India Looks To Make Open WiFi Illegal
from the overreact-much? dept
In most of the discussions we've had over the years concerning the legalities of open WiFi networks, the issue was whether or not it was legal to access an open WiFi network. Over in India, they're taking a different approach, apparently preparing rules that would outlaw offering an open WiFi network (via Slashdot). This is in response to the recent bombings in India, where officials believe the bombers used open WiFi networks to email each other. That seems like a pretty big overreaction. If it's not open WiFi, the terrorists will come up with other ways to communicate -- and in the meantime you inconvenience everyone else, and make it impossible for those who want to offer open WiFi to do so.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Who Will They Call?
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Re: Who Will They Call?
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Re: Who Will They Call?
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But, as pointed out, if not WiFi then some other means of communication will be used.
Why not ban the telephone? Why not ban the Internet altogether? Why not ban plain brown envelopes?
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Payphones
Pay as you go Cells
Even the Post office must close
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They are scared
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No go
Indians are resilient and extremely shrewd. They find a way around problems, especially technical problems. You are talking about a country whose street vendors software-hacked open the iPhone even before it was made available legally in the country without any jailbreaking software. The computer tech support guy will fix your Vonage router even though it is not technically sold in the country. And you would think that after the WiFi ban (if it can be implemented), people won't find a way around it?
As usual, the public will forget this also without holding the politician's feet to the fire about terrorism preventive measures.
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Re: No go
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and if you tracked everything then IP and MAC spoofing would no longer work and in addition, cracking weak passwords would be made ineffective.
Wow, what a good solution !
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ban everything
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