Marriott Fined $600,000 For Jamming Guest Hotspots 278
schwit1 writes: Marriott will cough up $600,000 in penalties after being caught blocking mobile hotspots so that guests would have to pay for its own Wi-Fi services, the FCC has confirmed today. The fine comes after staff at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee were found to be jamming individual hotspots and then charging people up to $1,000 per device to get online. Marriott has been operating the center since 2012, and is believed to have been running its interruption scheme since then. The first complaint to the FCC, however, wasn't until March 2013, when one guest warned the Commission that they suspected their hardware had been jammed.
Did the fine cover the price paid by the visitors? (Score:5, Interesting)
I just wonder if the fine that Marriott had to pay actually was large enough to take out the profit that they got from the jamming.
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Are you kidding?
They were jamming for two years in a convention center where thousands of people meet every weekend, and they were charging exorbitant fees, in some cases $1000 per device. If this looks too high to you, imagine you are giving a talk about the last 18 months of your research, and a prearranged setup stops working. Your tenure, your reputation, your tenure may depend on that talk. And that's just for researchers. A company that has gathered a thousand POS managers for a discussion of a ne
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Are you kidding?
They were jamming for two years in a convention center where thousands of people meet every weekend, and they were charging exorbitant fees, in some cases $1000 per device. If this looks too high to you, imagine you are giving a talk about the last 18 months of your research, and a prearranged setup stops working. Your tenure, your reputation, your tenure may depend on that talk. And that's just for researchers. A company that has gathered a thousand POS managers for a discussion of a new system will have millions on the line.
Captive customer base indeed.
Fines seldom come close to wiping out the profits from the con, when big businesses with lobbyists are involved. I have personally participated in a cleanup effort (mostly through volunteers) which used about $30,000 on top of our donated time and equipment. While we were working, the assholes released more detectable crap, and were fined $2,500. But hey, they are golfing with the local high scum.
Did you host an event there? Sue Marriott in civil court.
Re:Did the fine cover the price paid by the visito (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah that's one way.
Another way is to have laws and fines that are sufficient to actually stop abuses, instead of burdening courts with remunerating for abuses after the fact. I prefer this way.
For instance, yeah my family could sue the maker of the tainted drug that kills me, or we could just have the nanny state certify drug manufacturers and then people don't have to die nearly so much in the first place. I think that is a better world so that's the one I support.
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If this looks too high to you, imagine you are giving a talk about the last 18 months of your research, and a prearranged setup stops working.
Not that this excuses their illegal behaviour but if you are giving a talk that important and you do not have at least one local copy of the talk without then your reputation deserves to take a battering. I'd be astounded if such a thing seriously affected someone's tenure though - it certainly would not where I work.
Inverse Wi-fi law (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it that the most awful dumpy motels always seem to have free, open and strong wi-fi? Many don't even bother with passwords.
Yet it's the expensive name-brand boutique hotels that always charge for wi-fi. And more often not, it's terrible quality, hard to connect and slow?
And, now we see this happening. This never happens at Motel 6.
Has anyone else noticed this- that overall the cheaper and sleazier the motel, the better the wi-fi?
Re:Inverse Wi-fi law (Score:5, Interesting)
this holds true across the board for hotels.
cheap hotels give free breakfast, nice hotels charge a small fortune
cheap hotels give free parking, nice hotels charge a small fortune
nicer hotels (like the gaylord mentioned) charge a resort fee of $25 per day for basically no services at all.
cheap hotels though are competing on stuff like free wifi, free breakfast, etc
where the nicer hotels are competing on location, beautiful facility, etc.
i still don't understand though the $1k fee. i have stayed at that gaylord many times. its not a $1k fee for internet, ever. more like $20 per day (unless your marriott gold or platinum, then its free).
