Because Only Terrorists Use 802.11

skinnyd writes "Consultants working for the Department of Homeland Security have announced that the Feds view open WiFi as a means of abetting terrorists, and say that they will compel the open wireless operators will have to close off their nets. 'Homeland Security is putting people in place who will be in a position to say, "If you're going to get broken into ... we're going to start regulating."'

Comments

And this is limited to Wi-fi how?

[idiotnot]

It would seem that anyone who could get internet access could potentially affect networks. Should they regulate AOL distributing CD's with a thousand free hours? I mean, the terrorists could easily use a stolen credit card (oh, I'm sure they'd have qualms about doing that...)to get initial access....

Okay, so they wouldn't be moving as fast as they would going through a corporate network.

But if a LAN Admin is stupid enough to leave his access points open (with access to the outside world), then the company gets what it deserves for hiring an MSCE to do its network design.

Yes, I run an open AP at home (and there's nothing really interesting to look at, I assure you), but I'm not to the point where I think it's a good idea to put one on the network at work. It's been discussed before, and it'd just be more difficult than it's worth.

Please Read "Is This the America I Love?"

[goingware]

The original of "Is This the America I Love?" is at http://www.goingware.com/notes/america.html

But I wanted it to be read more widely than was happening with it on my own little homepage so I posted a copy at Kuro5hin. An advantage of the K5 version is that it enabled followup discussion.

Here's the intro:

I just feel the need to write right now. Something has gone terribly wrong with the country I was raised to love. The good things that America stands for are being trampled into the dirt by those charged with the burden of protecting them.

I was raised to be a patriotic American. I grew up a military brat - my father was a proud officer of the United States Navy, who served in the Vietnam War. When I was young, I was always told that my father was fighting to preserve the freedoms that were guaranteed us by the United States Constitution.

In the first grade, I attended a school run by the U.S. Navy in Gaeta, Italy, where my father was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Springfield. Each day when we started school we sang patriotic songs and said the Pledge of Allegiance. We were told that America stood for freedom and democracy and justice.

I loved America for what it stood for.

Thank you for your attention.

It's not too hard to see where this is all going..

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

Our department of "Homeland Security" is creating the situation where all users of the net must be tracable....for the purpose of spying on them and controlling our ability to peacefully associate on the net. Our right to assemble for the purpose of communication is gauranteed in the bill of rights, but is under assult.

As with the "Great Firewall of China" articles that I've been seeing here lately, governments are fearfull of any tool that would allow people to communicate freely. Annonymous communication over the net allows disent to grow without the heavy hand of big brother picking out the "ringleaders."

I notice in this article that there is no discussion at all about why this is necessary for security. I don't believe at all that one guy with a laptop on an open AP could "bring the net down"...

We must force our government to explain WHY this and all of the other USA Patriot act bullshit is necessary....making Bush, Poindexter, Ashcroft and the others explain their position to everyone is the act of a real patriot.....don't believe the hype.....

Re:Great...Big Brother, anyone?

[outlier]

That's not what the article says. It points out that wireless insecurities, particularly on corporate networks, pose a security threat -- no surprise there.

Because of all the hoopla about homeland security, people are pointing out that *any* insecurity that allows people to access networks in unauthorized ways can be a vector for Bad People who want to do Bad Things.

The same could be said about critical security problems in networked computers that may be exploited to attack critical networks. I'm sure that federal cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke would say that any insecurity that enables unauthorized network access *may* be a national security threat.

It doesn't say that you can't have a home or office wifi network. It doesn't even say that freely available wifi is a tool of the terrorists. It says, that systems should be secured, and that responsibility lies at many levels (manufacturers, corporate users, etc).

This isn't to say that the government doesn't engage in FUD or that civil rights aren't under attack. But it makes mare sense to fight the real threats to individual liberties.

sanity run amuck

[kraksmoka]

this WiFi announcement makes as much sense as the personal injury suits won by crooks years back (i'm certain overturned on appeal), who sued homeowners when they hurt themselves in attempted breakins.

yes, people today in the US fell less secure in some ways, say, when traveling on airlines. this is understandable due to the trauma of 9-11 and the threat of worse, such as the SAM attack in Kenya last week. bad things do happen in the world, they are unavoidable, and my mother would agree, better paranoid than alive.

however, it is this /.er's opinion that the right wing extremists of our beloved (not) presidential administration is overly eager to use the situation to extend the police powers of the state.

every little chink in personal liberty, every new crime invented, every new link to terrorism where it does not exist, ALL of THEM, are affronts to not only the liberty of the land of the free, but to the free world at large.

take Jose Padilla. an enemy combatant now, why? last time i looked (i took a history degree in a prior life) a Citizen of the United States had certain rights, even if he used them in a way detrimental to society. this is a "free" country, treason is an option, still punishable by death, none the less an option. that isn't to say it's my choice, but he made his willingly. why is he all of the sudden, this native born son (or bastard, don't know yet really, do we?) having something taken by Ashcroft (remember, he did lose an election to a corpse before his elevation to Grand Inquisitor), that a proper court of Law would only strip of him (this is being decided now) in the most dire of circumstances.

wi-fi security is just another nick in the neck of lady liberty. unfortunately, if you add the nicks up, there's a gaping hole at the moment, and not enough people to stand up to GOP sticks and stones making these nicks. may the god i don't believe exists help us all, without faith based government initiatives.

