Austin Police Planned... Then Postponed Wardriving Plans In An Attempt To Shutdown Open WiFi
from the um,-but-it's-legal dept
Jonathan Rumion alerted us to a plan by the Austin, Texas police department to conduct a massive war drive around the city, looking for open WiFi networks, with the plan to try to find the owners, and tell them to lock up their WiFi networks. We've heard of similar campaigns in the past. Rumion was reasonably concerned about this effort -- and whether it was because of him asking questions, or other reasons, it looks like the Austin police have postponed this effort for the time being.Either way, it raises lots of questions. Having an open WiFi network is not against the law, so should the police really be going around telling people to lock up their WiFi? It's also not at all clear how they're figuring out who actually owns the open WiFi networks. Rumion was also concerned about what the police might do with the data they collect, though I don't think that should be an issue -- that data is public. Still, it does seem like a questionable effort against something that remains perfectly legal.
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This whole Open Wifi 'problem' makes no sense at all!
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Re: This whole Open Wifi 'problem' makes no sense at all!
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Re: Re: This whole Open Wifi 'problem' makes no sense at all!
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sigh
It's not a dangerous thing and only becomes that when and IF IF IF your open is used to d/l material that is "illegal". Sadly, the only reason it's not illegal is because there is a card to be played that has not been played yet by the big government. IF, you ask me anyway.
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Re: sigh
While he might try to scare people with that figure and "settlement" it is not a legal finding by a court. It is another tool to try and stomp out the lawsuit defense of I have open wifi.
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I wouldn't be too quick to declare open wifi public. Last I heard the US government was trying to work that out ...
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Open Wireless can be a good thing.
Networks prosper with more nodes, a fact clearly visible to anyone old enough to recall the days before ubiquitious internet, fax machines or telephones. Constraining that devalues the entire network.
Making the world safe for data miners and the total information crowd comes at a high cost: stifled discussion, freezing out folks too poor to afford broadband, eidetic machine memory where everything one ever says is a permanent record to be freely recalled without context.
The data is often wrong: users spoof information, MAC address changers and IP proxies are common. Competant criminals and terrorists will have little trouble stealing anomnimity, making these policies ineffective for policing, and casting the majority of innocents as criminals.
Those who see the commensualism in open networks are not all criminals-they don't need to be policed until they _actually_ commit a crime.
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FOX News Alert
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Re: FOX News Alert
teach them the importance of securing them.
'Yes, officer, I know my wifi is open. I left it that way on purpose. Have a great day.'
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Re:
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Re: British police
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This might be useful...
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Re: This might be useful...
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Unsolved rape, murder, arson, assault and kidnapping cases...
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Re: Unsolved rape, murder, arson, assault and kidnapping cases...
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Re: Unsolved rape, murder, arson, assault and kidnapping cases...
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Re: Re: Unsolved rape, murder, arson, assault and kidnapping cases...
ok smart guy, how do you know these illegals aren't coming into the country through these open wireless networks? FUD much?
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Re: Re: Unsolved rape, murder, arson, assault and kidnapping cases...
> about illegal immigrants coming from Mexico
> into Arizona and Texas, they would have
> something else to keep them busy
The Austin police can't do anything about illegals. Haven't you heard? Austin is one of those lovely 'sanctuary cities'. The cops are prohibited by the city council from enforcing or helping to enforce US law if it has anything to do with illegal immigration.
Fantastic, huh?
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Make no mistake about it, YOU pay for it, YOU who earn less than 30K a year not the ones that make a million or more.
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Open Wifi provides funds to the raporist pedoterror pirates!
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So, if I don't fence and lock my farmland, and some kids make a baby there
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Sounds OK to me...
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Re: Sounds OK to me...
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Re: Sounds OK to me...
The reasons for leaving a wifi network open are varied. Me personally I leave it mine open for my convenience. There is absolutely nothing illegal or even wrong with leaving it open. It does not violate my service agreement with my ISP.
The people arguing that illegal activities may potentially happen on an open access are not thinking through the logical progression of what will happen if we go down the road of mandating encrypting connections. IF we accept the government telling us we need to lock down connections for our own good, what will be the next thing we will allow for our own good.
Maybe we need the government to mandate enforced best practices regarding passwords. After that we should mandate antivirus and security software. Then maybe enforced patching. By god we will make sure that all users of electronics are safe.
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It's not illegal, but some people don't understand their exposure
What if somebody parks outside your house and proceeds to download a mountain of kiddie porn? Even if you successfully defend yourself against such a thing, the stink is still on you, and the chances of successfully defending yourself aren't very good.