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I read an article on this some time back and I unfortunately can't cite where. It stated that the more expensive hotels actually have lower margins of profit than the cheaper hotels and they can't afford to make those amenities for free. Everything is more expensive for them and the profit is lower, so they tend to nickle-and-dime the fees quite a bit more.
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What happens is people willing to pay $250 per room per night will be willing to pay an extra $25 or $50 per day for their internet. Someone that is not willing to pay even $100 per night, probably will not pay extra $5 or $10 for internet. So the cheap hotels just make it free as a way of getting more budget customers.
It's the same for everything. If you are willing to pay for delivery or room service, you are willing to shell out for a tip too. If you go for buffet breakfast, then most likely no tips are
Re:Inverse Wi-fi law (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus... often it's other people's money.
Business travelers just charge it to the company.
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1. Tourists/Vacationers
2. Convention/Conference goers
In the case of #1, you're probably not a repeat customer (or at least, repeat often enough for them to care). They want to wring every last dollar out of you while they can.
In the case of #2, you're a captive customer (the con is nearby or in this hotel, unless you have a car you're not going
Re:Inverse Wi-fi law (Score:4, Informative)
I think it's because cheap hotels are for regular travelers and nice hotels are for people traveling on business who will be reimbursed by their employers. Even for expensive hotels, the prices are pretty minuscule compared to what a big company can afford, so money is really no object for them. So the employees book at expensive hotels because it's kind of a perk of traveling for their company, and private individuals book at cheap ones because that's what they can afford.
Re:Inverse Wi-fi law (Score:5, Informative)
its not a $1k fee for internet, ever
Not everyone at the hotel is staying in a room at the hotel.
Do they hold business conferences there? Our company sends me to man the sales booth at conferences/expos all the time, and the hotels charge us ridiculous rates. I haven't gotten to $1000 yet, but the last one was at a Radisson which had a $150 "setup fee" plus $80/day per device for a two day conference (I expensed $20 to turn on my sprint hotspot for a month to run our demonstration ipad and ipod touch).
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Seriously. Once, in a pickle, I paid $30 ($30!!) for wifi for a one-night stay. We got my wife hooked up then I tried to connect -- NOPE! They wanted a second $30 for the second device.
I spoofed my wife's MAC address and swore off that shit hotel forever.
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You misunderstand.
Guests in the common areas and rooms pay $stupid per day for WiFi.
Convention areas have different APs and charge $Obscene per day per account/device for WiFi.
Yep, breakfast too (Score:3)
I've certainly noticed that. Midrange value-oriented places frequently include a continental breakfast too, whereas high-end places want you to buy their overpriced breakfast.
Sometimes I enjoy employing certain Priceline biding tactics to get a $200 room for $81, but other than the appearance the less-expensive places are often just as good or better.
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I've certainly noticed that. Midrange value-oriented places frequently include a continental breakfast too, whereas high-end places want you to buy their overpriced breakfast.
Last year when I was driving back from Florida(in march), I stopped at a Microtel(wish I could remember where but I'd been on the road 12hrs by that point) which had an actual cook on staff for morning breakfasts. I was thoroughly impressed, not only at the menu that was included but that it was "donation only."
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If you can afford a decent hotel, you're less likely to balk at $20 wifi. If, on the other hand, you're looking to spend $50 a night for a hotel room, getting cheap entertainment is probably just as much a priority.
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If you can afford a decent hotel, you're less likely to balk at $20 wifi. If, on the other hand, you're looking to spend $50 a night for a hotel room, getting cheap entertainment is probably just as much a priority.
Actually, if I pay good money for a room, I hate if they try to make me pay for the nose for WiFi. If you pay $50 for a room, you can probably keep yourself entertained by watching the local wild life in your room.
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Nope. Best free wifi I've ever used was at a Marriott, and best wifi I used on my last vacation was at the most expensive hotel we stayed at (we were always at budget hotels though). Many of the networks were set up my totally incompetent idiots.
This is not Marriott corporate policy - this happened at a single location that happens to also be a convention center, and is more about the practices of the convention center and not the hotel.
