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Finland To Legalize Use of Unsecured Wi-Fi
Apotekaren writes "The Finnish Ministry of Justice has started preparing changes to a current law that criminalizes using unsecured wireless hot spots (Google translation; Finnish original). The reasoning includes the impossibility of tracking unlawful use, the ease of securing networks, and the lack of real damage done by this activity. It is also hard for a user to know if an unsecured network is intended for public use or not. The increased ubiquity of legal, open networks in parks, airports, and other public places has also influenced this move by the Ministry of Justice."
We need a standard for secure WiFi that allows guests in, most likely by giving them a personal shared key on their receipt or ticket. The big problem with unsecured WiFi is that there's no accountability. Some video-downloading hog can take all the bandwidth, and trying to use anything on 2.4 GHz during a Apple or Google developer conference presentation is near impossible. WiFi was a good first take, but we've got to work QoS and authentication in just like we have for wired just for safety's sake. Otherwise, these laws banning open WiFi actually make sense.
Finland To Legalize Use of Unsecured Wi-Fi
Kids, don't you know that unsecured wifi is just a gateway. Pretty soon you'll be cracking into stuff with stronger encryption. Then where will be? Sitting on the side of the road in some bad neighborhood looking asking to borrow a power jack.
a botnet ?
Yours In Baku,
Kilgore Trout
Oh wait .... for some things you need a MasterCard ...
I hear by propose that Finland change the name of the Ministry of Justice to the Ministry of Common Sense and Applied Intelligence!
Imagine that, a reasonable and informed change to a law to sync with their ever changing technological landscape. I am astounded! One
only hopes others will learn from this event.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Just do what Barnes and Nobel does. If you try to connect to their system it will want to text you a temporary access code.
How can they both "legalize" and "criminalize" the use of something? Did the editor not notice this complete contradiction of the title versus what the summary says?
If the topic is computer security, and the question begins "There's got to be a better way to ...", then the answer is always OpenBSD. Always.
There are a lot of common sense ideas in the Scandinavian countries.
I've been thinking about it and I think that perhaps it's related to their increased tolerance for failure. A Swede or Norwegian or Finn is able to say "yes, this was a mistake" and not be derided in public for it.
The concept that humans aren't perfect isn't lost on these people as it seems to be in much of the rest of the world.
Another great example of this is the sex offender registries in the area. They're not only non-existent, they're actually illegal. They contend that it is a gross violation of personal privacy for those who already served their time and point out (probably correctly) that they do very little than encourage fear and paranoia amongst the populace. There was even a very public protest in OPPOSITION to a group who set up a private registry with similar information, after which, the site was removed due to its illegal content (in violation of local privacy laws).
To bring up another example, in these countries, there are very few frivolous lawsuits, as the system is carefully balanced to make it burdensome to bring one.
It is much easier for a judge to deem the plaintiff liable for all court costs and all defense costs if he feels the lawsuit was brought with malice or with little hope of succeeding.
Additionally, the state represents both parties in some cases, removing the financial burden of defending yourself from lawsuits. What they then do is place that burden on one of the parties in the case that they have been shown to be "willfully" out of compliance with civil law, but in cases where it is a genuine misunderstanding, the costs are absorbed by the system.
Rather than having a heirarchy where the rich can do whatever they want and the poor get fucked. Or a system where the powerful control everything and those down on their luck are brazenly left out to dry, these countries seem to have found a balance.
Also, worth noting, that these countries, despite their low populations and high standard of living, are not in the list of struggling economies, even during this "European crisis".
Absolutely brilliant. :-)
So basically what you are saying is that the law that criminalizes using unsecured wireless hot spots is finished.
Wow, a policy that criminalizes a nearly victimless activity (who really notices if someone is checking their email on their network?), is impossible to police, and 'perpetrators' could be doing so mistakenly being repealed for those reasons?
Almost gives a man hope in government. At least Finish government.
Someone let me know when they decriminalize the use of unsecured automobiles and females and I'll start packing my stuff.
Does the ubiquity of public places like airports, businesses and town halls mean that if I leave my front door unlocked someone should just be able to walk in and I have no recourse to have them arrested for trespassing?
I think the reasoning behind this is flawed. Because there are a lot of public things in the world doesn't mean that my unlocked door is difficult to ascertain isn't there for you to walk through. Unless the hotspot advertises itself as public the proper assumption is that, like a home without a business sign in front of it, you don't walk in without knocking. That is the kind of assumption that privacy laws are based on. The assumption that everything is public unless locked is the opposite of privacy protections.
*I think people who don't lock down their network are stupid. But that doesn't mean it should be legal for other to take advantage of their stupidity.
Well the laws that make this illegal have typically been a little inappropriate - dating back to the 1980's to deal with people hacking into mainframes rather than a harmless bit of sneaky freeloading.
Still, I think part of the justification is silly. "It is also hard for a user to know if an unsecured network is intended for public use or not." No it isn't. Does it have a name along the lines of "free wi-fi", or are there posters up telling you that there's free wireless internet? If so then it's probably intended for public use. Does it have a a name like D-LINK-N300? If so it's probably not intended for public use. If you're not sure, don't use it. Err on the side of caution. It's not that hard. You don't assume that unlocked bikes are free for public use after all.
