A very strange story out of Alaska: A police officer seized the laptop of a 21-year-old who was using free Wi-Fi from a library after it was closed parked in his car. The police had warned him off parking in private neighborhoods and using unsecured networks, and had told him to leave the area outside the library the day before they seized his computer.
The article is short on details. He wasn't arrested, but his computer was seized. The basis of that seizure aren't disclosed--what crime was actually committed? Trespassing, perhaps, as he was parked in a place he had already been told to leave? The computer isn't being examined by police; rather, the library's director will be looking into the matter. The fellow in question seems only mildly irritated, and neither he nor the police are sure whether he'll be taken to court over the matter.
The hilarious librarian Jessamyn West notes on her blog that there are a number of other unanswered questions, such as why the library needed a professional to install a "timer," when they could just hit the off switch if they didn't want it used after hours.
This reminds me quite a bit of the quite (not Very) Rev. AKMA (A.K.M. Adam) being asked back in Aug. 2004 to not use the Nantucket (Mass.) Athaneum's Wi-FI while he was sitting outside the facility by a police officer with a sketchy idea of what actual law might be involved.
I read through the Alaska State Troopers' recent watch reports, and found no mention of this. Anchorage police don't publish a blotter, more's the pity.