EFF Advocates Leaving Wireless Routers Open 686
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the sounds-good-to-me dept.
from the sounds-good-to-me dept.
SD-Arcadia writes "We will need a political and technological 'Open Wireless Movement' to reverse the degradation of this indispensable component of the Internet's infrastructure. Part of the task will simply be reminding people that opening their WiFi is the socially responsible thing to do, and explaining that individuals who choose to do so can enjoy the same legal protections against liability as any other Internet access provider."
Same legal protections? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'll really enjoy making that assertion before a judge, *after* my door has been kicked in and my gear confiscated!
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:5, Insightful)
And you wonder why your rights get chipped away at, piece by piece.
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:4, Insightful)
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If we had freedom no knock warrants would not exist. You come through the door unannounced, I should be legally in the clear when I send as much lead as I can in your direction at high velocity.
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:4, Insightful)
Criminals is not 'the public' and meth is just a poor excuse to give the police free reign.
Hey guess what? the large majority of people who the police enter there homes could be grabbed at work. Or on the street.
Instead they kick in the door, point guns at every one, don't give people time to think, and shoot dogs and threaten 3 year old kids. FSM help you if you are woken up a 3 am, not completely aware of who is storming your house and reach for a gun so you can protect your family.
Sorry, but if its 'people have meth' or 'people get violated in the middle of the night' I'll choose people can have meth.
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:4, Informative)
Ah, that old schtick. The truth is that in the US, police work doesn't even make the top 10 most dangerous professions. [yahoo.com]
It may not be an easy job, but it is also not a particularly hazardous one.
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I have no issue with police punishing me for what I've done wrong.
I have major issues with the police not abiding by the same laws that they enforce for the public. From simple traffic laws (the most obvious) to drug trafficking, we have MAJOR issues with the police in the area I live in, and in my experience, throughout the country.
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:4, Interesting)
Reminds me of a war movie I saw once where a guy makes a really stirring speech about sacrifice, god, country, etc. When the time comes for the big battle charge, the men all tell him that he's been chosen to lead it. As he charges across the field, he's immediately killed. The men behind him take cover instead of following. One of them looks at another one and says "Damn, he was brave!" and the other replies "Yeah, and dead too."
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:4, Insightful)
There really is no need for a "legal test case" because there is no legal problem -- all sorts of businesses already offer free WiFi, and no one holds them liable for use by their customers or passersby.
The problem is the police are deciding that raids are a reasonable way to serve search and/or arrest warrants. And since the police don't raid Starbucks there's no reason to think they would raid EFF hotspots either. Instead they'll serve the search warrant in a reasonable way, in an attempt to collect the evidence they need to prosecute a crime. Just like they should do for individuals.
ISPs have been trying to scare people for years (Score:4, Informative)
The push to eliminate guest wireless has largely come from ISPs, especially the cable companies, who don't want people sharing bandwidth with their neighbors instead of everybody buying their own connection. A few ISPs, such as Sonic and Speakeasy, actually encourage sharing and roaming, but the companies like Comcast that also are pushing bandwidth caps have been the main propagandists against sharing wireless, and they're also the people who didn't want you running a web server from home when the broadband business was getting started.
On the other hand, sometimes there are actual problems. Back when I was running open wireless, I once got a call from my ISP saying they'd blocked half a million spams from my address overnight, and could I check that my computer wasn't infected? The computer was fine, but my neighbor's laptop had gotten infected and was blasting away over my wifi. Eventually when I upgraded to wireless-N I turned on encryption; unfortunately the wifi standards don't give you an easy way to have open access and encrypted connections, and I'd rather have the privacy.
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the WiFi standards have nothing to do about it - use a different router or if yours supports it switch to a non gimped OS for it.. DD-WRT along with most other 3rd party ones will allow you to have more than one SSID at a time each with it's own auth and encryption scheme.. you can even isolate and throttle - then to pr
Re:ISPs have been trying to scare people for years (Score:5, Informative)
ISP's don't give two shits what you do with your bandwidth, as it's not a server.
