fact that it involves computers has no bearing on that...

But before anyone freaks, that's all just my opinion...

[Jay @ Nov 14th 2006 8:42AM]

I agree with "stupid government for finning the kid" I guess Singapore changed from the old fashioned, and undoubtedly painful, caning to the more civilized finning. Perhaps this is like fanning where one is gently stimulated by folds of paper or fabric. Well, I guess with this more modern form of punishment we should now change the American adjective for Singapore's government from "stupid" to "clever"? Or maybe we have no idea what is going on because we are so far BEHIND (a pun on the "caning" aspect at the beginning). But talk of "behinds" is perhaps crossing into the porno topic. Uh-oh!

[David T @ Nov 14th 2006 8:45AM]

wait now wait now panther_V: NOBODY'S fining the kid yet. that's just the maximum fine for such an offence. likely tt if no serious damage was done, they'd let him off with a warning.

Singapore is well known for enforcing its laws - that's why its laws actually work. but they're not idiots either: they do generally know the line between being firm and being idiotic... I can say this from several years living there myself.

[JamesB @ Nov 14th 2006 8:46AM]

There's bound to be more to this story than we're reading. How many devices out there automatically connect to any available wifi source?

I've considered moving to Singapore, but stories like these tend to make me think twice about that idea.

[DarkMirage @ Nov 14th 2006 8:58AM]

bliz, of course there is. :)

Read the first question.
http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/1001qns.aspx?sid=165&fid=-1&qid=1160#HtmlAnchor_Anchor

[wolwol @ Nov 14th 2006 9:13AM]

sure...singapore is a FINE city afterall.........was in Singapore about 2 weeks ago, gained somebody's unsecured wifi while i was there, downloaded about 4gb worth of software updates.......
its just plain SILLY to have someone who gained access to his/her UNSECURED network behind bars....
it's the owner responsibility to SECURE his/her network
dumb...this is just plain dumb...sure...after its chewing gum ban *i think now they finally ease the use of chewing gums after some 'talk' by the US* and the ban of Far Eastern Review magazines cause apparently the magazine has been interviewing the government opposition..........

[David T @ Nov 14th 2006 9:43AM]

i can't believe the idiots on this board who don't even read the facts.

he has NOT been fined. he has NOT been sent to jail. and we do NOT know if the wifi was unsecured or not - and in any case, if it's a crime to do something, it's a crime to do something. how about "well the idiot wasn't carrying a gun so of course i should steal some money?"

and lest we forget, THIS IS HARDLY THE FIRST CASE IN THE WORLD: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/25/uk_war_driver_fined/

that was in the UK

read before typing next time.

[Max Fun @ Nov 14th 2006 10:35AM]

The local paper actually claims that there were already some prior similar charges in the US.

[kbz @ Nov 14th 2006 11:03AM]

Good, he was stealing bandwidth. so the neighbor didnt secure his internet, it should be able to be stolen? If a store does not put rfid on all its products they should be allowed to be stolen? If Im not mistaken people in the US have been charged with stealing wifi too. The ones I remember hearing about were where people would park outside somebodys house on a laptop.

[Rick Lyon @ Nov 14th 2006 11:31AM]

$6k and 3 years in jail for stealing bandwidth? Wow, surprised they didn't cut of his mouse hand to prevent him from future violations.

[James @ Nov 14th 2006 12:31PM]

Re: kbz

Yeah, and did you hear about the time some guy was baking a pie when a passer-by took a deep breath, stealing the delicious aroma that by law belonged only to the pie-baker? The pie-baker's failure to close his window and "secure" his pie-smell is no excuse. Hope they lock that thieving bastard up and throw away the key.


Seriously, unless Singapore is the last ass-backwards place on Earth that's still charging per KB of download, or unless the guy was hogging the whole pipe and/or was asked to stop but didn't (certainly possible), criminal prosecution is assinine. It's like sending somebody to jail for walking on your lawn -- when you didn't even have a "no trespassing" sign up.

[Then @ Nov 14th 2006 1:59PM]

Just a quick comment from a Singaporean on this matter:

It has been established that the kid's actions were unlawful - his act was akin to theft since his misappropriated his neighbour's property (i.e. bandwidth) without his neighbour's consent.

It is irrelevant whether his neighbour was negligent in failing to properly secure his wifi access with a password - the neighbour is under no positive obligation to do so. The situation may be different under American law, but the crime was committed in Singapore and therefore under the jurisdiction of the Singaporean Courts. And since Singaporean law is an off-shoot of English law, I believe this case would be treated no differently in England and Wales.

Take, for example, the situation where you leave your front door unlocked and a burglar seizes the opportunity and enters the premises and runs off with your possessions. In the eyes of the law, would the burglar be able to escape prosecution by claiming that it was owner's fault for not securing his front door in the first place? Unlikely. Regardless of your contributory negligence, the burglar has committed a crime because the act of misappropriating another's property and entering into his/her premises is unlawful.

However, do I think the punishment is proportionate to the crime? From a moral perspective, it would seem rather harsh to send him to jail for hijacking bandwidth. But one should also consider that 'punishment' serves 2 functions in society - 1) to rehabilitate the criminal and 2) to act as a deterrent to other criminals.

I doubt the kid will get anything more than a fine and some community work - you Americans are just over-reacting!

[kbz @ Nov 14th 2006 1:53PM]

James, with your pie example I would call the bandwith the pie and the smell the product of the pie. It seems to me he was being charged with stealing the bandwidth and not the product of.

As far as 6k and 3 yrs, that seems harsh to me but so does 10 yrs for a joint.

[Tracy L @ Nov 14th 2006 3:36PM]

Then @ ....

I'm going to have to disagree with you on the part where you say it is irrelevent whether the neighbor secured his connection. It's completely relevant in many ways.

