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A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

(ramsayleung.github.io)
137 points samray | 8 comments | 10 Oct 25 07:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.228s | source | bottom
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traceroute66 ◴[10 Oct 25 11:36 UTC] No.45537711[source]▶
> We affirm our strict adherence to all relevant regulations and service terms throughout this project.

Except if you bypassed payment and used the service in a manner that was not intended, most likely you were by definition not undertaking "strict adherance" to service terms ?

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VladVladikoff ◴[10 Oct 25 12:06 UTC] No.45537995[source]▶
Yeah I am a bit confused about posts like this. It’s bragging about breaking the law. There was a particularly bad one a few months ago where a kid had hacked Monster’s employee training site, and was sharing all this internal media in the post. I don’t understand how they don’t end up getting in some seriously annoying trouble with law enforcement. Well I looked it up just now and the post was deleted, I guess maybe he did get in trouble. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44997145
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1. eps ◴[10 Oct 25 12:23 UTC] No.45538161[source]▶
> breaking the law

Not law per se. More like contractual obligations taken upon by connecting to the flight's WiFi.

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2. traceroute66 ◴[10 Oct 25 12:37 UTC] No.45538281[source]▶
> Not law per se. More like contractual obligations taken upon by connecting to the flight's WiFi.

Well, being pedantic, you could be said to be breaking Civil Law. :)

Jest aside, IANAL but most western countries have some sort of Criminal Law relating to mis-use of computers.

A brief search for Canada reveals Criminal Code (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46)[1].

Again IANAL, but from my reading in this scenario it would be (c) -> (a), "uses or causes to be used ... a computer system" to "obtains, directly or indirectly, any computer service".

[1]https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-342.1....

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3. gruez ◴[10 Oct 25 14:13 UTC] No.45539324[source]▶
Isn't this pretty straightforwardly "theft of service", like "stealing" cable TV service?
4. ◴[10 Oct 25 14:49 UTC] No.45539723[source]▶
5. Aurornis ◴[10 Oct 25 14:52 UTC] No.45539753[source]▶
Most countries will have laws covering cases of unauthorized access, theft of services, and computer misuse.

The user agreement helps define the service as a paid service with defined access cases. Going around those would put the user in violation of some laws.

An analogy would be showing up to a paid event venue and noticing a back door was left open. Going into the building without paying is not okay, even though you never engaged with the ticket office to agree to anything.

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6. ballenf ◴[10 Oct 25 15:07 UTC] No.45539911[source]▶
If the user routed all traffic through a WeChat or other messaging service, they would just be using messaging.
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7. nradov ◴[10 Oct 25 16:57 UTC] No.45541086{3}[source]▶
Intent matters. In US legal jurisdictions that could potentially be prosecuted as a CFAA violation, although I'm not aware of any cases like that yet.

https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-9-48000-computer-fraud

8. hluska ◴[10 Oct 25 18:34 UTC] No.45542237[source]▶
This is theft. Stealing is illegal. Giving a blueprint for how you stole is the icing on the prosecutorial cake because you can’t claim lack of knowledge if you create a conspiracy to enable the theft.

This may be the dumbest write up I have ever read.