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Why is it that the most awful dumpy motels always seem to have free, open and strong wi-fi? Many don't even bother with passwords.
Yet it's the expensive name-brand boutique hotels that always charge for wi-fi. And more often not, it's terrible quality, hard to connect and slow?
And, now we see this happening. This never happens at Motel 6.
Has anyone else noticed this- that overall the cheaper and sleazier the motel, the better the wi-fi?
Simple. People who stay at economy hotels don't have a lot of money to burn. They're also noisy. So if the hotel provides crappy internet, these vocal (but economically challenged) people get online and post bad reviews.
I can speak from experience on the quality of Wifi in economy hotels. It just frickin' works, never had a problem.
I imagine the upscale hotels can get away with charging high fees for nearly useless internet because people staying there have moolah, and people whom have a lot of moolah
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Higher end hotels charge for that crap because they're trying to keep you from holing up in your room and pushing out into their bars or hotel restaurants or even the nearby establishments.
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Because most of the more expensive hotels are catering to business travellers, who will moan, then just expense the cost of getting online.
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Yep. Totally agreed. Many times I have selected the higher quality lower cost hotel for exactly that purpose.
Here is what I expect from a hotel in priority order
* Separate bedroom from other guests (all hotels today offer this)
* Clean bed (all hotels offer this)
* Access to a bathroom (all hotels offer this)
* Fast free wifi (only at cheap hotels)
* Separate bathroom from other guests (all large hotels but not many small ones)
* Parking spot (only at cheap hotels)
*** this is where I stop giving a shit about ame
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Honestly these days it's often quicker to tether. Even in rural NC last week I was able to pick up a 4g signal that gave me 10Mbit/s down. The free hotel wifi struggled to hit 2Mbit
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The last Motel 6 I stayed at charged $29/night for Wi-Fi.
They didn't attack my hotspot.
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Has anyone else noticed this- that overall the cheaper and sleazier the motel, the better the wi-fi?
I wouldn't go that far.
I once stayed in a really bargain hotel, which advertised free WiFi. I think they had a single consumer wireless router in the office, and my room was not close to the office... I couldn't get a usable signal. So no, definitely not "the cheaper... the better the WiFi".
But middle-of-the-road hotels generally have perfectly usable WiFi. I wouldn't try to stream Netflix on it but it's f
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Their interest not yours... (Score:2, Troll)
The Opryland Hotel blocks customers wifi at conventions hosted in the hotel since they sell their own service. Here's their statement from Jeff Flaherty, a Marriott spokesman...
"Marriott has a $trong intere$t in en$uring that when our gue$t$ use our Wi-Fi $ervice, they will be protected from rogue wirele$$ hot$pot$ that can cau$e degraded $ervice, insidious cyber-attacks and identity theft."
Dollar signs added for emphasis. That hotel sells dedicated wireless services and custom networks for convention purpo
Maybe we should pour cement down their toilets (Score:5, Funny)
Not surprised in the least (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh. Just commented on this on the Gizmodo post an hour ago. Please forgive the copypasta for my first post on Slashdot in probably 5 years.
My organization recently had a conference in a hotel owned by Marriott in a large Southern city. Not only did they want $500 per device per day for any Internet access — wired or wireless — the $12.95/day in-room wifi straight up did not work. They'd take your money before you could figure out it didn't work, of course. And if you ponied up the $16.95 for the "high speed" in-room wifi, it...barely worked. Barely.
We request one wired connection now. And once it's connected and the hotel staffers leave, I set up our own router with our own network. I'm pretty sure that if there was will or pressure on various and sundry consumer protection agencies, the prices charged by many hotel chains — with Marriott properties being the worst of them all — would not hold up in court.
I'll also add that our Director of Events is fairly convinced a new Marriott property in Washington, DC is doing this right now.
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I've only held events in hotels that included Internet for "free" (with the price of the event). Shop for better hotels (no, not more stars, but better service).