The UK's laws on use of unsecured wi-fi are asinine in the extreme. People have been prosecuted for using unsecured home access points to check their email in the past. I think laws should recognise that computers and smartphones will, by default, connect to an unsecured access point (presumably manufacturers set it up this way because it's easier for non-technical end users) and that the onus is therefore on the access point owner to secure the device if he wants to limit access to it. By broadcasting its SSID he is quite blatantly offering a public service, and IMHO he has NO right whatsoever to complain that people are using that public service if he has not secured it. There is no way of telling just from a list of access points whether one is intended for public access or not, and in fact many people do keep their wi-fi unsecured specifically to allow for public access. By setting up WEP or WPA on an access point, or by using an alternative method of securing the access point such as a captive portal, the owner is clearly indicating that the access point is not for public use. If someone chooses to try and break the encryption or use some other method to get around this, then that probably should be a crime.
I'm paying 45 euros/month for a 110Mb line (yes, actual speed) here in Helsinki. So bandwidth wouldn't be a problem. OTOH, what might become interesting might be the operator agreements, wouldn't the operators want to stop people from sharing their connection? And how is anyone ever going to be able to use IP addresses as evidence anymore if you can just claim that you have an open network.
I live in Finland, and I have been using unsecured Wi-Fi nets since at least 4 years (maybe longer) perfectly legally. In some cities (Oulu) it is a service offered by the municipality, in others it's part of the student campus facilities, etc. etc. In theory, you were not allowed to use your neighbor's Wi-Fi (if you knew it's his/hers), though I have never heard that being enforced, ever. This law just makes the point wholly moot.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Cool! I will be in Helsinki in September. Can I get on your network? :)
Unsecured wireless isn't illegal in most places and shouldn't be.
I'm aware of all of the potential issues, but the implications of government control; being forced to secure something if you don't wish to - are far worse.
"And how is anyone ever going to be able to use IP addresses as evidence anymore if you can just claim that you have an open network."
I guess that you'll have to actually obtain some evidence of illegal activity then. It is not the job of laws to restrict freedom for the purpose of making it easy to sue people or catch criminals.
The price of freedom is that some criminals will run free, get used to it. It's what all of America was built on for fuck's sake. It saddens me that there's people who can't accept this fact.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
It isn't illegal in Finland, *unauthorized* use of unsecured WiFi connections is currently. The lawmakers are trying to clear the situation, as the user can't know whether he has a permission or not to use the open connection. The current law defaults to no permission, the new should default to open -> permission.
U+F8FF
Yep. Just put the legal liability for any illegal activity done over the WiFi to the owner of the Internet gateway address unless they can tell you who did it and we'll be all set.
Well, that's pretty much it goes nowadays in most Western countries at least. Both the US and UK have had lawsuits to establish that just having an open WiFi access point is no defence in CP downloads, for example.
U+F8FF
Germany's internet laws suck, alas. :(
Why are the Scandinavian countries generally so awesome with new media and civil rights? Sweden has Wikileaks and (had) the Pirate Bay, Iceland has the IMMI thing planned, now Finland allows open wi-fi...
Well since open wifi is just a public-like place where obviously people will do illegal things since they can't always be monitored, lets move to banning open, public spaces. We've all seen how things like drug deals are done there. Along with things like drinking in public, illegal panhandlers, illegally sleeping on public benches, illegally urinating in public, vandalism, dogs being illegally let off leash ignoring leash laws. By gosh, these open public anythings are just breeding grounds of illegal activity.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
It takes no time.
'Locks keep honest people honest' - not an issue for me.
Week locks attract me like a moth to flame.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Did you miss the part where he was paying in Euros, i.e., likely not in the United States? Normally I hate it when people point this out, but dude...
And also, another pet peeve of mine is when people say "America." I bet any of those South American countries ruled by pseudoelected presidents would beg to differ about that whole freedom thing.
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Given the large amount of bandwidth available to share in Finland, this sounds like an unlimited data plan for cell phones with wifi capability. Sounds like a smart way to go. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
This seems strange to me. I've been to Helsinki a few months ago, and free hotspots were all over the place. It was faster to open the laptop, connect to a random hotspot and check google maps than it was to find a dead-tree map and read that. It seems hard to believe that all those hotspots, some of which looked pretty official (inside stations and such) were illegal.
Hilarious! Somebody mod parent up, I'm out of mod points.
Actually since Conan is "between jobs" maybe we could make him King instead?
Why does the kernel go through stable and then unstable forks? Can't it always be a stable build, like with Windows?
The people of Finland may not care all that much about what all America was built on. Fuck's sake or otherwise.
You need not be sad though, It's not that they won't accept it. It's just not really relevant to Finnish law.
Sure, they WANT to keep people from sharing, but in fact, they offer 110Mb for 45 euro/month. As long as they get paid on time they have no legitimate room to complain. Any claim that sharing drives up utilization just means they were deliberately making an unsustainable offer and counting on customers paying for more than they could actually use (a somewhat scamish practice).. Of course, here in the U.S. (the third world of telecommunications), we WISH we could get 110Mb.
As for using IP addresses for evidence, that never has and never will be legitimate in the first place. I guess police will just have to start actually doing legwork again. If it's something that an average person actually believes to be a crime, they could probably get a lot of cooperation from the owners of the unsecured wi-fi. If it's not something most people believe should be a crime, then the police shouldn't really be bothering with it in the first place (nor should it actually be a law in a democracy). If the police are so bad that the general public won't help them, they've already screwed up too badly to be trusted anyway.
A state where laws forbid things for no reason but to make law enforcement easier is a police state.