The St. Petersburg Times has a hilariously written article that equates someone using your open access point to being a hacker. In short some guy saw a man “furtively” using his WiFi connection and called police.

Police say Benjamin Smith III, 41, used his Acer brand laptop to hack into Dinon’s wireless Internet network. The April 20 arrest is considered the first of its kind in Tampa Bay and among only a few so far nationwide.

“It’s so new statistics are not kept,” said Special Agent Bob Breeden, head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s computer crime division.

But experts believe there are scores of incidents occurring undetected, sometimes to frightening effect. People have used the cloak of wireless to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.

For as worrisome as it seems, wireless mooching is easily preventable by turning on encryption or requiring passwords. The problem, security experts say, is many people do not take the time or are unsure how to secure their wireless access from intruders. Dinon knew what to do. “But I never did it because my neighbors are older.”

In any large city you can turn on your laptop and find half a dozen freely available hotspots at any given time and I can also reasonably assume that you are not instantly trading in kiddie porn, stolen credit cards or plotting the destruction of Western civilization. Wireless is everywhere and we constantly use it.

This man knowingly left his access point open and calls police when someone is using it? Between all of us here at BBB, we’d have gotten the death sentence by now for all that “free” wireless we’ve “hacked” into by just turning on our laptop.

“Honestly your honor, my powerbook connects to the first wireless network it sees automatically.”

“Likely story young man,” the judge said just before he threw away the key.