Could That Be The Wireless Police Knocking?

netbuzz writes "Should private-property owners be required to practice safe wireless? Are the wireless police about to come a-knockin' on the front door of your castle? Network World reports on a condo complex in Arizona that will monitor your wireless signal for security. Is this the way all condos and apartment complexes should go?" From the article: "'We just kind of kicked it around the table and everybody said that's a helluva good idea, (mandatory encryption) ought to go in the declarations,' says Welch. However, a lawyer warned that wireless technology could quickly overrun any specific covenants they put to paper, 'so we decided that instead of recording (declarations) at the county that we would leave it up to the hotel manager to put it in their rules and regulations.' Why bother at all? 'We just don't want to see anybody hurt with their wireless system,' says Welch. 'If someone (unauthorized) were accessing it and an owner's information, there could be damage and a potential lawsuit.'"

Comments

paper tiger laws

[adam]

FTFA: "We just don't want to see anybody hurt with their wireless system," says Welch. "If someone (unauthorized) were accessing it and an owner's information, there could be damage and a potential lawsuit."

absolutely ridiculous. maybe they should start digging through our trash to make sure we've properly shredded our monthly bank statements too.

Furthermore, this rule would be a total paper tiger, as far as enforcement goes, since wep [which i do believe is the most common security protocol in use for wifi today] is widely known NOT to be secure. It will be ironic when the first whitehat captures a few days worth of packets from outside that guy's home and then published the unencrypted contents of his web traffic.

Re:paper tiger laws

[gnasher719]

'' Lawyer "Mr. Doe, you left the SSID or 'name' of the network at the default value and didn't add any encryption or security?" ''

Some manufacturers of wireless equipment are just clueless and make it unnecessarily hard for people to do the right thing.

On my wireless router, there is a setup page with an html interface where all kinds of things can be changed. The problem is, it never tells you what these things are that you could change, and why you should change them, and what you could change them. One of the things to change was called "SSID" and the preset value was the name of the manufacturer.

Now how am I supposed to know what "SSID" means? If you apply logical thinking, since it is set to the name of the manufacturer, it is probably meant to be the name of the manufacturer. So the logical assumption would be that it is used to identify the make of the router, like a processor having an ID of "IntelInside" or "AMDSomething" so you know who made it, and the only reason to change it would be to pretend to be a router made by some other manufacturer.

If these idiots had set the preset field to "NameOfThisNetwork" or "TypeInNameOfTheNetworkHere" then it would have been much more obvious what SSID is for. One line change in the source code for the router software, and I guess 30 percent fewer people leaving the default name because they don't have a clue what SSID is supposed to mean.

Now that is just one minor point. But consider that there are about hundred settings, and ninetyfive of them will stop the router from working properly if I change them, so how is an end user who is not a computer expert supposed to get this right?

oh thank you nanny state

[kaufmanmoore]

i will never have to learn from my mistakes ever again.

Rediculous...

[Xserv]

This is a waste of time and money. People should secure their own networks. If you don't know how then you pay someone to do it for you. If you can't afford it, then how are you able to afford a wireless network. Period.

Why should any government, company or anyone else worry about someone else's network connection security -- unless they're being paid by that party to do so. And in the case of a government (city/state/local/federal) being responsible; don't make ME pay for it.

Xserv

Why single out wireless protection?

[ewireless]

This seems silly. If you want to protect your own private property or not, that's your own business. They don't require you to lock your apartment door when you leave. They don't require you to lock your car door when you park in your parking space. How is this any different?

Some Perspective

[Fnord666]

Let's get some perspective on this please. Despite the gratuitous use of the word "police" in the posting headline, this has nothing to do with the police or the law. No one is trying to pass any laws. This is one condo association setting up the covenants under which purchasers of the condos must live. This isn't any different than a restriction that condo owners can't put a fence in their front yards.

According to the article

"Bryan Welch is sales manager and designated broker for Canoa Ranch and he takes credit for first broaching the wireless security mandate with the developers of the project, which will provide each condo unit/hotel room with wired broadband, telephony and cable TV service."

In summary, the condo developers are providing the broadband connection and want to make sure that the condo owners secure their endpoints. Open access points have some risks that the developers are apparently not willing to accept. As a goodwill gesture they could retain a local networking firm to help owners set up their wireless networks properly though.