It is not often that Singapore appears on the front page of Slashdot, a news site for tech-savvy Internet users, but when news of a 17 year old being charged for the crime of stealing his neighbour’s wireless Internet access was reported, readers protested at what some see as a “draconian” law coming from a “fine” country. Sympathies poured out for an act that did not seem like a crime, or one justifying three years of jail and a hefty fine, not to mention a criminal record. Wireless Internet is, after all, abundant. Your laptop might have been programmed to automatically connect to an open network whose “openness” might be a subject of grave doubt. Does that make you a criminal? Excuse me, switch off that laptop before you get into trouble; there is liability in the air.

What infuriates this technologically informed writer is that the steps to take to protect your network from intruders are simple –- if you understand what a password is, you are almost there. However nothing is truly secure as long as it is connected to the Internet and accessible to millions of people as much as it makes millions of people accessible. Any tool available to a home user with better things to do than toy with his computer all day can be breached by a determined hacker, and the consequences can be dire for this victim. Not only is his private information in danger, he could suddenly find himself liable for crimes committed on his network. There is therefore, a community interest to deter intruders from entering a private network. A simple analogy settles this – opening a window in your home to enjoy some fresh air is not an invitation for a robber to climb inside and steal your belongings.

Criminal law is not an end to itself, and as interactions between people change with technological advances, the law should change in tandem. What is or not a crime similarly changes over time and varies from person to person. It is heartening that the Penal Code and other laws are reviewed regularly, but when it is to be applied, some questions must be considered before punishment is meted out to an individual. Whose interests are we protecting? What kind of behavior are we trying to deter? A law cannot also impede the functioning of society or deny us the benefits of technology; it would be against the interests of the community. Its relevance is not based on the usefulness of the law per se, but its usefulness to the wishes and demands of our society in general.

Even when we do not believe our actions can actually affect others, most of the time they do in our closely connected society. Whether the law of criminal liability should be applied to all of them is a separate fine line. An open window entices the curious – should we then kill the cat?

Ang Hou Fu is a first year law student and an associate editor of the Singapore Law Review. – Juris Illuminae Vol. 3 Issue 3 (January 2007)