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Unsecured Wi-Fi to Become Illegal?
echucker writes "News.com is carrying a story for a draft proposal for law in Westchester County in New York state that would outlaw unsecured wi-fi connections. Public internet access would require a network gateway server with a firewall and also require home/business office users to install firewalls to protect personal info, even if their connection is encrypted. Violations would carry fines of $250-$500."
Actually, from the article it seems to only apply to businesses, or home offices, not just any homeowner. Their intention seems to be to prevent theft of credit card information from customers of the business.
(...or am I missing a Simpsons reference?)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
No, it's fine. It doesn't have to be encrypted, just firewalled. It's a crap summary, I'm afraid.
If you were up to no good is an open AP the way to do it?
The short answer, YES.
The long answer, if its not a honeypot and you can evade physical detection, YES. The former may be harder to detect on the fly, but the latter is as simple as hiding in plain sight in the parking lot of an apartment complex or frat house.
~Rebecca
The Oxford English Dictionary shows "burglarize" as early as 1871 for the action of committing burglary.
burglarize (Murray: bA.rglar[GIF]iz)(IPA: 'b3:rgl[GIF]raIz), v. U.S. [f. burglar sb. + -ize.] trans. To rob burglariously; to break into by violence for the purpose of theft. Also intr.
1871 Southern Mag. Apr. (Schele de Vere), The Yankeeisms donated, collided, and burglarized, have been badly used up by an English magazine-writer. 1876 Congress Rec. July 4419/2, I found that the house of a lady moving in good society had been burglarized. 1883 TALMAGE in Chr. Globe 13 Sept. 829/2 The man who had a contempt for a petty theft will burglarise the wheat-bin of a nation. 1884 Boston (Mass.) Jrnl. 7 Feb. 1 The house of John Fuller was burglarized on Wednesday night.1926 J. BLACK You can't Win xi. 142 It was built to be burglarized. 1947 Jrnl. Crim. Law & Criminol. Nov.-Dec. 319, I tried to resist the urge to get outside and burglarize.
Hence 'burglarizing vbl. sb.
1872 SCHELE DE VERE Americanisms 655 In like manner the burglar's occupation has been designated as burglarizing. 1888 Merchant Traveler (Farmer), `What have you been doing for a living lately?'.. `Burglarizing.'
As a resident of Westchester county I find this laughable, sitting here I see 3 open networks from my neighbors and find it a great comfort in the event of network problems. The county's view is posted here posted in an article called Gasoline and Katrina (nice job webmaster). As a westchester resident of 12 years I can imagine only 2 reasons for this, 1 to make it look like they're active in protecting the people, who in Westchester would love to make a point that *their* county is fighting for them on the tech front. The other point which might provide a bit more incentive is a Corporate interest. Someone is sure to make money off of this, and not just be the county from collecting fines.
The law of negligent entrustment is another area in which courts have specifically defined negligence under very limited circumstances. A dive shop operator who lends a vehicle or a spear gun, or a boat owner who lends a boat, may be found guilty of negligent entrustment if the borrower is incompetent, unfit, or reckless and the owner knew or had reason to know that the borrower was unfit. The law of negligent entrustment is fairly broad and covers nearly any dangerous instrumentality. The injured person may allege that the operator or user of the equipment was negligent; or the plaintiff may allege that the owner of the equipment was negligent and that the user of the equipment was simply unfit. For example, a person injured in an accident may allege that an automobile owner knew about the driver's tendency to black out, but loaned the car to the driver anyway. The injured person may not claim that the driver was negligent, but can still claim that the owner should not have lent the car.
http://www.pernet.net/~danat/negloview.htm
The original English word in this group is the noun "burglary", quickly followed by "burglar", both of which are first attested in the early 1500s, and ultimately derive from the Indo-European root *bherg, which means "high". The verb "burglarize" is a regular verb form, dating from the late 1800s, formed from "burglary" by the same process that gives us "scrutinize", "sympathize", etc. The British form "burgle" is an (apparently originally humorous) back-formation, also dating from the late 1800s, but not widely considered acceptable (in Britain) until somewhat later.