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Australian Police Plan Wardriving Mission
bfire writes "Police officers in the Australian state of Queensland plan to conduct a 'wardriving' mission around select towns in an effort to educate citizens to secure their wireless networks. When unsecured networks are found, the Police will pay a friendly visit to the household or small business, informing them of the risks they are exposing themselves to. Officers also hope to return to surveyed areas within a month to see if users have fixed their security settings. The idea is modeled on another campaign where officers walk around railway stations checking cars have been locked, and leaving notes warning people of the dangers involved with leaving their vehicles unsecured."
...and leaving notes warning people of the dangers involved with leaving their vehicles unsecured.
What? People don't know this in Australia? I mean if it came to become a campaign the problem must have been of significant magnitude. I'm not trying to flamebait here but back to my question: people don't know this in Australia?
I am the lawn!
The police maybe able to see my wireless network as unsecured, but unless their mac address is in my router they have no chance of connecting to it.
Oh, there are a lot of strange ways this could play out:
[ knock, knock ]
-Do you have the WLAN with the SSID MonkeyTails?
-The what, Sir?
-Wireless Network?
-Oh, for the computer Internet? No, I think ours is called captaincrook.
-Okay, that one is safe.
-Safe?
-Yeah, we are driving around checking for insecure WLANs. Do you know who MonkeyTails are?
-I think it's my neighbour.
-Ok, thank you.
[ knock, knock ]
- Hello.
- Hello, are you the owner of the WLAN MonkeyTails?
- Yes?
- It's insecure.
- I know.
- Well, you should secure it.
- No, I don't want to secure it.
- You should secure it or pedophiles could use it.
- It is an old router that doesn't support encryption.
- Well, let us know if you see any pedophiles.
- Bye.
Well, the police also lock the cars as well as putting notes on them...
A friend of mine got hit by this, he had an old car which used 2 keys - one to open the door, and one to start the engine... He had lost the door key, but still had the engine one, so he simply left the car unlocked. Being an old, rusty and totally worthless looking vehicle it never got stolen, and he never left anything in it worth stealing either. It wasn't a problem until the cops came along and locked him out of it.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
> I don't mind sharing my wifi with complete strangers
I must need coffee. I misread this as "I don't mind sharing my wife with complete strangers."
Bark less. Wag more.
But ... but that would be like... you know, breaking into the car before stealing it!
I'm fairly sure that's in some way illegal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm not doing a RAM raid with the side window smashed, it completely ruins the air con. effectiveness.
You want mod points , I got em, I can help you out with th... oh crap, I've done it again haven't I.
su userWithModPoints mod +funny
Unexpect the expected!
Would you want your next-door neighbor hammering away in bed with your wifi ?
Dunno how many people would just jump out the window if the police knocked and said "hey, we just wanna talk with you".
I mean, it's not what you'd expect from the police. Also, the price for dope would certainly go up with the increased demand, considering how much would be flushed down the drain...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't you know that the evil predators can actually ABDUCT INNOCENT CHILDREN THROUGH UNSECURED WIRELESS? Every time the police shut down an unsecured access point they're literally preventing billions of rapes and murders. The only people who could possibly be against this idea are probably the predators who make torture porn of little girls. God bless these valiant crime fighters who are making the world safe one W.A.P. at a time.
I'm in southern suburbs of brisbane and there are no less than 6 open wifis in my area. All of them have completely default settings, default SSID's and everything. On some of them people have their whole c: driver shared... Usually i print to their printers letting them know, but there are so many I just stopped doing it.
I used to have a LeBaron convertible. When I first got it, I used to always lock it. One day, I discovered that criminals will happily cut into a top to unlock a door. Nothing inside the car was worth more than my deductible (plus the hassle of actually getting the top replaced), so I stopped locking it entirely. Thankfully, no pigs ever bothered to lock it for me.
On the other hand, the criminals still sometimes assumed it was locked and broke a window once to break into my unlocked car.
Locking a car only keeps non-criminals out.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Next time, leave the furry costume at home.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!