Nebraska Sheriff Wardriving, Sending Letters About Unsecured Wi-Fi

An anonymous reader sends this quote from JournalStar.com: "The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office has seen an increase in scammers using unsecured Wi-Fi connections to steal identities and mask their crimes during the past six months, Sheriff Terry Wagner said. ... So deputies spent the past few weeks finding unsecure connections and sending 40 to 50 letters to let people know about the potential dangers of strangers accessing their network connections. 'You're just opening yourself up for a series of potential pitfalls,' Chief Deputy Jeff Bliemeister said. ... Bliemeister said only businesses like coffee shops that offer Internet connections to customers need unsecured Internet connections.

Comments

Law Enforcement at Work

[ackthpt]

Applause!

Much better than that goofball sheriff in Aridzona.

Re:Law Enforcement at Work

[mpoulton]

Applause!

Much better than that goofball sheriff in Aridzona.

Those of us in Maricopa County can worry about our sheriff; the rest of the country can worry about theirs. It's a local elected office. I do not understand the national media attention.

With that said, I do not support Arpaio or his policies and do not vote for him.

Re:Law Enforcement at Work

[IceNinjaNine]

Those of us in Maricopa County can worry about our sheriff; the rest of the country can worry about theirs. It's a local elected office. I do not understand the national media attention.

As a former Phoenix resident, I have to say maybe it's because of things like this and this?

Sorry, but once you step over the line and nobody else is reigning it in, it becomes a federal problem.

Re:Law Enforcement at Work

[Hatta]

Criminal behavior by public officials anywhere in the country affects everyone. The Feds need to make an example of Arpaio, lest his corrupting influence spread.

Re:Law Enforcement at Work

[pavon]

Those of us in Maricopa County can worry about our sheriff; the rest of the country can worry about theirs. It's a local elected office. I do not understand the national media attention.

American citizens don't deserve to loose the fundamental constitutionally guaranteed rights when they travel through another county. Nor do prisoners deserve to be loose their (more limited) rights because they are transferred into your county. It's essential that his abuses get national media attention, so the rest of us can know to stay out of Maricopa county until you guys (or the feds) finally get around to doing something about it.

Re:Law Enforcement at Work

[Dishevel]

To be fair though the administration started attacking him first.

Re:Law Enforcement at Work

[fm6]

Oh that's funny, It's OK for your local official to interfere with stuff that has nothing to do with his responsibilities or jurisdiction and that affect the whole country. But if the rest of us complain about it, we're the ones messing with a local official?

I love the way right-wingers make idiots of themselves, and then when people notice it, they complain about the "national media". Take some fucking responsibility, dude.

Re:Law Enforcement at Work

[hey!]

Those of us in Maricopa County can worry about our sheriff; the rest of the country can worry about theirs.

Not when he started to investigate Obama's birth certificate. Arpaio is the one trying to put the Maricopa sheriff's office on the national stage, and when he does that the people who elected him have to take the criticism that provokes.

Re:Law Enforcement at Work

[Anonymous Coward]

He said he would vote against telecom immunity but voted for it.
He said he would have the DoJ ease up on the prosecution of medical marijuana but they did the opposite.
He said he was going to institute a new era of transparency and rule of law but did neither.
He said he would shut Gtimo, and end torture camps around the world, he did the opposite.
He escalated foreign wars and most of them are actually secret, unofficial wars.
He claims the right to kill American citizen without due process; not even Bush made that claim.

The only one that is deluded is you.

Re:Law Enforcement at Work

[wolrahnaes]

On a world scale, yes, yes he is. The US view of "center" is just fucked off to the right by a lot.

Re:Law Enforcement at Work

[Dzimas]

Take a look at this chart of the political opinions expressed by world leaders: http://www.politicalcompass.org/images/internationalchart.png

Hugo Chavez is left wing. The Dali Lama is left wing. Romney and Obama? On the broad global stage, they're both sharply right wing. The fact that their campaigns have you believing they're worlds apart is simply not reflected in their actual policies and rhetoric.

How do they know exactlywhere to send the letters?

[ZorinLynx]

In a dense area you might pick up 15 different access points, 2-3 of them open. Unless they have sophisticated RF locating equipment the letters are just going to be out based on a best guess scenario.

The only place I can see this working is suburbs with wide spacing between homes, or rural areas.

Who says you can't?

[phorm]

I don't see anything in the article that said it was illegal to have open wifi, or that you couldn't.
It said that open wifi was being used for identity theft, and that notices of potential dangers (I'd imagine such as possible repercussions for the wifi owner if fraud is traced back to their internet connection) were sent out.

For a couple of older folks or just generally non-technical people who potentially just plugged in an unsecured D-link, not a terrible thing to be given information about, and somewhat pro-active of the Sheriff. It seems little different from the notices given to people who leave their cars unlocked in neighbourhoods experiencing an increase of car thefts...

Re:How do they know exactlywhere to send the lette

[JDG1980]

In a dense area...

We're talking about Nebraska here.

Re:unsecured wifi?

[PTBarnum]

I thought that using a PSK still allowed people to decrypt your packets, as long as they knew the PSK and were able to capture the beginning of your session. So while having a PSK is slightly better than not having one, it doesn't really guarantee a secure connection.

Does anyone make an easy-to-use 802.1x appliance for coffee shop type uses?

Kills plausible deniability

[DoofusOfDeath]

For someone up to no good, I'm not sure that securing WiFi is smart move.

If someone has an open wifi, and something illegal (copyrighted content, kiddie porn, etc.) is downloaded via his IP, the person has plausible deniability that he himself did the downloading.

If that persons has secured his WiFi with a password, then I would think he's more likely to get convicted.

Re:Utter Horse-shit!

[Jeng]

So the sheriff is trying to put a stop to cyber crimes and you oppose it because you like to leave an access point for neighbors?

Why not give the password to the neighbors you want to allow on your network?

Re:They've tried

[Hatta]

Fuck.

Re:Proactive Police Work Preventing Victimization

[WGFCrafty]

If you were to equate this article to trying to prevent rape, then the equivalent action by the police would be to tell women not to fall asleep naked spread-eagle in a dark alley.

Just stop.
Not only is it a shit analogy but you like a fucking idiot imply that women who get raped are asking for it by being sluts.

To some people, that's a "duh" thing, but to some less-street-smart people it's quite a notion. THAT's the premise here.

Again you imply it is a completely intuitive thing that "you see a bitch being slutty, she should expect that raping. I mean you'd be shocked, some people think they can act sexually and ACTUALLY EXPECT to NOT get raped."

Do you understand why what you said was actually ignorant trash? Grow up.