Uh, yeah they do care, because they are overselling it to an absurd degree. Anything you do that makes it more likely that you are actually using the bandwidth that you purchased puts stress on their network. One of the major providers where I live is trying to build a system by which they can bill by usage, rather than by max download speed just to get around this problem. Keep in mind, most ISPs are loss-leaders for the more profitable services in a telco or cable company. The ISP typically loses money every month on Internet accounts, but since it is part of a bundled service, the parent company makes up the difference in residential, long-distance, and/or cellular telephone services; or cable TV, PPV, VoD, etc. Consequently, they have incentive not to build a better network than they have to, and the more you use that network, the fatter the pipes they have to build.
Furthermore, some ISPs have in their AUPs a provision that says you can't run a server on anything but a business account (since business accounts are typically quite a bit more expensive than residential accounts). The other major provider in my area, for whom I used to work as a sys admin, was such an ISP. While most of the ISP admins didn't really care, the provision was in our policies, and I was aware of a couple of instances where we terminated peoples' accounts for reselling services off of residential Internet accounts. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to see an ISP interpret sharing an open WiFi access point as "reselling" a service (i.e., payment is in goodwill and/or karma rather than cash).
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No, it hasn't.
ISP's don't give two shits what you do with your bandwidth, as it's not a server.
Of course they do. They generally don't want you to share it with your neighbors, since that means they have fewer paying customers. And they generally don't want to be in the law enforcement business, responding to subpoenas, etc., if they don't have to.
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Sounds good until you're the one at risk of being shot by a trigger-happy psychopath under protection of the US Government. I don't think any of us are concerned about answering a nastygram about some contrived DMCA violation. We're concerned about having our homes invaded because someone thought it was a good idea to attack non-violent crimes with violent reactions in the USA.
in case you need a refresher: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=135680995 [npr.org]
Our ancestors had a less ambiguous case
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:4, Informative)
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Open doesn't mean WPA2 free. Set your SSID to: "Neighbor Shared Password: 'EFF Advised' questions to me@myhouse.net" Then you'll be fine. That's a minimal tech solution - your connection to the router should be fine. You'll probably want to pay attention to LAN security, and maybe put a password on NAS or network printers - but if you have those things, it's something that should have been thought about anyway.
Or if you want double protection, get yourself a VPN service and set it up for everything in you
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define insecure.
If it's open, then no problem. It in no way should be considered trespass.
That's just based on how computer networks, work, so please don't throw the broken and wildly inaccurate unlocked front door on a hour analogy.
"If you mean my right to share if I want, then I should point out that if I do share my connection, I am ultimately (for good reason) responsible for what you do with it"
no, you're not. that's kind of the point. You have the same protection as any ISP.
" How is what you're doing
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Under the current law, you are not responsible for illegal uses of your shared connection if you were unaware of said uses and did not filter the access / use (this is the common carrier protection). I am not a lawyer, so do not take that as legal advice, but this describes a reasonable interpretation of the law.
In regards to your analogy, a different standard is generally applied to physical uses of your property, especially when it comes to drug offences. However, if you can genuinely show that you did
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are millions of open wifi connections, there's been 1 (ok maybe there's been a couple of others) no-knock raids. That hardly seems to make one inevitable.
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Re:Same legal protections? (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried leaving my wifi open for awhile, but other people using it would slow my connection down...
Many modern routers support a "guest connection" with a separate SSID and allow limiting the bandwidth available to the guest(s). You can offer an open wifi connection without compromising your bandwidth beyond what you are comfortable with.
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Fascinating! I'd like to know more about this small city which is such a hotbed of IP crackdown. You must give us the zip code so we can see for ourselves on google news, or if you prefer just link your hometown newspaper. [google.com] Maybe you could submit a slashdot story about it.
Unless of course, you're just talking out your ass...
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Yes. Technically, you have the same legal protections. As a practical matter, you do not. If someone download kiddie porn from an open router at a coffee shop the FBI will assume the coffee shop was innocent and it was one of the customers. If the same thing happens at your home, then you are guilty until proven innocent.
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:5, Insightful)
if everybody left their wifi open then they wouldn't make that assumption.
