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Dan Rutter Suggests Tossing Some Wi-Fi At the Neighbors
A few days ago, Dan Rutter (the Dan in "Dan's Data") published an interesting idea for extending the sort of philanthropic technical pranksterism that spawned throwies by applying the same approach to Wi-Fi. That means, looking what he hopes is not too far down the road, creating Wi-Fi repeaters that are cheap enough to deploy on the sly and frugal enough with power to run on solar power or cheaply replaceable batteries. But as he says, "If you've got a lot of spare money, a ladder and no respect for private property, though, you could already be stealthily deploying Open-Mesh or other such gadgets all over your neighbourhood." In some cities at least, you'd be hard pressed to ever avoid at least one available wireless access point, but that's not the experience for most people, most places -- which bears correction.
It's an interesting idea... but here's the thing I can't see the ISPs letting something like this happening.
Also, what's to prevent somebody from stealing one of the boxes, and causing an outage... or modifying the firmware on one of these boxes to sniff for passwords?
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Make sure to include a nondescript box and some blinking lights in the setup, we wouldn't want anybody to mistake it for any sort of improvised device.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I really like the idea that this guy has, but I hate to think about the crazy ISPs would release on us if people started doing this. They're as bad as the media companies for wanting control over networks. I can just see it now, every repeater that you install is considered a lost sale with potentially thousands of users using it. Cease and desist or we will sue you for one brazillion dollars. Yet another argument for treating the internet like a public utility, just one that you can opt out of if you so choose.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
I know the slashdot crowd is a big fan of free things, aren't we all, but when you sign on for internet you agree it's for your household, apartment, or whatever, not for you to provide publicly (even though many people inadvertently do with unsecured wireless networks).
Just like you can't steal cable or run a cable over to your neighbor's, you can't steal internet service either.
Likewise, when someone pirates something using your network, the person getting sued will probably be the person that pays the bill--you. And just think what would happen if someone downloads child pornography on your connection...!
Using wi-fi hardware to make a wi-fi network is hacking now?
My UK ISP already provide for 'municipal' wi-fi via an affiliation with FON. By opening up part of my spectrum, I get to piggyback my mobile devices on some other member's wi-fi when I need to.
The only additional item here seems to be not getting ISP permission to do what they are happy to give permission for anyway. Rebellion this isn't.
We, in Paris, have been experimenting with just such a network, based on a dynamic mesh routing protocol (Babel) and an autoconfiguration protocol similar to DHCP (AHCP).
The results are mixed. On the one hand, a lot of geeky types turn out to be willing to volunteer their (paid-for) ADSL line and even to buy a router with their own pennies. On the other hand, normal users are not willing to install software they don't understand -- they just want to use a normal AP, and don't understand why they need to install extra software just to use the Internet.
Yes, that's exactly what we are doing. Unfortunately, setting up tunnels (VPNs) is complicated and error-prone, and existing VPN software are designed with static routing in mind. We're actually thinking of designing our own VPN implementation that is convenient to use with dynamic routing protocols.
That's a very good point.
I don't think that using solar-powered devices is economically feasible; you really need access to external power.
In cities, there's power in every streetlamp, and we need to find ways to get the municipal authorities to give us access to that, and in every café or restaurant, and we need to explain to café owners that it's just a few watts. In the countryside, there's church towers (at least in Europe), so be nice to your local priest.
so you can just claim Plausible deniability because someone was using your service without your permission.
What everybody fails to grasp is this: if you're ever been merely accused of something the powers-that-be don't like (child pornography, "terrorist" materials, whatever) they're not going to listen to your plaintive cries of "but it's an open access point." They don't care as long as they can be publicly seen to be doing their jobs. Odds are the grunts arresting you won't know an access point from Adam, and they'll haul your ass off to jail as a matter of principle. Then, if you have a very good lawyer and are lucky enough to come before a tech-savvy judge (and don't count on that) you might have some form of viable defense. Then again, you might not, and could end up serving ten years to life. Either way, you've been seriously boned up the ass and for what? Giving your cheap-ass neighbor his jollies?
So, don't assume the cops or the Justice System will be reasonable about any of this, or even grasp the fundamental technical aspects of modern communications. They will take the simplest approach, which is it was your I.P. that was active when the offensive/illegal materials were downloaded, and even if it was someone else who did it it was still your equipment that was used. That wouldn't remotely constitute proof to an engineer, but so far lawyers have had a field day with it.
Bottom line, secure your access point as tightly as you can, and if you're going to download anything "questionable" do it through an encrypted anonymous service like Tor, and hope that that is sufficient to protect you. God help you if it's not, because nobody else will.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.