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Wireless Clouds for Good and Ill
dr_delete sent in a story about Athens, Georgia joining the ranks of municipalities creating free public wireless networks. In a counterpoint to that, we have the Pentagon cracking down on wireless devices, trying to control information leakage. And Newsforge has a story about starting your own wireless ISP. Nifty stuff.
Any attempt by the federal government to further limit the ability of United States citizens to monitor and/or use the airwaves in the United States is a grave mistake. In times of crises the use of radio and similar communication devices by amateurs has helped immensely. Had they been invented at the time, our forefathers would have suggested having a radio in addition to powder, ball, and musket.
I am not suggesting that such technologies shouldn't be regulated. Airwave frequencies must be regulated! What I am saying is that as soon as radio communications are restricted for use by military and commercial purposes only, than liberties ears may be silenced forever.
You complain when corporations provide it, then you complain when the government does it. So who should provide it then? Internet access doesn't grow on trees you know.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
I dont own a car... I can walk or ride my bike everywhere I go. Why should my taxes go to pay for other people's transportation (roads)?
Because people agree that roads are needed even though not everyone uses them. Same goes for this. If enough people agree that its needed then it doesnt really matter if you want/need it... youll be paying for it either way.
Do you eat or consume anything that comes from more than 2 miles from your domicile? Ok then you use roads. Fresh OJ from florida or california, bananas from central america, wheat from kansas, milk from cows in ohio, eggs from who knows where, maple syrup from canada. And that was just for breakfast! We are all benifieries of the modern transportation system that is made possible by the interstate highway system. Besides much of the money comes from gasoline taxes which you don't pay for directly unless you use the roads (you of course pay for it in the cost of goods purchased but then that is fair because getting the goods to you used the roads.)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Also, why don't they use the same line with guns. "The gun industry is inherently irresponsible because guns are inherently dangerous and insecure" or "The airline industry is acting irresponsibly because they don't have locks on the cockpit doors."
I think what many people fail to see is that originally, the internet was based on a trust system. It was more important to get data through then to protect them. That however has changed. However, we shouldn't tell the industry to stop innovating because of the potential for misuse. Wireless devices are a great leap from the wired networks of prior. And it is widely known that anything going over a public network is inherently insecure.
I would argue that this "cybersecurity advisor" really has no idea what he's talking about.
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"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
President Bush's top cybersecurity adviser, Richard Clarke, said the technology industry was acting irresponsibly by selling wireless tools such as computer network devices that remain remarkably easy for hackers to attack.
The industry's most common data-scrambling technique designed to keep out eavesdroppers, called the wireless encryption protocol, can be broken -- usually in less than five minutes -- with software available on the Internet.
A few years ago, the U.S. government attempted to make all encryption crackable by government agencies by mandating key escrow or weak encryption. At one point, they even tried to jail Phil Zimmermann for creating and publishing PGP. Now they're berating vendors for making encryption in their products too weak and have become advocates for strong consumer encryption. Other countries that have had no encryption controls in the past are now trying to adopt key escrow requirements.
I find the reversal fascinating. Few easier ways exist to execute an electronic wiretap than to packet-sniff the subject's WiFi connection. I'm curious if there are internal struggles over encryption policy.
It should be a community based network, setup like the Internet was at universities in the 90's. Nobody cared what you were doing as long as the servers stayed up, and the men in black didn't show up. Just apply power to the computers/servers in a room somewhere, hook up some wireless stuff, and let the community pay a 1 time fee for hardware and then a bandwidth charge per month. It should be less than $10. And you can use your laptop anywhere in the city.
How is this at all counter to the preceding story? Though I think 802.11x devices are suitable for trivial and lightweight network traffic, I don't use it at home because of inherent security flaws (among other reasons). Similarly, I don't give out my credit card info over my cordless or cellular phones. Yes, fine, I'm paranoid though my needs for secrecy - as a private citizen - are relatively moderate.
However, I certainly don't see any reason why the US military shouldn't regulate the use of largely unregulated communications within its own sphere of influence. Seriously, these are some of the same people who modify computers for zero electromagnetic emissions. Why wouldn't they want to minimize the risks inherent in utilizing unsecured public bandwidth?
The problem is, despite the best of intentions, someone has to be in charge somehow. The reason you were able to have it set up by "the community" in a university is because that community was full of peopel who know how to do that. But in the wider community of say a city, there isn't enough expertise to go around, at least I don't think there is. I suppose if there were enough volunteers one could set this up, but you would have to find enough volunteers in that general area. You would also then have to find a way to pay for the equipment as well as the connection to the main internet.
Another problem is that, even in the universities, someone was in charge of this, and at some point they did start caring who did what, just try to log into Napster or any service which happens to use one of the popular Napster ports from a university and you will see what I mean.
The moral is, someone will eventually take control of the network and there is no way to guarentee that it won't ever happen. If we start with a community based system, eventually it will get taken over by either a company or local, state or federal government. If anything, it may be best to keep it in the local government because at least then it is easier to be heard than if it was all run by the feds, where only the rich are allowed to talk to the powerful.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Ok, I don't know who modded this person down as troll, but that was wrong. Far as I can see, this person was modded troll because the moderator didn't agree with their viewpoint.
I didn't agree with them either as you can see by my post in reply to them, but save -1 troll for the real trolls, or better yet, modding up the GOOD posts, let those with endless mod points deal with the real trolls.
But if you must mod troll, do it real trolling, not just because you do not agree with a post. If you don't agree, REPLY and make your rebuttle, don't just slap someone down to where no one will read them, otherwise you become no better than the censors (DMCA anyone?) us Slashdotters all lothe.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
The industry's most common data-scrambling technique designed to keep out eavesdroppers, called the wireless encryption protocol, can be broken -- usually in less than five minutes -- with software available on the Internet.
WEP actually stands for Wired Equivalent Privacy. It was intended as a means of ensuring that wireless users could have the same level of privacy as users using a wired network-- not as an secure communications protocol. (Of course, WEP does not even provide that level of "privacy").
Aren't there better privacy/security options available for Wireless devices?