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The sites that provide it are probably all overseas, in countries with lax enforcement or little cooperation with the US. That makes it hard for the FBI to enforce anything.
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The FBI doesn't carry much sway in a lot of the countries hosting this stuff. About their only alternative would be some nationally mandated firewall protecting against black-listed foreign sites providing illegal porn/warez/pirated music & movies/etc. (Please no!) So, they enforce domestically however they can. They're taking down the Johns because they can't touch the hookers.
And, even domestically, I'd imagine the content hosts are generally much more cautious (i.e. difficult to locate) than the
bad press (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't go after people who "download" it. Just the other day there was a story on here about someone arrested for "downloading" KP. It also mentioned in the same article the story of another who was arrested for "downloading" Millions of images from a boat using a cantenna several blocks away from the WAP.
But if you actually read the SOURCE articles for that, the truth comes out: the one who "downloaded Millions" did NOT "download" but UPLOAD. And it wasn't Millions that were UPLOADED (for, obviously, that would take many many hours and this was alleged to have happened in one very late night) but MILLIONS of images that were found on the guy's PC when he was raided.
This seems to be a deliberate confusion of the truth. "Upload" is consistently confused with "download" in articles like this so the reader is led to believe if you even download something from the internet big brother doesn't like then the MIB will come knock down your door and drag you to hades. Of course this is in the interests of the MEDIA OWNERS who publish this nonsense, because the more fear of the internet they can generate the more likely people are to be good little sheep who only use their connections as an extension of their TV sets, thus ensuring even more monthly income for the big media giants who own shit like hulu and who profit from others like netflix.
The witch hunt won't end until the last big media conglomerate lies dead in its grave. This is why I don't have cable, I don't go to movies, I don't subscribe to magazines, and I don't "rent." Ayup, I watch what the fuck I want to watch, and listen to what the fuck I wanna listen to. Sorry Alice, I know you own your work but I've bought enough copies of Billion Dollar Babies in my life from people who show absolutely no respect for the rights of the people of the society from which they profit.
Re:Same legal protections? (Score:5, Informative)
I pay for my internet service and my neighbors can do the same for theirs.
I speak from experience. I allowed my next door neighbor to piggyback for "just e-mail and some web surfing". They seemed to be low on money so I helped them out.
Then their house sprouts an HD satellite antenna and I notice my own Netflix streaming stuttering. It turns out they had gotten a DVR/DirecTV setup and were doing their own streaming. I blocked DirecTV and next thing I get is them asking me to help them fix their connection because their X-Box wouldn't connect and they wanted me to enable specific ports. Their X-Box would connect and it turned out the ports were what the DirecTV service rep had told them to make sure were open.
They decided they wanted more bandwidth and were lying to me to get it. It pissed me off. I then configured QOS to limit their data rate to just what the X-Box needed to play online. They finally decided to pay for their own connection.
It's just a pain in the butt and a liability to open up a wireless connection to anyone who wants on. I realize my story isn't exactly what this thread is about but it isn't far away. Leave your router open and people will just start soaking up bandwidth. With all of the streaming services out there, data rate increases are inevitable. It's easier to just not ever get on that merry go round and lock down your router.
Besides, liability is far lower. Anonymous users have no accountability.
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The summary fails to point out that the EFF is _not_ talking about leaving access points unencrypted. They're actually talking about new standards, which I think is probably a doomed plan; what they should be talking about is a way to use WPA2 enterprise to provide a common authentication domain. This way you could get people to agree to reasonable terms of use (e.g., I will not pirate software on your network) and also have an audit trail in case someone did do something in violation of these ToS. Yo
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, *after* my door has been kicked in and my gear confiscated!
Yeah, because that happens every day. We've had ubiquitous wifi for a decade or more. Open wifi points everywhere. How many people have had their doors kicked in as a result? Can you name one? Can you spell FUD? I've only ever heard of a handful of people charged with some bogus "hacking" offence for USING an open wifi point.
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The fact that those people failed to do proper work doesn't make the EFF wrong. IT means the police are wrong.
I have seen a lot of police busts, and not once have I seen an officer shout the crime at the person while they where being arrested. Maybe it's different in NY.
