Slashdot Mirror
'Wi-Fi Police' Stalk Olympic Games
schwit1 writes with news from London that Olympic venues are being patrolled by so-called "Wi-Fi police," who seek out and shut down unauthorized access points and hotspots. BT is the "official communications services provider" for the Games, so access points other than the ones they set up or approve have been disallowed. A picture tweeted from the Olympics shows a gentleman carrying a portable direction antenna that can localize sources of transmission and interference.
"One possible aim of shutting down such WiFi access points is to cut down on interference with essential wireless communications being used by those refereeing, reporting on and working at the sporting events. ... The news of the WiFi crackdown has angered many of those following the Games online, who were already upset at Olympic authorities' attempts to limit the use of social networking tools at the Games at certain times. The London Olympics had been billed as the first 'social media Games,' but organizers have been accused of bungling the effort to seamlessly integrate popular technologies like Twitter and Facebook into the event."
If I were in the area, I'd be tempted to set up a few of the old linksys routers that cut out now and then in strange places (just powered, not networked).
Make it a little more challenging for them to find the real "WiFi Offenders"
So the Olympic committee and BT can get together and prevent YOU from using the FREE portion of the spectrum that is allocated for public use, which is why everyone can use wifi routers in the first place? Nice. How can I do that? I have a price in mind for air.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It may be so, but I have serious doupt about the legallity of this action in light of RF frequency allocation and usage rules. If it is an open and unregulated band for wifi, BT has not right what so ever to ask someone to turn of an access point. If they claim the said access point causes interference on their equipement, which is unlikely for certified devices, they can fill a claim through the proper channels. I doupt running, chansing access points, is the proper channel.
I think it's even worse than religion. At least the goal of religious organization (ideally, without the greed and corruption) is about people as a group trying to find a spiritual part of themselves. We could argue whether such a part exists or not, but sports organizations really aren't about anything positive for the individual, only idolatry towards freaks of nature, those within the top 0.1% of humans with such levels of athletic ability made possible by genetics, and distracting people from doing things like work or caring about politics and their future or education or gaining skills or even taking a moment to be introspective.
More Twoson than Cupertino
US spectrum rules say that you can't interfere with transmissions (ie no signal jamming). They don't say anything implying that you are allowed to operate a device on someone else's private property. I doubt that rules anywhere else are much different from that. You wouldn't think it legal for a HAM operator to erect some giant antenna in the venue just because he has a license to use spectrum, would you?