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California Passes Wi-Fi Guidance Law
MrNonchalant writes, "California's legislature has passed a law requiring Wi-Fi device manufacturers to include warnings about security. From the article: 'From 1 October 2007, manufacturers must place warning labels on all equipment capable of receiving Wi-Fi signals, according to the new state law. These can take the form of box stickers, special notification in setup software, notification during the router setup, or through automatic securing of the connection. One warning sticker must be positioned so that it must be removed by a consumer before the product can be used.'"
The actual law (link to the law text attached to the article) this has no statement that even hints at that. Instead, it clearly and plainly defines those items that will require the warning, and those definitions are not only correct, but quite adequate.
Nice to know that the writers of the law did a better job than the writers of the article.
Also nice to know that my little 'Canary' WiFi detector will continue to be quite legit, and not covered by the law, at all.
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Tomas
I strongly disagree with you. The last couple wireless routers I installed did not intuitively inform me of the risks. They made it easy to setup, but without security enabled by default.
I believe some newer linksys routers have a synch button you push to add a new device. They call it Secure Easy Setup and that sounds quite useful for customers (never tried that myself): http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/07/25/HNlinksy swlan_1.html
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
If you took the population of CA and choose any equivelent area on the East coast, you would have the same if not larger economy. Imagine if the mid atlantic states like PA, DE, NJ and maybe even NY in one governmental drawn boundary line that made a single state. The physical size would probably be smaller then CA in size but have a much larger economy. CA is not an economic powerhouse because of some special business sense or because of some business advantage, it is because of the population due to its physical size.
The per capita personal income for CA was $33,403 as of 2003, ranking 12th in the nation.
Considering the large difference of ranking between GSP (Gross State Product which you incorrectly refered to as GDP) and the per capita personal income, CA seems to be a great place for business but not for the people as a whole. The GSP is not consistent with income levels of the people who live and work there. Consider the median income and not the average income and it looks even worse.
Too bad the rest of the states can't seem to learn from California's success.
We have different ideas of who should be successful, the state or the people that live in the state.
One is to your data. Most Windows firewalls when set to "easy" mode have a certain level of trust for the local network they don't for the Internet. This lets people do things like filesharing without having to know how to configure their firewall. Not as secure as it should be, but you can change it and they'd just turn if off if it stopped them from doing what they want. Well anyone who doesn't want to mess with their firewall t all probably has a poor understanding that other people who can freely connect to their wireless count as part of their network. So they may have things shared that are for their use only.
Another risk is what happens if people start doing illegal stuff with your network. Let's say I decide to hop on and do a shitload of filesharing and suddenly you've got a lawsuit from the RIAA. Sure you are innocent but now you've got to prove it. Maybe the courts decide you aren't innocent, since it was your choice to leave the network open. I mean if I leave my garage open and people are in there selling crack, maybe the cops arrest me too, even though I claim ignorance.
Finally it's a risk that your connection will be bogged down. You have wireless open, your neighbours are cheap moocher university students, suddenly your network is trying to do the work of 5 connections and it's all slow for you.
I don't think this law is useful, but there is real danger to leaving your network unsecured. Maybe you decide that the risks are acceptable, but it kinda sucks if you just aren't aware of them at all.
I've heard others say that too, but I don't see it.
Wood was a surprise to me. The only other place I tend to see it is on signs around junkyards, garbage dumps, packages of engine oil, grease, etc.
So far, I've never seen one entering any restaurants, supermarkets, electronics stores, etc. No Prop 65 warning on my TVs, shoes, DVDs, etc., etc.
What are you doing, and what are you buying, that you're seeing these warnings all over the place?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Do you live in California? The stickers are everywhere, maybe you just missed them but every Safeway, Mervyns, Fast food joint, well heck they are everywhere! Maybe like all warning stickers, if you see often enough, they just don 't register anymore. Your right though I don't remember them on end products, just every business establishment I can think of.