According to consumer reports, the cheaper the hotel, the more likely it is they provide free wifi. Wealthier guests are easier to gouge for small things.
Re:Not surprised in the least (Score:5, Interesting)
I just stayed at a fancy hotel in Boston, they wanted $20/day internet access (wired or wireless).
First night I was actually able to connect to the public library a few blocks down the road, but it was VERY slow (3k/sec). After that first night, I was never able to reconnect....
Then I found out the hotel has internet connected TVs, so I plugged my *nix laptop into one of their jacks, got DHCP, and did a (ze)nmap scan to find all the other TVs. Picked one at random, grabbed its MAC address, and spoofed it on my network card. Wallah! Free access.
Charging for 'net access in a $50/night room I can understand - even if it is $10 or so. A $500/night room though should come with free wireless.... strangely in my travels, many cheap places (ie the $50-80/ngiht places I pay for) give free wireless, free coffee, sometimes some sort of free breakfast service, etc and the expensive fancy hotels (that my filthy rich relatives use and pay for, which is why I ended up in one in Boston) not only don't have these as free, but the prices they charge are outrageous ($24 for 2 eggs over medium, hashbrowns, bacon, toast vs. the same meal at Dennys, Waffle House, Perkins, any local diner, etc. for under $10).
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Re:Not surprised in the least (Score:4, Informative)
...and spoofed it on my network card. Voilà! Free access.
FTFY.
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I'll also add that our Director of Events is fairly convinced a new Marriott property in Washington, DC is doing this right now.
Has your Director of Events considered not doing business with Marriott, or at least putting them on the "only if nothing else is available" list?
600k too small. (Score:5, Insightful)
$600k seems too small for such a large company. This is very sinister behavior. It would be like Burger King parking unmarked trucks or actors playing drunk bums in front of McDondalds' drive-through lanes to block customers.
Sounds About Right (Score:5, Insightful)
"The first complaint to the FCC, however, wasn't until March 2013, when one guest warned the Commission that they suspected their hardware had been jammed."
How many guests would have the technical knowledge to tell if a device is being "jammed" or simply "isn't working" or that "cell reception is bad"?
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That knew they were being jammed.
Raspberry! I hate Raspberry! (Score:4, Funny)
Only one man would dare... Lone Star!
Cost of doing business for it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am very sure it is not the top management of Marriot that dreamt up this scheme. The top honchos of most companies are so technologically inept they need tech support to turn on their iPads. It is most likely a local operation. The local manager lamenting not showing any revenue increase despite installing the WiFi access point server. And from the ranks someone down realizing jamming is possible. After that it is simple making bonus and making numbers for the local team that set up the scheme. The top guy has collected his bonus and will find another job. The mid level guys who knew it would be fired and have to look for a new job. The tab is paid by a big faceless corporation. This is likely to happen again.
Well, the good outcome of this (Score:3, Informative)
is that now that's less money that Mariott can donate to the Mormon church. Anything to deprive that cult of funds is a good thing.
I have, for years, because of Marriott's cozy relationship with the Mormons, refused to stay in one of their properties or any property owned by same.
Where's my refund then? (personal anecdote!) (Score:5, Informative)
So they basically got away with it. $600k when they're charging $250-$1K per wireless account? Yeah...that's fair.
Personal experience: ... where are the refunds? Where are the damages being paid back? My conference was fairly small (this hotel is beyond enormous mind you) and there still had to be 100+ vendors. We were one of ... I don't know ... 5-10 conferences that weekend?
I was a vendor at a conference in this exact hotel in 2013. Internet access was ridiculously expensive...per account which they prohibited sharing between devices of course. Handy when you're trying to present and sell technical services...and your hotspot doesn't work. Many vendors complained about how their hotspots weren't working, quite a few sucked it up and paid the extortion fee. Now I guess we know why. What I want to know is
At a bare minimum the FCC should find them equal to all the WiFi access fees they collected while this system was in place. Would some have paid anyhow? Yes. This is meant to punitive after all.