Devil's advocate

[Have Blue]

Ignoring the arguments about whether it's "terrorism", this does touch on a very important issue. Does making your computer deliberately insecure count as negligence if it is used to commit a crime? Are you liable if you accidentally leave your car unlocked and it is used to commit a crime? What if you did so deliberately? What if you put a sign in the window saying "Anyone is free to use this car so long as you return it"? Where do you draw the line between generosity and irresponsibility?

Civil Disobedience

[Loki_1929]

I just opened my Wireless router wide open. Anyone with an 802.11b network card should have no problem immediately getting an IP address from my router and should have completely open and unrestricted access to the internet from anywhere within about 800ft of my house. I encourage every single one of the 250,000 daily slashdot readers who has a wireless access point or a wireless router to do the same thing. Secure your computers, open your wireless.

To hell with the Dept of Homeland insecurity and their ridiculous ranting. They can take their Gibsonesque FUD elsewhere.

Very proud to have done my small part

[goingware]

I used analog earlier this evening to check my server logs to see how people were finding Is This the America I Love?. I've had the page up for over a year, but since the election I have felt a renewed sense of urgency to get people to read it.

One of the referring pages I found listed in my log is I've held it in too long: I am no longer Proud to be an American. wherein the poster says:

America just makes me sick now. The worst part is nobody seems to see the Injustice of it all. Are you all Blind? Have you not seen the greatly exaggerated and proposterous veil that has been strewn upon America?

Something is indeed wrong. I've sensed it, and to this day haven't been able to find the words to describe what it was, but I have to say something. Why? Because I have a fucking voice, and I will fucking spread it, because that's what America USED to be all about. Now? Now it's nothing, not even a shadow of it's former self. I'd literally rather live in Canada right now, because despite what people thing of Canada, it's pretty cool.

and so on.

Look at the bottom of the guy's post where he gives a link with the text "This is what inspired me to finally say something".

I've worried about the potential for backlash by saying what I did in such a public way, and further to be making such an effort to get people to read it.

But if I was able to get even one person to speak out as this fellow said I did, well that makes it all worthwhile.

There's lots of people who posted to the K5 discussion who don't agree with what I said, but that doesn't bother me so much. I'm very pleased to have opened up so much debate. People are talking about these issues that might not have otherwise.

People need to talk about this stuff, or we will end up in a great deal more trouble than we are already in.

And there were some fairly intelligent points raised at K5 that seem to poke holes in my argument. That's OK too, because I have answers to their objections, and will be able to make some small revisions to my original piece that should ultimately make it stronger and more convincing. So in the end those who found fault with my essay have done me a favor.

Finally, in the little while between posting the above and being just about to post this, my copy of the essay has received 102 page views referred from this slashdot discussion.

I'm very glad of that - prior to posting at K5, the essay was getting about 300 page views a month. So far this month (just a few days into the month) my copy has got 594 page views, and I imagine the K5 post got many times that.

Re:Ludicris

[blincoln]

These people need to take action and clean up before the govt gets more motivated to regulate them.

Should it be illegal for businesses to have poor security for their buildings?
Breaking and entering (in the physical and electronic world) is already a crime. Only a police state regulates the actions of potential victims of crimes to "protect" them.

The politicians do not understand

[panurge]

...what is going on. Forget Bush, who seems just to be a mental underperformer (many countries have done well when their Royal Families collectively lacked the IQ of a seaslug in a jar of alcohol), I suspect the real problem is that the people in power are many years behind an understanding of where technology has actually been going. While technologists have been following Moore's Law, the politicians and the bureaucracy have been following a linear path of increased understanding, dropping behind the curve more and more each year. (And FBI agents are lawyers, basically the most reactionary profession of the lot.)
Now suddenly they are being asked to do something other than obtain campaign donations and talk crap on TV. And they have not the slightest idea what to do. When a politican or a civil servant doesn't know what to do, what is the reaction? Find something that people are doing, and stop it. It is so much easier to ban something than to think of a positive action.

The posters who are making jokes about banning telephones and coats are not actually that far off the mark. In the Soviet Union, that dangerous instrument the typewriter required a licence, and all official typewriters had their fingerprint taken by the KGB so that any typed document could be traced to the original machine. As for photocopiers, each one had its KGB operative to control access. We now seem to be heading for a government policy of achieving basically the same thing electronically. In the long term, it is likely to be about as successful.

The big problem is, who is going to educate the politicians? Or do we need to find a way to replace them with younger, better educated ones who might actually have a clue about the modern world?

Re:Very very sad

[Sacarino]

What's worse is they're going to push and push and take away rights under the guise of 'public safety' or some shit and it will come to a head.

America in the past has risen up to say 'fsck you' to overwhelming repression and hopefully it will again.