From that point of view, this whole thing could be considered something of a public service, kinda like telling someone they left their headlights on or their dog's on the loose.
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Re: It's not illegal, but some people don't understand their exposure
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Re: It's not illegal, but some people don't understand their exposure
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Re: It's not illegal, but some people don't understand their exposure
Then it's an education problem. The solution here isn't to police ALL the users, it's to EDUCATE the users who don't know what they're doing. You wanna solve this problem? Require everyone who buys a router at Best Buy to watch a 2 minute tutorial on WEP and/or WPA. Hell, just refer them to one of the countless YouTube videos of someone cracking WEP with Backtrack in under 2 minutes. Problem solved.
Seriously, this is the problem with America. People here think Educations ends at Graduation. Don't get me wrong, I personally believe the US Educational system is badly broken and should be scrapped entirely and recreated from scratch, but that's not the point. The problem here in America is that, at some age, everyone stops learning. People hit 40 or 50 or 60 and they start thinking "I'm old, I'm busy, and some younger person can figure this stuff out for me for $6/hour, so I give up." This mindset has cost more trillions of dollars and more millions of lives than any war in the last 3 centuries. Education should be like healthcare - cradle to grave. The thought that you hit some magical point where you've "paid your dues" and no longer need to learn anything is as insane as thinking "well, I'm 55, so even though everyone else is going to get a Flu Shot, I've had 50 of those things and I'm alright." It's insane.
So rather than passing a law that punishes everyone (or worse, using the police to enforce a misguided viewpoint with zero law to back it up) - including those who actually properly secure a network without WEP/WPA (it can be done!) let's focus on educating those who simply don't have the KNOWLEDGE to do it.
Also, in case someone is wondering, here's my setup:
DSL Modem > Router A > Router B
Router A has no encryption but is configured to allow only 1 wifi connection at a time. My Nintendo DS uses this connection 24/7 unless a friend needs it. Thus, the single slot is always occupied, preventing use by the public. Router B uses WPA, a MAC Filter, a 9 connection limit (the exact number of devices I connect to it), static DHCP, expires leases every 30 minutes, and sends me an email if all previous devices don't reconnect within 5 minutes.
Now, if you don't understand ANY of what I just said, GO EDUCATE YOURSELF. THIS IS INTERNET 101 PEOPLE!
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Open WiFi
They are much smarter now thanks to my lawyer and a few thousand dollars of my money.
Having said this, I would defend anyone's right to leave their WIFI open but I would not recommend it.
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Re: Open WiFi
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How About this?
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http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/crime_and_courts/article_c7495b94-d411-11e0-8cd3-001c c4c002e0.html
One also has to wonder what "grass roots" front for the media corps offered them money to provide this vital service to the community.
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Doors
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Re: Doors
Operation wardrive is not part of any police officers beat. They are going to drive around with the express purpose of finding out who has open wifi. Period.
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Re: Doors
What, I'm allowed only to have my router open from 9 to 5?
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Shut down Wi-fi
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Re: Shut down Wi-fi
Everyone here is protesting that they should be able to leave their wifi open if they want to, but did you people stop to think that you are not the people who the cops are trying to warn? Some people just don't even know that a WiFi can be open, and can also be locked down for their own protection, so if the police is trying to lend a helping hand, more power to them.
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Re: Re: Shut down Wi-fi
People should be able to keep their WiFi open if they wish.
People that don't know how to secure, shouldn't be setting up WiFi in their homes. They have no excuse for not knowing how. Besides the great thing called the internet, they have the owner's manual to tell them to how to secure it. Many wireless routers have an option to auto-secure it.
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I imagine many people who have wifi don't even know there's such a thing as securing it, so they don't know to look up how to do it.
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Re: Shut down Wi-fi
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If you have open WiFi and get accused of infringement..
(in my experience policemen are amongst the biggest pirates out there!)
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I suggest...
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It's not illegal to leave your house door unlocked or your car doors unlocked, but in many places if the police note it, they will contact you and suggest you lock them. It is a question of security, even if it isn't "the law".
I wouldn't be shocked to see an anti-open WiFi law coming at some point.
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They do?? That would totally creep me out, and probably make me a bit irritated at the police.
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"Firefighters tell homeowners how to keep houses safe from fires"
I don't see much problem with this, even if I didn't despise all those too lazy to connect wires.
By the way, I just noticed that the weekend "stories" (which I never read -- don't you people have off-line lives?) are what I frequently rail at: totally comments on comments! Holy cow, it's narcissistic wallowing in your own supposed wit, And to me seems to drive the reach for excess ornamental fluorishes.