Oh...and don't let me get started on how they *required* you to "rent" carpet for your booth 10'x10' booth (starting at several hundred dollars) and pay for power connections - another several hundred dollars for the lowest ~300w 110v connection. Then there were fees to receive fedex boxes, fees to store them until you got them, fees to deliver them to you, etc. Want to rent a TV for your display? They quoted something like 6 grand for two 42" TVs with speakers. Yah huh. The vendor that got that quote laughed at them, went to costco and bought two TVs for ~$1500, then raffled them off.
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Seems like you're asking for the FCC do go beyond their duties. What you're looking for is a class-action lawsuit.
From Hacker News (Score:2, Interesting)
Lately, Slashdot seems to be echoing Hacker News [ycombinator.com], about three hours late. If you're going to be a scraper site, you have to do it faster.
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Lately, Slashdot seems to be echoing Hacker News [ycombinator.com], about three hours late. If you're going to be a scraper site, you have to do it faster.
You think that's bad? They follow Ars by about 3 days
Hospitality (Score:2)
This shit is why I strongly prefer AirBnB or other alternative forms of hospitality.
I was at a hotel in London and found out that "Free wifi" meant it was freely available to reach the paid gateway. Sleezery seems to be in all large chains in large cities. You would think the high premium on staying there, and the economy of scale of the size of the hotel would mean that it's easier to provide good service to guests.
By contrast, with AirBnB you'll probably get secure, unrestricted residential wifi, or
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Let me know when AirBnB starts listing convention centers that can host 10K+ person events.
The money (Score:5, Insightful)
The Free Market (Score:3)
But Noooooo. We have to play by communista rules, where companies are not allowed to use the airwaves, which belong to them to intercept, jam or do whatever they want to, as guaranteed in the Constitution, when Jesus wrote it.
Thanks, Obama.
More to a point we care about (Score:3)
How did he do it?
News for nerds, come on!
Re:$1000!? (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah, we pay several times that for WiFi coverage for our 5 days each year at the Bellagio for our industries trade show. Of course we're paying that to use their infrastructure and bandwidth, our rental agreement prohibits us from using our own WiFi equipment (which sucked the first year there because we were paying for dedicated bandwidth but they initially set us up on the same line as their guest vlan, if we had been able to setup our own equipment ahead of time we would have found the issue before the
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For that price, they'd better be giving you an actual wire to connect to.
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Enforcement is...difficult at best.
When APs were big and bulky and more scarce perhaps. These days though my daily carry bag has 2 or 3 APs in it (iPhone, android, sometimes hotspot or iPad). Chromecast uses WiFi. Samsung printers with NFC use wifi ... as to a plethora of other things that people don't even realize.
Yes you can get some directional antennas and start triangulating people...but you've probably got dozens of WiFi networks that the owners don't even know exist and aren't using to get interne
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The way we've seen it done is they use the location service in their AP management software to detect rogue AP's, with Cisco this is accurate to a few meters, if you check before any guests have arrived it's easy to pin it to one booth and remind that booth that they aren't allowed to have their own network.
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You should read the summary at least, my friend.
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Good luck carrying those in past the union staff at most places. :(
In some of our trips, we couldn't move anything over 20# without union assistance.
Re:Now if they could only fix... (Score:4, Interesting)
With proper design of the hardware and protocols, congregation of people should be an advantage, as it is right now for the Hong Kong protesters and their mobile devices.
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Mind you, these are extremely well funded and talented people who "know how to get it done right".
If they're well funded, they're obviously not talented enough.
It's certainly a challenge to provide coverage at these events, but it's a solved problem. Football stadiums get it right. Nearly every big Vegas tech convention I've been to recently gets it right. They've got talent, money and time. What's the problem with SCinit?