Given bandwidth caps... (Score:2, Interesting)
... it might get rather expensive to share one's WiFi. Yes, it would be nice to have uncapped service, and some of us might have such. But that's not the case here in Quebec.
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Get a router that can broadcast two SSIDs, one encrypted and password protected for yourself, and an open one with capped speed and traffic limits.
There are some which support this out of the box (Fonera, for example), but you can get much more if you install a custom firmware like DD-WRT.
Or you could just pay for your own services (Score:3)
If you sometimes find yourself needing an open wireless network in order to check your email from a car, a street corner, or a park, you may have noticed that they're getting harder to find.
No, actually, I haven't, because I just use the bloody cellphone I carry all the time in modem mode. I need the service, so I pay for the service. I don't leech and expect somebody else to foot the bill (note that I don't consider using a coffee shop's wifi either, unless I have purchased something from them).
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What bill? I don't pay any more if I share my connection, and I assume that anyone who shares theirs doesn't either.
Re:Or you could just pay for your own services (Score:4, Insightful)
I do pay for my own services. And if my neighbor is too cheap to pay for theirs, I don't care. Let them have at it.
Whats all this talk of 'leeching'? Who really cares? I don't need to hoard the portion of my monthly bandwidth allotment that I never use. If I've got it, someone should be using it.
Safe harbor prov? Sorry, only if you're a big corp (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Safe harbor prov? Sorry, only if you're a big c (Score:5, Insightful)
A few more cases like that and we might get some laws changed...
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Depends on whether the people whose doors are getting kicked down exercise their second amendment rights.
If enough of those raids backfire, then maybe the cost will be seen as too high.
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The problem is how those stories will be reported. Instead of "Innocent man has door broken down for leaving wifi open," it will be "Child pornographer shot dead, one police officer injured." The laws favor law enforcement when executing a no-knock warrant, and the media presumes guilt. Imagine how hard it will be to hear them yell "Police" when they have just set off a 180db flashbang in your house, or how hard it will be to see their badges when they have a tactical light in your eyes.
And for the recor
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Which then results in Mexico - the people getting raided also get more firepower, and then get MONEY, and then just BUY the police.
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You know, I have some sympathy for your point here, but I don't see a lot of evidence, either. Back in the misty days when Thompson sub-machine guns could be purchased over the counter and Clyde Barrow toted a BAR, the cops weren't notoriously polite to the people they arrested. Apparently the widespread availability of firearms did not, in fact, prevent "third-degree" interrogations and prisoners who never even made it to booking.
I suspect our perceptions of how it used to be are based on a sort of Pleasa
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Re:Safe harbor prov? Sorry, only if you're a big c (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, it'll become fucking illegal to have open wireless access points anywhere.
After all, if you have yours open, you are "obviously" intending to aid child pornographers. Or terrorists. Or democrats. Or something.
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Yea. I'll pass on being one of those cases, TYVM.
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Be careful what you wish for. A new law may outlaw non-commercial open wi-fi or it may make wi-fi router owners legally responsible for its users.
Oh hell no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh hell no. (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe if Communism actually worked I'd consider doing something like this.
It is my personal observation that Communism works well in a small group, like a tribe. More than a few hundred people and you need a tyrant.
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The problem with communism is, the group needs to be able to kick out the malcontents.
Situations where "communism" works: Religious communes. But they have a nominal "leader" for the day-to-day management, and if they find someone is not pulling their weight, the group issues a shape-up-or-ship-out ultimatum. The truly infirm or sick aren't kicked out, just the lazy. And the entire group is bound by a certain moral and ethical code of behavior to keep the rest of disagreements from turning into fistfights o
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What is needed is a semi-capitalist system where the government has an economic incentive to do it's j
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Maybe if Communism actually worked I'd consider doing something like this.
So noone can ever share any ressource ever, because some ass-hat in Russia misread Marx and tried forcibly to have everyone share everything?
Do you think we should privatize every meter of road too, and stop and charge each other for every meter driven? Because that is more or less what we are doing with bandwidth now, and it is more or less exactly as ineffecient.