The most insightful quote I ever heard was Sean Connery in Red October.... "A little revolution now and then is a good thing."

America needs a revolution, and needs one soon. I have no desire for my children live with the burden of pencil-pushers dictating their lives.

Sure, for now..

[Lysol]

You are absolutely correct. However, politicians may steal as much as they can, but it's the people that still elect them. Only when the masses wake up will things change. And unfortunately, throughout history, this has rarely happened until after the point of no return.

What you list above is an admirable way to protect the 'homeland' but it still misses the main problem. Check out Usama's letter on what his reasoning is. We were founded on the premise of religious tolerance. However, there are elements linked to the government through the current administration that are now just as bad as Usama himself. Extremist conservtives drunk with intolerance of any religion other than Christianity and set on enforcing their view of morality on the rest of the world - just like Usama. Only difference is that they have the worlds largest military and corporations to back it up.

When and if we correct this problem, will there be no or little reason to monitor our borders and ports - except maybe to keep others away from prosperity (which sounds odd if you think about it). But for now, I fear you're correct and we are already starting to see ridiculous examples of democracy gone awry.

It is even more sad..

[nurb432]

That I've been trying desperately for years to tell people this was happening time. But no one listened, I was just a 'nut'.. Then 9/11 happened and I said it again, but I was 'anti patriotic', so again, no one listened.

Even in school in the 80's people that valued freedom, our constitution, and wanted to protect both were labeled 'radical' and programmed to think it was wrong.. In reality we were no different then our founding fathers, and should have been labeled 'federalists' instead..

Now here we are, almost at the gates of oblivion.. Who among us will be the first person to stand up and say NO.

Re:public != insecure.

[ncc74656]

cable company kiosks - Do you mean those kiosks which stand in the middle of the street? They usually are very crippled in their interface. you can't even run ping. I dunno. Maybe you might be able to exploit them.

If they're running IE (or a browser built on the IE engine), all you need is some useful binaries squirreled away on a webserver to do whatever you want with their computer. Security settings are almost always such that you can run untrusted EXEs. At Comdex, I ran PuTTY off of my home webserver so I could check my mail. There's no reason I couldn't have stashed some malware ahead of time and run that.

(Mozilla, OTOH, won't let you do that. It'll prompt you to save the file someplace. If "Run...", "Command Prompt", and IE are removed from the Start menu and Windows-R is trapped (it's a keyboard shortcut for Start|Run...), good luck getting your downloaded file to run...assuming that you can find a directory that'll let you save your file. (One college lab had "Run..." and "Command Prompt" removed from its machines, but opening IE and giving c:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe as the URL gave me a command prompt.))

Re:Fine, run your open network...

[MikeFM]

A yard or radio waves are different than an object. They are something that is just there. Grabbing them and claiming it doesn't mean you or anyone made them. A car, food, your cat, etc are objects. The first two you can own and as always the cat owns you.

Most people are shortsighted greedy morons who wouldn't know the difference between their arse and their brain. Y'know the people who read tabloid newspapers and think all thats tuff is real. Land is an unlimited resource. At least as far as humans are likely to be concerned. There is more land on this one planet than is actually usable by the number of people the planet can sustain. Then there are lots of other planets we have the power to go to if we wanted to bother. Also we could easily create more 'land' by building large underwater or floating cities. Land is not an object so it is owned by the public.

Just because something belongs to the public doesn't mean you can't use it. It just means you can't deny others the use of it when your not using it. Y'know like a King that would punish peasents for killing a deer in his forest despite the fact he wasn't using the deer or the forest.

You and I are certainly not responsible for what our ancestors did but that doesn't mean we're not responsible for whatever actions we take that support what our ancestors did. Of course we have to have a place to live but you don't hafta put brick walls around your yard and curse the damn kids for their frisbees that float inside the fence. ;)

Try not paying your taxes and see how public your land is. Your purchase price is little more than a rent deposit. Of course the only reason you have to pay for land is because people don't realize that if they felt like it they could just take what they needed from all that empty land not being used. A large enough group can take anything. No surprise about that. Forty big bikers with semiautomatic weapons can camp in my living room any damn time they want. :)

What are you not yet using your yard for that it'd be damaged by a child running across your grass?

Sure kids can play in their yard, a public park, etc. It doesn't mean I'm gonna get pissed off if they walk across my yard. I guess it's a reasonable use thing. If they aren't hurting me or damaging anything I'm using then I don't care if they use it.

You must have grown up somewhere nice. Where I grew up everyone played in the street. It was the only space big enough for most games and close enough to home that our parents didn't have to worry about gang fights, drug pushers, etc.

Anyway I think the original point was that it'd be silly to blame someone for not fencing their yard against criminal/terrorist activity. In the same way it's silly to blame someone for not fencing off their wireless network against criminal/terrorist activity. You shouldn't have to fence off either if it pleases you to leave them open.

Smaller Government?

[oldstrat]

Was anyone besides myself foolish enough to print this thing out before scrolling through it?

I just killed a small wooded lot.
Just a thought, next time George and the boys offer up something this important, they really should think about making it a PDF and or gzip it.