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These "talented" people should have known that. So you need some number of APs (I'd aim for about 1000, with minimal ov
Re:Now if they could only fix... (Score:5, Informative)
To play devil's advocate - That's pretty much what the people here were trying to do - prevent a disaster like what happened at the 2012 Big Android BBQ, where exhibitors/speakers couldn't use the network because it was completely jammed, or 2013 BABBQ where they at least kept most people off of the convention center network but all of the hotspots around caused everyone's wifi to be flaky.
Keep in mind this happened at a single Marriott location which was a convention center - it's not standard corporate policy. I've been staying at various Marriott hotels for years and the wifi has always been free.
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No it hasn't. The price is included in your room fee. Don't think that if it isn't itemized it is free. There is no such thing as a free lunch as the saying goes.
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Many Marriott properties offer "free" WiFi. Indeed, the cost of providing this service is rolled into the room rates.
Other Marriott properties charge a fee for WiFi access. However, Platinum (and I think maybe Gold as well) Marriott Rewards members get access for free (though this is a relatively new development). Since these folks have the same room rates as everyone else, it's not exactly accurate to say that the price is included in the room rate (since many people pay
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Re:Now if they could only fix... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, Econ 102. They get repeat customers using their hotel instead of a competitor's hotel. If the Rewards incentive wasn't there, many of these customers would not use the Marriott properties as much as they do, maybe even rarely or not at all, and so Marriott's gross income would be lower, and therefore presumably net income. This means these customers, by using the Marriott chain hotels as much as they do, are providing a higher revenue stream for Marriott, and it is in Marriott's financial interest to provide benefits, like WiFi at no additional charge. The "charge" for the WiFi is built into this increased revenue stream, since the traveler could at times have chosen a cheaper non-Marriott hotel, and also since the WiFi (or wired) expense is a sunk expense, namely it is already paid for and whether the room is empty or the room has a guest in it using the wire the cost to Marriott is essentially the same, give or take potential future expansion needs.
That explanation wasn't very clean but I have a project due and didn't have time to edit it much, but hope you get the idea.
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That's at least not willful and malicious.
Large venues do beef up their cellular network but there are finite limits on the number of channels and frequencies available. Generally they do a pretty good job at stadiums and concert venues. Ad-hoc venues? Well good luck :)
WiFi is another story. I always use 5GHz and typically don't have an issue even living in NYC. 2.4GHz? Lol...good luck.
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Fortunately, there is a solution for those; unfortunately it is not cheap. The cell service providers can supply one or more high-capacity "mini towers" at the venue with a fiber uplink to their own system, and a provider-agnostic third-party repeater system can be installed so that all frequencies from those providers can be broadcast throughout the venue in locations where the mini towers cannot reach directly, and to ensure that 10,000 users don't try to connect to a lower-capacity tower nearby that happ
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Who knew?
Anyone who has read the regulations.
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:4, Informative)
So, if not the FCC, who should regulate it? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the FCC doesn't have the authority under current law, what agency should regulate situations like this (assuming for the sake of argument that Congress intended for such situations to be regulated)? The Federal Trade Commission perhaps?
What you were doing was arguably more ethical since you weren't making money off of people using the service, but if it happened today you would be denying other companies (namely, cell phone carriers who sell wifi hotspots and who charge by the byte) the right to conduct
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Re:So, if not the FCC, who should regulate it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Marriott was hacking the competing networks, not jamming them.
Hacking is a federal offense in the United States.
However, since there probably wasn't any money to be made by prosecuting some Marriott employees with a felony, they somehow roped the FCC into this so they could collect some sizable fines instead.
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
The ISM bands are not unregulated. Operations in the ISM bands are not protected from unintentional interference, but the FCC most certainly has the authority to, but chooses to abide by agreements with the ITU deferring to ETSI.
This is exactly what the FCC should be regulating, and not the content of TV or Radio broadcasts. This type of intentional disruption of service should be policed by the FCC.
