Law enforcement agents armed with assault weapons, raided a Buffalo, N.Y. man's home at 6:30 AM only to learn that he was innocent, and had been framed due to an unprotected wireless router. The man appeared to have downloaded child pornography, but after a forensic examination of his desktop and iPad, it was determined that he was not the perpetrator. Further investigation led to the arrest of a 25-year-old neighbor a week later who pleaded guilty to the distribution of child pornography.

The root of the debacle: The man had become fed up with trying to set a password for a new router, and he eventually left it unsecured. While it is not known how often unsecured wireless routers have brought trouble to their owners, a substantial number of computer users are surprisingly amenable to logging onto a Wi-Fi network without permission. Specifically, a poll conducted for the Wi-Fi Alliance industry group found that 32 percent of 1,054 Americans age 18 and older admitted to attempting to access a Wi-Fi network that wasn't theirs.

Laws regarding access to wireless connections without permission vary widely, further complicating the problem. For example, it is illegal in Singapore, though the topic is open for debate in the United States. In Germany however, the country's top criminal court ruled last year that Internet users must secure their wireless connections to prevent it from being used as a conduit for illicit downloads.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at MSNBC

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