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."

Comments

yes and..?

[marcushnk]

so what do you think they'll say when I say I do it deliberately ?

I don't mind sharing my wifi with complete strangers. I restrict it to make sure they can't cost me too much and everything I do on it is encrypted via VPN so - meh!

Re:yes and..?

[hairyfeet]

The problem with what you are saying is you are thinking like an IT guy, that is to say you are logically walking through the steps from point A to Z. Not your fault really, it is pretty much the way most of us do it.

The problem with using logic is that Child Porn has become the new red scare and sadly logic often don't have shit to do with whether you will be spending years in PMITA prison or not. See McMartin preschool and Little Rascals Daycare for examples.

Now see, if they had actually used logic they would have said something like "Chuck Norris killing elephants in dungeons? WTF?" but instead they bulldozed the place to the ground actually looking for the fricking dungeon! So sadly until we get rid of scaremongers like Nancy Grace and start actually using logic in the courtrooms again you would have to be batshit crazy to have an open Wifi. Because your logic doesn't really help you when everyone is treating you like a monster, the state has confiscated all your possessions and leaves you to rot in some cell.

Sad that we have fallen this far down the rabbit hole, especially when the vast majority of sexual abuse cases involves a family member or family friend and not some Internet bogeyman, but you simply can't deny reality. If the cops kick down your door and scream "Child molester!" while pointing at you nowadays you are guilty, and whether you can prove your innocence later it will often still cost you years of your life, your friends, maybe even your family. It just isn't worth it.

Visist Every Residence

[rtb61]

I also like the idea of police officers visiting every home and place of business, more as a social visit and to establish better ties between the police and civilians. You know, get to know 'your' local police officer and, establish a more social contact with at least one officer whom you can contact in the event of need. Also it would help to remind officers of what their role really is in assisting the public to maintain a civil and orderly society.

Of course while it might work in Australia, in the US with pepper spray and taser abuse out of control and with 'public' discussions of the effectiveness, legality and use of torture it would likely have the opposite affect and drive an even greater wedge between 'law enforcement' and the public.

Re:Visist Every Residence

[houghi]

In Belgium when you move, the local cop will make a visit when you moved. This is to see if you live where you say you live. This can go from just knocking on your door and say hello to actually walk around and see if you live there, not just rent the place as a fake address.

A friend of mine had a nice chat and some coffee with the guy.

For me it took some three months and he really looked if I lived there, because each time he could I worked or was in another country and when I could he was not available. So he might have thought I was just renting the place with nothing in it, so e.g. debt collectors can not take away my stuff, while in reality I was living in a mansion.

In another town, my local cop was somebody who I often shared a beer with. And when I had a ticket, I just gave him the money and he would do the rest. He then would put the proof of payment in my mailbox. That way I did not need to go to the post office and buy the stamps. The system is now changed and I can pay directly via my bank.

In those days, the local cops would get the first beer free in the pub and payed for everything after that. I liked it, because I knew they knew what was going on in their neighborhood and so what if they where sometimes drunk. It showed the rest they were people as well and made the distance much smaller.

But then in Belgium drinking is not something that is frowned upon and the result is that we have the world largest brewery company.

Re:Visist Every Residence

[hab136]

I also like the idea of police officers visiting every home and place of business, more as a social visit and to establish better ties between the police and civilians.

The last time I approached a police officer in public to ask a question, he immediately said "get away from me" before I could even say anything. He was doing paperwork, FYI.

I really wish police officers would act as part the community, interacting with us, instead of acting as a separate society, above and over us.

If I did this, I'd be arrested..

[Anonymous Coward]

So when a kid demonstrates he can access his school's network or a customer demonstrates that he can get free calls from a phone system, they will be thrown out of school for 'hacking' or arrested for 'theft of service'. But when the police do it, it's fine?

Whats happening here?

Unsecure WiFi is bad for Police, Bad for ISPs

[hughk]

It seems that two of the largest organisations hating the sharing of WiFi access are the police, who don't like the fact that unofficial open access points don't log and the ISPs who hate to think that they are losing a potential customer.

Some years back in London, a chain of winebars (C&B) offered free access for their customers with no fancy tumbling time code or anything (you, know where they print a code that has a limited validity on the till receipt).. A story appeared in one of the papers about how people were able to 'steal WiFi access' showing the 'security consultant' with a laptop in the city of London demonstrating that there was open WiFi. Yep, because they are standing directly outside that Winebar (out of shot). I have stood there myself, as the bar was too noisy, so I could use Skype over WiFi to contact my SO. This is fairly common practice now, but it disrupts the business models of people like Vodafone or commercial WiFi providers.

Find people who donate to charity too

[ConfusedVorlon]

People who donate money to charity will lose that money.
People who donate some of their bandwidth to passing surfers probably lose nothing.

Surely the police should be concentrating on the cases where there is a more significant danger of loss.

Re:Aiding and Abetting?

[Savior_on_a_Stick]

We were amazed that our old POS 20 year old Dodge Spirit was stolen from a shopping center parking lot.

It was found later parked (in two space) in the lot of some subsidized apartments.

I was expecting to find a destroyed ignition lock from someone using a screwdriver or dent puller on it.
It was unscathed.

I know the key wasn't left in it, as we still had the only key for it.
Or so we thought...

I then remembered my experience with motorcycles in the late 70's early 80's.

The 78 Yamaha 400 Special only had 5 or 6 keys made for it.

It was a trivial matter to wander around with your own key until you found a matching lock.

With the exception of the uber secure electronic keys, the same is still true to an extent.