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
You're confusing unlicensed with unregulated. The FCC regulates ALL the RF spectrum in the US.
With that said...The rules include:
"...no person shall willfully or maliciously interfere with or cause interference to any radio communications of any station licensed or authorized by or under this chapter or operated by the United States Government"
This was definitely willful and arguably malicious as well.
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd call it malicious but that's an opinion word. Nobody, however, can deny that it was willful. They admitted they did it and said they think it's an okay thing to do; that is clearly willful. That's fine, they are being honest: they violated a rule which has the force of law because they don't think that rule should exist.
They can lobby for a change to the law/rule, and until then they should obey the law/rule. My only problem is, like always, the fine is 100x too small.
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The fine is appropriate if you buy that they were willful but not malicious. If they were honestly trying to keep the WiFi working for presenters at the convention, and this was the only way, for example. OTOH, if this was some money-making scheme, that's malice in my book, and the FCC should have demolished the hotel such that no brick stands upon another, and salted the earth as a lesson to generations to come (or, just fined them enough that the CEO resigns, if you want to get all modern about it).
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maybe they only affected 600 people?
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
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You should fire your legal research team and pull your equipment ASAP. A simple 10 second google search yielded http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedi... [fcc.gov] which includes wi-fi jammers.
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THEY DID NOT USE A JAMMING DEVICE
Jamming would have made a range of frequencies unusable to one device.
Instead, they merely sent normal WiFi messages to any clients connecting to the AP saying "Hey, Get off that AP.
So all radios still had full operational use of the spectrum, it's just that, there was a process preventing any clients from connecting to the unapproved APs.
The Mariott owns the property, and they have a right to dictate the use of their property, so they have a right to control what
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:4, Informative)
First of all, WiFi operates on UNREGULATED
This is completely and patently false. There ARE regulations on wifi. They are merely moved into the unlicensed spectrum which is NOT the same thing as unregulated. Granted, the regulations are pretty few, they are NOT non-existent.
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
...WiFi operates on UNREGULATED spectrum, which means anyone can use, and anyone must accept interference from other users... and we did EXACTLY the same thing that Mariott was doing, for just that reason. ... we also investigated the legality of it, and the conclusion we came to was that it was perfectly legal since it was on unregulated spectrum.
According to that logic, I can come with a router backpack and prevent all users from connecting to YOUR university network. Well, it's unregulated, right? You should accept the interference and you cannot ask me to leave (in fact, I can be on a public place to cause you enough of a headache, so all is a fair game).
How did Google get charged exorbitant fees for briefly recording unencrypted wi-fi traffic from their street view cars while everything they did was on an unregulated spectrum?
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
As much as I dislike Mariott's practice here, this is clearly outside the scope of the FCC's regulatory powers and as far as I know isn't even in violation of their own regulations. First of all, WiFi operates on UNREGULATED spectrum, which means anyone can use, and anyone must accept interference from other users.
Not quite true, the ISM bands are Unlicensed bands, not unregulated. In order to sell equipment used to transmit on these bands, the systems must be type approved. Part of this type approval process includes ensuring that the equipment in question will not cause undue interference to other users on the band. To me, sending rogue de-auth packets constitutes interference.
In Meraki's Air Marshal Whitepaper [cisco.com], they explicitly state on page 8 that Unauthorized containment is prosecutable by law (subject to the FCC’s Communications Act of 1934, Section 333, ‘Willful or Malicious Interference’)..
I actually had this particular issue affect me. As a volunteer, I operate a community-wide network, including a widespread wifi network, at a retreat centre high in the mountains of WA. At this time, there is a significant mine remediation project going on in our valley, so we have leased out several buildings to the construction companies, who setup their own Meraki system. Unfortunately, they enabled Air Marshal, which then went on to attack our wireless network. Despite running WPA-Enterprise on our network, it was still successful in attacking our networks, and rendering them nearly useless. In the end, we had to flex our muscles as the landlord to get the feature disabled.
