SALT LAKE CITY — How much privacy can you expect to have when you pilfer internet service from a neighbor's or nearby business' open Wi-Fi access? The short answer may be "none."

The question has been central to a legal case out of Pennsylvania, where a man is accused of downloading child porn through a neighbor's internet access.

According to the Wall Street Journal, police after first tracing the IP address back to the neighbor, then used a program called "Moocherhunter" as well as a directional antenna to implicate Richard Stanley to the crime.

Stanley pleaded not guilty to possession of child pornography. Through his attorneys, he has argued police should have first obtained a warrant to use the program. A federal judge ruled that was not the case, and Stanley could not expect any more privacy than the subscriber to the internet service, whose IP address is considered public.

"Anybody that's downloading child pornography needs to know that the police either know or will know that they're doing that," said Salt Lake City-based defense attorney Greg Skordas, who trains police on Fourth Amendment search and seizure legalities.

Legal experts maintain it's a challenging legal issue: Does someone have an expectation of privacy if they don't necessarily know they're giving off their location when they log on to someone else's wireless network?

The assistant federal public defender who represents Stanley stands by her position and plans to appeal the ruling.

Related:

Leaving your Wi-Fi open can leave you on the hook for crime

In neighborhoods everywhere, people can log onto their computers to find a list of secure and unsecure Wi-Fi connections nearby. It's the unsecure connections that could leave you vulnerable to having to answer to police for some crime you didn't commit.

"When Stanley connected to the other person's router, he didn't reveal his location," Marketa Sims said in an interview with the WSJ. "The question here is whether the government needs a warrant to find your location when you haven't broadcast it."

Skordas said the internet has created scenarios the founding fathers couldn't have possibly predicted, and in general terms internet users — subscribers or not — should keep their expectations of privacy at a minimum.

"The internet has sort of lessened that expectation I would say, maybe lessened it more than some of us are even comfortable at this point, notwithstanding the horrible things that are happening here," Skordas said. "It's a very low or maybe no expectation of privacy when you are using another person's IP address or someone else's internet to download something that is otherwise illegal."

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