Holy crap! 9 pages on this! Sadly, the deaths of our 3 fallen yesterday got less attention than this thread. That thread is currently 5 pages long. Just a point...maybe this REALLY isn't that big of a deal and I am surprised at the way this is being debated.
I've read thru the arguments, and there seems to be no cut and dried, black and white answer here.
1. I have a wireless router set up in my room. My room is not the public domain. I hold a certain expectation of privacy for it as I do my personal belongings. Whether I secure it or not. I've gone to the bathroom before and left my door open, I certainly don't exect to come back and find people sitting on my leather couch watching my TV, and if they did, the explanation "well your door was open" probably wouldn't mean much, would it?
2. If you want to argue the signals are not mine once they leave my antenna, fine, I can agree with that. I can show you the receipt for the WAP that they go in and out of, which then go to my cable modem, which I can assure you, I am paying for. So, the signals? Free. Devices and physical connections to the media they travel over are NOT free. Therefore, IMO, my connection via Eastlink is not free nor "public domain". Afterall, does not Eastlink give my router its own private IP address that I pay for monthly?
3. I will liken securing your network to securing your home; although you don't intend for people to come into your home uninvited or unwanted, due diligence and the reality of our society make door locks and security systems a necessity, which we further back up with home insurance from burglary, theft, etc. Depending on the risk we each assess in our own situation, we have different layers of protection. Because not many of us can wire our homes properly with a security system and monitor that system, we hire people to do this for us and accept that cost as protecting our homes from intruders. Much like our home, we can set up a WAP, and secure it with things like...actually NOT broadcasting our SSID, encryption, MAC filters ( a nice one for those who don't want to encrypt ), and various other technologies out there. If you don't want to leave you WAP unsecure and are finding that a challenge, try using the Setup CD that came with it. Its really not that hard. If you can't figure it out still and can't get a friend to help, then you can pay for some IT professional to come to your home and charge you the mandatory 1-hour rate minimum to set it up for you. That's your risk and your decision to make. Some people leave their doors unlocked, some people don't. We all expect that a stranger who enters that home uninvited is unwelcome. Ethically, as an IT guy, I expect the same with my router.
If you go away and leave your door unlocked, and come home and someone is sitting in your kitchen...did they "break into" your house?? Technically, no, there was no forced entry. Are they there legally? I don't think so, nor do I think a judge would rule that they were either.