In my mind, the ability to attack adjacent networks should be illegal, and Cisco and the others should not be permitted to sell this technology to the general public. Rather the systems should simply alert on the presence of other wifi networks, and assist in locating them. Also, the wifi standards should really be updated to fix this type of vulnerability... in a WPA-Enterprise environment, clients should only respond to a de-auth packet encrypted/signed with the session key between the client and the AP its connected to.
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What the Marriott was doing was HACKING not JAMMING.
To the end-user it might appear they were effectively jamming: but they were not doing so by drowning out or canceling radio transmissions: instead they created a hostile network that more or less "hacked" the other networks in its range. I can see why the FCC got the call, but technically this is probably more one for the FBI.
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
In Meraki's Air Marshal Whitepaper [cisco.com], they explicitly state on page 8 that Unauthorized containment is prosecutable by law (subject to the FCC’s Communications Act of 1934, Section 333, ‘Willful or Malicious Interference’)..
Hmm, according to the whitepaper you linked it says "As containment renders any standard 802.11 network completely ineffective, containment measures should taken in your airspace(emphasis mine). Extreme caution should be taken to ensure that containment is not being performed on a legitimate network nearby and, action should only be taken as a last resort. Unauthorized containment is prosecutable by law (subject to the FCC’s Communications Act of 1934, Section 333, ‘Willful or Malicious Interference’). "
So provided that the "containment" effort took place only on Marriott's property (not a public space), I'm having trouble seeing how Marriott is legally in the wrong. Obviously, it's sleazy (and the FCC found reason to fine them, as well, so what do I know). Perhaps there is an implied right to the public use of the air in a building that, while not freely "open to the public" per se, is also not "closed off" private, either?
Would a retail store be prevented from doing the same thing?
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
Am I wrong? That's how I read the whitepaper.
You are wrong. At least one model of Meraki access point has a dedicated radio for this purpose. It attacks other wifi networks through a number of mechanisms, including pretending to be the AP under attack, to attract clients to it, sending spoofed de-auth packets to the clients of other APs, and other techniques to effectively conduct a denial of service attack on whatever other wireless network that may exist within its range. This is precisely what I was encountering on my network.
The main issue I have with this technology is that it can be set to attack all other wifi networks. If it was limited to protecting the SSIDs under its control, I would have less of an issue with it. IE if the wireless system is advertising the SSID "Marriott Convention Center" and someone else sets up a rogue AP using the same SSID, then that's fair game, as the person running the rogue AP is either clueless, or has nefarious intent. If it's attacking "Bob's iPhone Network" then that's another matter.
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I'm trying to wrap my head around this. So, were this the case, could I without penalty send de-auth packets for Mariott's pay wifi networks? Since wifi is unregulated. One could even do it from just off Mariott property, if that would be an issue.
Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
ISM is very much regulated. Get a new legal team.
ISM is unLICENSED. That means that you don't need a license to operate in that band as long as you obey the regulations in place. Those regulations cover radiated power and intentionbbal interferance (which is MUCH different than unintentional interference.
If your baby monitor causes trouble for my WiFi (or vice versa), that is unintentional. OTOH, if you get a baby monitor and a parabolic antenna with the intention of interfering with my WiFi you are violating regulations (but it may be hard to prove). If you get a WiFi and send deauth packets to my hardware it becomes easier to prove willful interference. If you change channels when I change channels it is very easy to prove.
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Re:Jamming unlinced spectrum is illegal? (Score:4, Informative)
Technically this wasn't jamming - it was a DoS through wifi deauth attacks.
Actually jamming other wifi routers while keeping yours up would be extremely tricky or maybe impossible.
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Yes (I think), but this is very expensive and also blocks voice/sms/email/etc. on phones. Good luck with a convention center where people can't make phone calls.
There may be some restrictions on that related to 911 access too.