To me, not the law, but to me, it seems like if you do not want people to use your access point you should have to lock it down. If it is open to be connected to and available outside your property thats your fault. I understand the argument if my door was open in my house or my keys were left in my car, yes nobody still has the right to touch your stuff or trespass on my property. But when you park your car in my driveway and leave the keys in it, do I have the right to move your car? I would think so? The only real damages I see would be from comcast or SBC who is now providing internet service for multiple homes and only paying for one. I suppose real damages could be done to a consumer providing the bandwidth is constrained, but again it was there choice not to implement security, thus allowing anyone to connect. What if I am sitting next door and just scanning and recording your network sessions, is this illegal if I do not associate with your network? If it is not encrypted every email you send and every website you visit can be seen, including some passwords. This has been a problem for several years and there has been no good legal determinations made. If you want to prosecute people for hacking into your system on the internet, you must post a warning message on the system saying authorized use only all others will be prosecuted. Without this message there is no leg to stand on in court for people loggin in and looking around at your files. They could still prosecute you though if you did actual damages to the system, whether intended or not. The law may be clear on this subject, but it is far from consistent with other similiar scenarios, and until it is seriously challenged it wont change.