Allow me to present a clickable ethical dilemma hidden under the Network icon in Windows Explorer, a.k.a. Network Neighborhood. Click it and what do you see? All of the networks and computers visible from your computer. Some may not be “accessible.” You might not be able to get into them, but you can see them - and a few more clicks might get you into some of them (the exception is when Windows is having a bad day and you can’t get into anything but your own machine).

Clicking “Network” is just one of many ways to navigate a network, but personally, I use it quite often - for example, to find a printer when I’m visiting the offices of friends, employers, or clients. Networks were made for sharing, and that icon is one way to find out what has been shared.

But what if you click the same icon when you are not in an office, but in the park, at a bar, or in a hotel room? You may find that there is some unintentional sharing going on. You may be able to access hard drives that belong to strangers. What do you do? Were you wrong to click the icon? Do you inform the parties who are exposed? Therein lies the dilemma, which is far from academic now that the air around us is thick with data, especially in trains, planes, hots pots, and hotels.

Over the last 12 months we’ve seen numerous convictions for “wireless crimes.” These have ranged from the criminal hacking of medical records in North Carolina to the attempted interception of credit card transactions at the national headquarters of the Lowe's home improvement chain (coincidentally also in North Carolina) via an “open” network connection which the perpetrators detected, wirelessly, from a Lowe’s parking lot in Michigan.

Reports of such cases invariably invoke the term “wardriving.” I’m sure editors love the sound of it but are unaware that it’s not the same as wireless intrusion. Indeed, wardriving, as defined by the vast majority of those who do it, is the detection of wireless networks that are broadcasting data into public airspace. Wardriving typically uses a laptop, a Wi-Fi card, and software such as NetStumbler.

Before you point to any motes in the wardriver’s eye, remember that your Windows XP laptop is probably beaming the air right now by default, since Wi-Fi detection is part of XP’s standard operating procedure. This observation suggests another nasty legal problem: Would Microsoft would be an accessory to criminal acts if wardriving were ruled illegal? After all, the recording industry, through the RIAA, is trying to pin piracy on makers of peer-to-peer software.

M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP, is Program Director of the Master of Science in Information Assurance program at Norwich University.