London Is Still World's Wi-Fi Access Point Capital 88
ISP Review UK writes "The latest annual Wireless Security Survey from RSA has revealed that London is still the world's wireless network (Wi-Fi) capital, with a total of 12,276 access points detected, exceeding the number found in New York City by more than 3,000. However, the French capital of Paris broke all the records with a 543% year-over-year increase in the number of wireless access points, which compares with London's 72% (down from 160% last year) and New York City's 45% (down from 49%). The survey also examined how many of the wireless access points detected were secured with some form of encryption (hotspots excluded). In New York City, 97% of corporate access points had encryption in place (76% last year). In Paris, 94% of corporate access points were encrypted — although in London, 20% of all business access points continue to be completely unprotected."
Fix the title... (Score:2, Insightful)
in London, 20% of all business access points continue to be completely unprotected.
So the title should read "London is still world's Wi-Fi Wardriving Capital", yesno?
Re:Fix the title... (Score:3, Insightful)
If a wardriver chooses to access a network, that remains a different and separate matter. (And not one that's black and white either. How is somebody expected to know what networks are open on purpose for public use? In Seattle there a lot of such networks.)
I myself have long taken the view that if I don't have to do anything more than just associate with access point to be fully connected, it's public. It's up to whomever owns the access point to take proper measures if they want it to be exclusive, otherwise their hardware is acting in their name to provide access to whomever asks for it.
As for these numbers, they seem to be ignoring all the wireless in places like Taipei, Seoul, and Tokyo. I wouldn't be surprised if comprehensive surveys done there blew away places like London.
Re:Misleading: They only went to Paris, London &am (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides, the gross number of wireless network doesn't tell us much. A per capita figure would have been a more useful comparison. NYC metro has 17 million people, London 8 million and Paris is at 9.6 million. It also looks like they only focused on the city's "financial hubs."
Well, the result would be the same then. More people per access point = bad.
Re:Also the worlds CCTV capital (Score:4, Insightful)
Two are supposedly on traffic lights and therefore may either by traffic cameras or, more likely, those familiar traffic sensors which have cowlings that make them look a bit like CCTV cameras. The author declined to investigate. Two more seem to belong to a conference centre (a private business) although the author didn't bother to look into that, assuming they were there on government edict to monitor Orwell's gardens for some reason.
Of the remaining 28, all the cameras actually identified are private cameras belonging to businesses. Mind you there are also "hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors to homes, shops and offices" which for some reason they decided didn't count towards the 32-camera total the way the other 28 cameras belong to businesses did. I'm not suggesting that those "hundreds" of cameras are figments of the author's imagination, or that they are only mentioned to imply that the preceding 28 cameras were somehow related to the government, even though they clearly aren't, but this is a publication associated with the Daily Mail so I doubt that fact-checking got in the way of sensationalism.
Re:well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:they sure aren't usable... (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh we understand all right. But logical arguments don't work here bureaucracy rules the roost here.
Running the tubes all night would be awesome. But Londoners are the laziest people on the planet and no one is going to work all night in the public sector, they would strike if we tried to make them.
Thus no tubes after midnight or before 6am.
Re:well... (Score:2, Insightful)
can't=shouldn't
especially WEP is a joke to crack
Re:All night tube (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets not forget that in all honesty 24 hour tube isn't something people are that interested in, Brian paddock was proposing keeping the tube open all of friday & saturday (or atleast some of the tube), nobody cared much. There are plenty of 24hr buses to get you home between 1-2 and 5-6 (with the tfl.gov plasterd everywhere, aswell as the nightbus maps its not exactly hard to find them either). Ofc 24hr tube would be nice but id rather see money spend elsewhere than maintaining >250 stations open during the night for almost zero benefit (at night a bus can get from A to B pretty fast, especially as it rarely has to stop ( no traffic & nobody catching the bus at most stops))