Reply #158: an automated (ie computer) response

[Clovis Sangrail]

is still a response, and if it's your equipment you're responsible for that response.
If your car rolls down a hill and causes an accident, it's your responsibility.
If it fell out of park or the brakes failed you may be able to pass some responsiblity on to Ford,
but if you failed to operate your equipment properly it's your responsibility...
and no amount of "but I didn't understand how to set the brake" is going to get you off the hook.

Regarding how I "must now" believe that hacking into your equipment is OK because it's broadcasting in public spectrum... you're wrong.

I don't contact the owner of every website I go to and ask him permission to talk to his machine.
However, when I issue "the appropriate command" to his machine and it gives it to me,
I have been granted permission to use his webserver.

If his machine refuses to aknowledge the "appropriate command", he has denied my request.
At that point my circumventing whatever security he has put in place is the electronic version of b&e.

Without this concept of implied consent the internet would very quickly become less than useful.
Routers send billions and billions of packets to each other all over the internet based on this idea.
If the other router accepts it permission is implied.

Most WAPs these days are combo deals that also act as firewalls, and if you have one of these it's already being sent perfectly legal packets all day long, that have nothing to do with any request you have made, which induce it to act in some way or another.
"is if for me?"
"do I answer it? serve up a page? drop it?"
Take a look at your logs sometime and see how many requests you get from places you have nothing to do with.

As of now, transmissions in the public spectrum are no different.
There is no law preventing me, or you, from broadcasting packets that request a service or response.... from the world or a particular machine.

I think part of the problem is that most people have never dealt with the realities of directly connecting equipment to a public network.
Now that it's cheap enough, lots of people are setting up wireless routers with no inkling that they are now broadcasting into and recieving from public spectrum.... or how to lock down their new wireless network.

While this is lamentable, I don't see that it shifts any responsiblity.