Sharing is not a bad thing. Not sharing when it costs you nothing is indefensible. I have not heard of a single ethical or ownership theory which
Too many problems. (Score:3)
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You can use an AP that separates the networks like an Airport Extreme. It can run 3 simultaneously - b/g at 2.4Ghz, a/n at 5GHz and a "guest network" which you can leave open or password protect. The guest network is isolated from your internal services so you don;t have to worry if you are running a sensitive one (beyond your usual precautions).
However, saying all that I don't have the guest network running - one because I live in a pretty densely populated urban area with a lot of APs in range and runnin
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Sure, they can say "should" and "ought" as much as they like. However, unless they can be sure that everybody (hint only 5% of the world is american) could do this legally, it sounds like a particularly irresponsible thing to urge people to do.
Security implications (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Security implications (Score:4, Informative)
This obviously has benefits to society but comes at the cost of making your home network less secure - most routers don't separate the internet side of things from the home network side of things, so it's similar to allowing a person to connect their PC to your LAN socket. Any machines on your network are now visible to an attacker.
Many newer routers support guest SSIDs that can have separate security settings, and are isolated from, your main SSID. My new Netgear router does this. What it doesn't do, unfortunately, is let me throttle the guest SSID.
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Nope... (Score:3)
I don't leave a connected extension cord going out to the sidewalk so anybody can use my electricity...
I lock my doors so they can't use my shelter or car...
My car's gas tank has a lock on it so I can't "share" my gasoline.
Anybody think that these guys don't encrypt their home APs?
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One Fine Day In Sacramento (Score:4, Funny)
"Notice all the vehicles outside, parked up and down the street?"
"Yeah, bunch of leeches."
"How can you say that? They're taking advantage of a basic freedom, exercising their rights, lest the government usurp them!"
"Have you looked at the plates on the cars and vans?"
"Uh, no. What's special about them?"
"Exempt. Almost all of them. They're using your connection due to cutbacks - they are the government."
A solution looking for a problem (Score:2)
[From the article:] There is currently no WiFi protocol that allows anybody to join the network, while using link-layer encryption to prevent each network member from eavesdropping on the others. But such a protocol should exist.
An easier solution would be for a WiFi access point to offer two networks: an open one and a secured one. The owner/operator of the AP could use the encrypted network, and enable the open network for public use.
The open network could also have a lower priority than the encrypted one, be subject to bandwidth restrictions, and limited to certain times of the day.
I'm not saying that any of this is a good idea. I just think there's no need for a new protocol.
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WPA2 encryption
network name: "password is Orange1"
problem solved
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An interesting idea, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of us have had the experience of tremendous inconvenience because of a lack of Internet access. Being lost in a strange place with no way to find a map; having an urgent email to send with no way to do so; trying to meet a friend with no way to contact them.
A wise man once said "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."
Really irresponsible idea (Score:3)
Most home users have their APs on their private network. Behind that hardware firewall that at least gives them some protection. Advocating that people who don't understand the risks of an open AP, especially one that is not segregated, is really poor judgement on the EFF's part.
No. (Score:3)
"Why would I pay for internet service when I can just use someone else's?" Eventually, no one is paying for it. Overall access to the internet decreases.
And if I am paying for it, why would I let other people degrade my connection, hurtle me toward the bandwidth caps, and possibly do illegal things and get my door kicked down?
Letting strangers onto my network or my connection is something I'll be safely be saying no to for the indefinite future.
No Thanks, EFF (Score:2)
(1) I don't want a slow internet.
(2) I don't appreciate piracy. I write software for a living, and that means having people pay me for my software. Until you've been on the other side of the fence (i.e. the side of the people trying to earn a living from creating digital media, rather than existing purely in the group of people who benefit from free digital everything), you probably won't understand my viewpoint. And let's face it: the EFF has constantly sided with pirates on is
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I'm a physicist. Among other things, I've made a few codes and I've developed some numerical schemes. What would you say if I asked everyone in the world who wanted to use my formulas to pay me a nominal fee? What is the difference between you asking them to pay to use your algorithm, and me asking them to pay for using my formula?