Then, after noting a LACK in the comments above (#24 current), occurred to me that what's needed is the opposite: for Mike to highlight and trumpet the first ad hominem or vulgarism. Let's all see who's the first low-life to use those this week, hmm? (This mention will cause skewing of results, I hope.)
[And a somewhat related shout out to #5 Take_a_WIfi_on_me for working in two rare words: eidetic and commensualism.]
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Re: "Firefighters tell homeowners how to keep houses safe from fires"
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I must be one of the lazy ones then - I've tried to keep the CAT 5 LAN connection hardwired to my laptop, but the wife tripped over it and it almost strangled the cat.
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Re: "Firefighters tell homeowners how to keep houses safe from fires"
How about those of us who don't have permission to rewire our apartments? How about those of us with laptops who want to -- gasp -- carry them around with us? (I know -- the idea of using a portable device in a portable manner does tend to cramp the brain.) How about those of us who have guests who want to connect their laptops to the Internet while sitting on the couch or whatever handy chair we sit them in? Blue wires stretched across the floor and sticking out of the cushions are so chic this season!
"Lazy" is just a way of saying "I don't have your priorities and I can't be bothered to understand them, so I'll just judge you harshly to feel better about myself."
"Holy cow, it's narcissistic wallowing in your own supposed wit, And to me seems to drive the reach for excess ornamental fluorishes."
Pot, kettle.
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Re: "Firefighters tell homeowners how to keep houses safe from fires"
Umm...if you're the same out_of_the_blue who's been coming here for months, then surely you know that Techdirt doesn't have any stories during the weekend? Unless I'm mistaken, the weekend is Saturday and Sunday. Mike does post articles on a Friday, but unless those of you in America include Friday as part of the weekend, then I wonder about you, OotB.
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class action lawsuite?
Another way Big Brother waste taxpayer dollars.
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Partially agree
Said that, not sure if it is ok to enforce people to use encryption.
Also, not sure how much time they'll spend trying to match each open AP with its location and owner. Wouldn't it be faster to break into the network and inject a banner with the warning, or break into the router, set up a random key, and change the ssid to "contact-the-police-to-recover-your-key"
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Re: Partially agree
Better yet: one letter to each of the ISPs operating in the region asking them to mass email their customers about it.
Having law enforcement wardriving around is wasteful on its face and suspicious underneath.
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Re: Partially agree
So you're advocating the police violate anti-hacking laws for the good of the public?
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Re: Re: Partially agree
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Colossal Waste of resources.
This whole initiative is a non-starter. In order to combat the 'scourge' of open wifi they will have to continually wardrive to look for new hotspots.
Stay classy Austin.
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Here's another project idea for Austin police
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Re: Here's another project idea for Austin police
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Consumers not knowing how to set these up is not an excuse. The directions are there and very readable. Is it too much to ask that people read the 5 page manual? Creating laws for things like this is unacceptable. Basically saying "Its ok if you don't know, I'm from the government and I'm here to help." We need a little more personal responsibility and a lot let gov responsibility.
Also, since most new routers come secured now anyways. The people who have unsecured networks probably want it that way.
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What a waste of taxpayer money.
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FTFY.
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?????????
In my area the little town/city I live next to has free open WiFi running down main street. Both auto dealers we purchased out cars from have open Wifi for customer convenience. Heck even the senior citizen center where I volunteer has open WiFi.
I wonder if Austin donut shoppes have open WiFi?
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Typical TechDirt
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Re: Typical TechDirt
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Locked Doors
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Re: Locked Doors
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Are we forgetting
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In my last neighborhood, the cops drove around at night and woke me up more than once because I was stupid and left my garage door open. They didn't force me to shut it. They just let me know it was open, and that someone might steal my stuff if I left it like that.
Seems like pro active policing to me. If the cops come to your house and inform you, and you say "yeah, I want it open," then their job is done. If they try and force you to lock it down, I think they are overstepping their bounds.
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Re:
In the first place, it's plainly obvious whether or not your garage door is open. A cop can notice it in the routine course of his duties and out of the goodness of his heart warn you. Not so with wifi -- you have to have equipment and be driving around looking for them. Given that educating people about network security is not anywhere close to being in a cop's job description, it seems like ahuge misallocation of resources that could be better applies elsewhere.
I assume that the cops don't have a dedicated team of people looking for open garage doors, and if they did, I would have an objection to that for the same reason.
Second, with the garage doors they are proactively preventing property crime. What crime are they proactively protecting you from with the wifi? I can't think of any, except maybe identify theft -- and WPA is weak protection against a criminal who wants to gather your CC numbers and such anyway.
Also, it's unnecessary. As a commenter earlier pointed out, wifi routers come presecured nowadays.
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AT&T
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