It's relevant because the client machine used by the "criminal" ASKED for an IP address and the victim's wifi access point GAVE him one. If I come up and ask you for a dollar and you give me one, you can't then turn around and call the police and arrest me for theft.

It's also relevant because your analogy has a big flaw. If you and I are neighbors and you leave your door unlocked and I come in and steal stuff, then I'm guilty regardless of your negligence. But the "criminal" didn't enter the neighbor's property did he? The real problem is that the "victim" was broadcasting across property lines. At my own house I have about 7 wifi networks I can see and if any of them are unsecured my laptop would occasionally connect to the wrong one. Does that make me a criminal? (It's less of a problem since SP2 was installed.) Back to your analogy: This story is more equivalent to you taking items out of your home and piling them in MY YARD for storage, then calling the police when I touch them.

The one fact I'm curious about is whether the owner made some attempt to secure his network. That and only that would sway my opinion. So I think securing the network is completely relevant.

[Then @ Nov 14th 2006 4:49PM]

Hi Tracy L,

I agree with your analysis that the victim's wifi access point GAVE the criminal an IP address at the criminal's request, but would argue that the act was an automated response which the victim had no 'real' control over - less for the fact that he installed a password. Therefore, there was never any 'real' consent between the victim and the criminal for the use of the victim's wireless network.

This then goes back to the root of our disagreement on whether the victim had a positive obligation to secure his network. I would argue that no such obligation exists, or should exists. Imposing such a burden on a victim has far-reaching consequences - it would , in effect, be granting the criminal the opportunity of pointing the finger back at the victim for his/her failure to take reasonable steps to prevent the criminal act from occurring in the first place (i.e. it's your fault I stole your stuff because you left the door wide open). This turn criminal liability into tortious liability, which is hard to reconcile.

I stand by my previous analogy and would argue that the criminal did in fact enter his neighbour's property - by gaining access to the victim's wifi network, the criminal 'entered' the victim's computer network, albeit in a metaphysical sense.

If you unlawfully access a wireless network accidentally but stop when you realise your mistake then you are absolved from all liability. But in this case, the kid knew full well that his actions were unlawful, and continued with it anyway. That is key the difference.

Assuming that the victim was a completely 'tech' illiterate and had no idea how to set up his wifi password - should he deserve any less protection from the law because of his incompetence penalise him for his lack of 'tech'?

[I? @ Nov 14th 2006 5:05PM]

Yeah, well, that's beautiful. The neighbour had his router broadcasting and accepting connections from anyone. That can't be compared to stealing something from a store because it wasn't secured. I'd compare it to sueing a guy that took a picture of you naked, when you were running around the neighbourhood without pants. Sorry man, you shouldn't steal unsecured stuff, but you can't complain if somebody connects to your unsecured wi-fi network. Your radio waves are invading the neighbour's home, you know? It wouldn't be called stealing if the shopkeeper had inadvertedly put stuff into your pocket, would it?

[cvetyrian @ Nov 14th 2006 8:27PM]

another question i'd like to raise: how did the neighbour figure out that it was the kid who was accessing his WiFi? there are dozens of computers around in the congested residential area in Singapore. he cannot ask the police to raid the kid's home only because he suspected the kid is stealing his WiFi, or can he?

[Unregistered @ Nov 14th 2006 10:33PM]

The news article in SG did not mention if the network was secured in the first place. If it was secured and the teen did some work to gain access to it, he's definitely in the wrong.

IF the network was unsecured, I say both parties are to blame.

[vincent @ Nov 14th 2006 11:47PM]

Its the friggin neighbours fault.First, hes inviting trouble by NOT creating a password for his router. Which in fact he should after the repeated articles in the newspapers advising people 2 do so. and second hes jus gt nothing better 2 do.

[Randolph @ Nov 15th 2006 4:00AM]

The thought is really very sickening. Terrorising an impressionable teenager over something so trivial. Was there really any harm done considering the pipeline capacity of broadband these days? And I cant believe that the complainant is a CEO. It was not as if his computer was hacked into or that some important information or data was stolen or corrupted from an act of deliberate sabotage, theft or espionage. I think the Singapore police does not fully appreciate the Computer Misuse Act. There is certainly more than meets the eye and I suspect its all about subscription or revenues. Can an intruder or burglar be blamed if we didnt secure our home or shut the gate? So what if he did a piggyride. No temptation no sinner! Its just so simple. It should be treated as an open house invitation.

[Randolph @ Nov 15th 2006 4:20AM]

If you let your water overflow and a passerby came and drank it, do you need to clobber or choke him until he's half dead. You dont need to do this this even to an animal least to say a fellow human being and a teenager. Come on Singapore! Let to live and let live and stand tall and gracious.

[cloud811 @ Nov 15th 2006 5:52PM]

can we find out where this "mr.wilson" lives adn kill him?

[NHAnimator @ Dec 9th 2006 11:31AM]

Grizz,

Is there a statute you could refer me to that actually backs that comment up? Thanks in advance.

[cci[RR]us @ Dec 24th 2006 10:48AM]

"kbz @ Nov 14th 2006 9:23AM

Good, he was stealing bandwidth. so the neighbor didnt secure his internet, it should be able to be stolen?"

Excuse me, but where did you read that the neighbor did *NOT* secure his wireless network? How did you jump to the conclusion that the guy did not break the preconfigured MAC filtering or possibly WEP protections?

[Simon @ Jun 3rd 2009 3:24AM]

I thought it was common knowledge that not securing your access points means you could be on the hook for anything a random user does over your connection (be it kiddy porn or whatever).

That's more than enough incentive to secure a Wi-Fi connection. Failure to do so is just plain dumb, and should be considered an invitation to use the access point. Might as well make the SSID "Free WiFi!"...