I agree you have to be payed for your work, but you have to be payed when _you create_ something, you shouldn't be payed when _someone is using_ something you created. And yes, I
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Re:No Thanks, EFF (Score:4, Interesting)
And let's face it: the EFF has constantly sided with pirates on issue after issue. I suspect this is the EFF's way of helping pirates by frustrating any enforcement of copyright.
Your view of the EFF is rather twisted, they espouse freedom to do as you wish electronically without copyright infringement or the like, why should everyone else suffer because the pirates find these freedoms useful at times?
I can in all honesty say I have never pirated a single piece of software (helps I mainly use OSS of course) and yet I strongly agree with most of what the EFF say with many topics.
I have at times kept a separate access point dedicated for the purpose open for people to gain access to the internet (limited by QoS so it stays sane) passers by are free to use it as they wish. If others did the same then when I am visiting their area I could use their wifi as well. How is this a bad thing. Wifi is far more convenient than mobile internet access when available. So long as you keep security controls in place in case malicious people try to connect I see no harm in providing a useful service to your fellow man which costs you nothing.
It already exists in a responsible way (Score:3)
Sure (Score:2)
and I'll be the porn provider king for the entire neighbourhood...
Compare to 20 years ago (Score:2)
Prior to WiFi, we moved along fine for decades without holding out extension cords to our neighbors. This is an operation akin to demanding that all corporate headquarters blindly put publicly accessible wired wallplates in their parking lots just because they can afford 24/7 internet. We all know the security implications.
Just because we're already leaking our radiation* doesn't mean that preventing other neighbors from misusing it and implicating us in their crimes. We have everything to lose and little t
My foot (Score:2)
Not socially responsible (Score:3)
reminding people that opening their WiFi is the socially responsible thing to do
No, it is not. This is like saying it's socially responsible to leave your keys in the ignition so your neighbors can barrow your car when they need to run to the store. It's not socially responsible to suggest that it's OK for people to use Internet connectivity they don't know anything about, like who the man in the middle might be. It's not socially responsible to allow unknown third parties to rile though your personal belongings, like those tax returns you left on that unsecured windows share.
Finally, "legal protections" are for people who can afford lawyers.
Deffo (Score:2)
Been doing it for years. And have been doing it for something along those lines for a reason.
1. The norm that we all need to lock the things down out of fear has got to be checked. There is no need for that.
2. I like the EFF reasoning.
3. The security stuff is a PITA. I've got some stuff that I would rather not share, and it's not on the open wi-fi. Easily done.
Drives my neighbor nuts. They say, "but I want to use MY INTERNET". And I say, "ok" and "why don't you just do that?". "But yours is just
That's fine, until my ISP takes my access away... (Score:2)
... you know that binding agreement you enter into that you and your family will be the only users on that connection. It then gives my ISP the right to revoke my connectivity because I broke that TOS agreement and they are not obligated to provide me with Internet connectivity.
Legal protections don't matter (Score:2)
Good luck with that (Score:2)
You will have all the lukewarm apologies you like after the police have ransacked your house and tasered you to death while calling you a pervert. Did you realize that the suspicion of possessing child pornography is punishable by extra-judicial execution?
I tried that for a while (Score:2)
But too often, to troubleshoot a slow connection, I'd disable it. It's easier just to keep it invisible.
How I discourage the use of my open WIFI (Score:3)
I have an open access point in a DMZ on my network at home. I've only allowed ports 80, 443, and 53 on the traffic on that access point and bandwidth limited that traffic to 128k/sec. I've found it's just enough to be useful for guests, and restricted enough to prevent permanent use.
-ted
Ok, hippies, enough is enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I just RTFA to make sure I'm getting this correct, because I normally am fully in support of "damn the man" stuff like this, but this is just ludicrous. There has never been a time in my life where I have needed to "urgently" check my email and been unable to, nor has there ever been a time where the only thing standing between me dying of thirst and reaching a nearby oasis has been my ability to access Google Maps on a laptop. In fact, I would like to go so far as to say that if you are the kind of person who ever "urgently" needs to check your email, consider: a.) purchasing a cellphone and distributing that number to whoever might need to get in touch with you, b.) purchasing a smartphone so you can check your email without a WiFi connection, and/or c.) checking your email before you leave for a four-week safari. Who is this demographic that can afford a laptop and conducts vital business via the Interwebs, but can't afford a data plan?
