You Could Get Arrested for Charging Your Phone

There are a few unassailable rules even in the developing field of smartphone etiquette: Don’t use your phone in a movie theater. Limit use at the dinner table. Don’t walk and text. Do not, under any circumstances, hop onstage at a Broadway play to charge your iPhone.

But as Techdirt points out, we’re still struggling to suss out the finer points, including which power outlets are fair game for phone charging. London Evening Standard reported that a man was recently arrested on the London Overground for plugging his smartphone into a train outlet. The charge? “Abstracting electricity.” (He was subsequently “de-arrested” for this offense but “further arrested for unacceptable behavior.”) According to Transport for London, on-board sockets are clearly designated for “cleaners’ use only.”