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Legal Issues in War Driving

War Driving is legal.

This paper from the Virginia Journal of Law & Technology- University of Virginia Vol. 9, No. 7 (Summer 2004) entitled "War Peace or Stalemate" says, in its very well footnoted and long winded way, that "wardriving" is legal.
But pay careful attention to its definition of "war driving": recording and marking wireless access points- as opposed to trying to "access" them.  (For more information on the definition of "access" as it relates to computer crime see: George Washington University Law School's Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series Research Paper No. 65 entitled "Cybercrime's Scope: Interpreting 'Access' and 'Authorization' in Computer Misuse Statutes")

"War, Peace, or Stalemate" relates that "wardriving itself is quite innocuous, legal, and can even be quite beneficial to society".  Its benefits relate to the oft repeated hacker claim of securing unsecured networks.  The paper says that "the premise that wardriving is legal relies on a narrowly construed and somewhat arcane distinction between viewing or recording the existence of open networks and accessing those networks".  It also warns that the criminality of wardriving has not been tested in court.

It notes an unofficial FBI memorandum that states "Identifying the presence of a wireless network may not be a criminal violations, however, there may be criminal violations if the network is actually accessed..."

One of the most interesting quotes in the paper is:

wardialers are not unlike self-appointed neighborhood watchmen who police an area looking for security breaches.  So long as the well-intentioned watchmen do not take advantage of the security breaches they discover, no crime is committed.  Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that most, if not all, of those living in the neighborhood are thankful to have watchmen patrolling the area


Although the paper seems poorly executed, all the assertions are footnoted to reasonable sources (to the point that many pages contain more footnotes than text).  And while I take exception with some of the presented ideas (like the War Games character played by Mathew Broderick is based on Kevin Mitnick?!?), overall the conclusion seems sound and well documented.

A recently enacted New Hampshire law (local copy) says basically that you are allowed to access wireless access points as long as you "could not have know that access was unauthorized."  This is basically an assumption that access is granted and legal unless shown otherwise.

So document wireless access points as you like (as I did surrounding Radford University in 2004), but don't access them where "unauthorized".

-Monta







The most recent copy of this document is here.


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written by: Monta Elkins


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