Nebraska Sheriff Wardriving, Sending Letters About Unsecured Wi-Fi

An anonymous reader sends this quote from JournalStar.com: "The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office has seen an increase in scammers using unsecured Wi-Fi connections to steal identities and mask their crimes during the past six months, Sheriff Terry Wagner said. ... So deputies spent the past few weeks finding unsecure connections and sending 40 to 50 letters to let people know about the potential dangers of strangers accessing their network connections. 'You're just opening yourself up for a series of potential pitfalls,' Chief Deputy Jeff Bliemeister said. ... Bliemeister said only businesses like coffee shops that offer Internet connections to customers need unsecured Internet connections.

Re:unsecured wifi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, firesheep works in that scenario.

You're confusing L2 security with transport security for http traffic, very different things

Re:Proactive Police Work Preventing Victimization

[AK Marc]

They've already made it illegal to leave your car running with the keys in to prevent auto theft. But I never see anyone complaining about that.

Re:unsecured wifi?

[DarwinSurvivor]

On the key is known, then anyone can use it and it might as well be open. Even the individual key is not going to stop snooping.

You obviously don't understand anything about wireless security. If a connection is open (no encryption), anyone (even those not connected to the router) can stniff EVERYTHING sent over the connection (barring https and the like). With a password, even if every person in the world knows the password, nobody can sniff anyone else's packets. The passwords intiates a transaction where the router and your computer set up their own sessions keys which are used to encrypt everything else. so even though everyone used the same password, everyone is using different encryption keys, so everyone is protected (at the wireless level at least).

Utter Horse-shit!

[Penurious Penguin]

In my area DSL isn't available and FIOS or broadband is upward of $70. This affects me and many others who have difficulty with such prices. The act of intimidating people with open APs is ludicrous and shit-brained. A secured router with a unique user-ID, strong password, along with various options such as filters, availability-configurations, etc., is more secure than WEP with default settings. This sheriff should have a router fastened to his head until the microwaves loosen the rocks. I think the EFF elaborated [eff.org] on this topic quite well, also mentioning Schneier and his views on the subject [schneier.com].

Sharing, especially of educational/informational resources is a good thing. Intimidating people into doing otherwise against their will is encouraging greed, inefficiency and paranoia.

Re:Because of racsim

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same thing happen in my home county. Our jail was under federal oversight for over 13 years due to constant escapes, inmate injury, and general code violations. We had a sheriff who hired a known thug deputy to be an assistant warden. The man hired numerous thugs for guards, and gave a good old boy system "wink, wink" to the guards who "beat the inmates who needed it."

This entire reign of terror ended after an inmate was beaten to death while in the restraint chair. The video showed the man get slammed into the chair, strapped in, pepper sprayed, and hooded with the spit hood. Then each inmate proceeded to either punch/kick, strike with a baton, or use a tazer on the poor victim. The coroner determined what happened and the federal justice department filed criminal charges against a bunch of "officers." I believe 18 of them either resigned, plead guilty, or plea bargained to lesser charges. Only one or two were convicted of the worst charges, and they happened to be the ringleaders. The only lack of justice is that the assistant warden was never charged, he did end up resigning and no longer works in law enforcement. This entire debacle cost the sitting sheriff his seat in the next election.

The man who took his place almost immediately increased the pay for guards, increased hiring standards, and began the process of fixing all of the code violations that had been ignored for years. The county commission thought he was "spending too much money" and fought him non stop. Apparently they don't think anything of having the justice department look over your shoulder for years. I only hope that the sheriff gets re-elected and can continue to fix the problems in the county. I do not want the county to look like "Sheriff Joe" and his "tent city."

Should anyone want to read what happened, the events in question were from Harrison County Mississippi, during February 2006. The sheriffs name was George Payne. I do know it is against the rules to read the article/story/research/etc. but it is an interesting read.

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