I know that people around here get fussy about car analogies, so...
This is like asking me to buy a horse, and leave the horse saddled in my front yard just in case anyone needs to use it to go somewhere. And then just trusting that no one is going to hop on the horse, rob a stagecoach, and then drop the horse back in my yard for the posse to find.
At a certain point, personal responsibility has to enter into all of this. Of course someone shouldn't be liable for nasty things accomplished using a WiFi connection if they made an honest effort to secure it, or just didn't know that that was something one ought to do. But if they intentionally leave it open for anyone to use, they should accept some of the blame when someone uses it to do something naughty.
And furthermore, it's WiFi, not clean drinking water. Since when is leveling your paladin a vital civil liberty? What's next, should I set up an HD projection system on the side of my house so that people outside aren't suppressed by the tyranny of Netflix requiring a subscription? Because Ironman 2 is one of those bits of information that "wants to be free"?
Do the exact opposite, please (Score:4, Insightful)
For years we've been trying really hard to get everyone to close down their open WiFi spots to prevent hacking/leeching/malicious activity/etc. Now they want us to do the opposite? I'm sorry, while I don't think a person should be held liable for the child porn their neighbor downloaded using their open WiFi, I also don't think we should be telling them to just ignore security. We have botnets precisely because people ignore security.
They are paying for a service and shouldn't be told to let others use it for free. Why wouldn't they then just cancel their service and use someone else's for free? They shouldn't have to open their computer up to being hacked (or do you want to explain to them how to beef up their security after telling them to lower their security?) just so someone can get free service. They shouldn't have to worry about bandwidth caps just so their neighbor can stream netflix for free.
They SHOULD be hassled if something goes wrong on their open network as a lesson to secure their system.
Hell, I turn off both my router and my cable "modem" when I'm not using them.
Power, water, sewer, too? (Score:3)
So, is it then the socially responsible thing to provide free access to my other basic services, too? Is the EFF suggesting that I need to provide a series of power outlets outside my house, so that people can share that? And a sink and toilet as well? Should I be sharing my heating/cooling too?
Please. Get a grip. I pay for the services just mentioned, just like I pay for internet access. If someone wants the same services, then they have to figure out how to pay for them themselves.
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I pay 30E for 20/20 optical line with no throttling, monitoring, bandwidth cap or any kind of this lame shit.
And my town isn't a big fancy one, just 10,000 inhabitants.
My wireless is open, I just setup a QoS so a single user can't use all the bandwidth.
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Here in Germany you usually enjoy flat rate i.e. no caps and no additional usage fees. I get the gear from ISP and here starts the trouble - some (vodafone et al) give you gear that is locked so that you can change some settings but not all and at the same time parameters of the connection may change and they do so you would need to watch or reverse engineer their protocol to have that covered. Of course I have my old gear but
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I live in stupid country USA and have no limit or throttling either.
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Which rights, exactly, are we supposed to exercise? The right to have someone else provide us with internet service for free? The right to use technology which the article itself admits does not even exist yet? The right to pay exorbitant overage fees and have shitty internet service for ourselves because somebody decided to download a terabyte of porn or netflix data through our free, open wifi connection?
I just want to make sure I write up the proper placard here. I'd hate to show up to a "We want pon
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If you don't exercise your rights, you lose them. Simples.
Yes, because the right to free wireless Internet is a basic human right...
In other words, I do exercise my rights... to secure my person and my belongings. Hence why my wireless network is encrypted.
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Define "most", because where I live, all four service providers have unlimited data and no associated charges (Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner, and Grande).
Perhaps Austin's market demand can justify all the major competitors not having data limits, and in the rest of the country "most" services throttle your usage?
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You install DD-WRT on your router and separate the private, unrestricted and password protected network/SSID from the capped, public one.