Free Wi-Fi: the Movement To Give Away Your Internet For the Good of Humanity

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Free Wi-Fi: the Movement To Give Away Your Internet For the Good of Humanity

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 30, 2013 @07:41AM from the leeching-is-bad-form dept.

pigrabbitbear writes "We are strangely territorial when it comes to our wireless networks. The idea of someone siphoning off our precious bandwidth without paying for it is, for most people, completely unacceptable. But the Open Wireless Movement wants to change all that. 'We are trying to create a movement where people are willing to share their network for the common good,' says Adi Kamdar, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 'It's a neighborly thing to do.' That's right, upstanding citizen of the Internet, you can be a good neighbor just by opening your wireless network to strangers — or so the line goes. The ultimate vision is one of neighborhoods completely void of passwords, where any passerby can quickly jump on your network and use Google Maps to find directions or check their email or do whatever they want to do (or, whatever you decide they can do)."

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Bad idea. by Anonymous Coward · 2013-01-30 07:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

Someone finds and an open WiFi, DL's some CP, you get the blame. One of the many reasons they can have my Cat 5e when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
1. Re:Bad idea. by Sigma+7 · 2013-01-30 07:53 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Easy to fix. If you want to access someone's WiFi, you log into the proxy server on that network.
  This token may be sent via email, SMS, or determined from the comptuer's MAC address. From there, the WiFi host is protected, but they can still track down the person trying to view the Little Lacy Surprise Pageant.
2. Re:Bad idea. by Synerg1y · 2013-01-30 08:24 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  They'd make open wifi networks illegal for those very reasons with the way things are going now.
3. Re:Bad idea. by dbet · 2013-01-30 08:29 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  If that's the case, why isn't every Starbucks shut down for facilitating CP downloads? I think it's a fear that's blown far out of proportion. The most likely negative of sharing wifi is the person maxing out your bandwidth with Netflix downloads.
4. Re:Bad idea. by Obfuscant · 2013-01-30 08:35 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Easy to fix. If you want to access someone's WiFi, you log into the proxy server on that network.
  What is the practical difference between "closed wifi" and "open wifi with a mandatory log-in"? In both cases you must obtain a credential (and thus implied permission) to use the network. You've just moved the access limit from the radio to the wire side.
  In general, though, the reason this movement will fail is the same reason why people want it to work. Selfishness. The same person that says "I would like to have wifi without paying for it when I am somewhere not home" has already said "I don't want to pay for my own 3g/data plan so I can have network access when I am not home". That same attitude would result in "why should I pay for network at home if I can get it free from my neighbor".
  In the final result, everyone who wants free wifi wherever they go will be the ones who are least likely to provide free wifi to others, and that means the entire system is a self-fulfilling failure.
  If you notice, most of the free wifi you find is not from altruistic people, it is from businesses that want to lure you into their establishment so you'll be likely to buy things from them. Profit motive. The altruist who opens his home network to free wifi for others has no profit motive, and while it is wonderful he exists, there is no incentive other than personal pleasure for him to do it. He can't depend on it being repaid, and he can't depend on it not being abused.
5. Re:Bad idea. by rarumberger · 2013-01-30 08:52 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Maybe so. Let's imagine a scenario:
  
  Cops determine that someone has been downloading CP, and trace it back to your house. They launch an immediate investigation, with you as the obvious prime suspect. They're aware that they can't prosecute on IP alone, so they do their diligence, and after searching your seized devices, they exonerate you. Publicly, even.
  
  You still lose your family and your job, and your life is basically over, because your name once appeared in a report investigating kiddy pr0n. You will be personally threatened, maybe even assaulted, by vigilantes who want to "protect" their children from "monsters" like you. There is literally no amount of public exoneration that will make the average Joe believe you're not a pervert.
  
  Me? I'd rather just keep my wireless secure.
6. Re:Bad idea. by Penguinisto · 2013-01-30 09:25 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That's easy, and all in how the media reports it on the local evening news:
  1) "Child porn was downloaded repeatedly at a local Starbucks" - Translation? Viewer thinks that some pervert went to a Starbucks and downloaded CP, thus Starbucks is not to blame.
  2) "Child porn was downloaded repeatedly at the home of a local resident" - Translation? Viewer thinks that *you*, the homeowner, are the pervert. Enough said, no?
  
  --
  Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
7. Re:Bad idea. by PraiseBob · 2013-01-30 09:28 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  there is no incentive other than personal pleasure for him to do it
  
  Personal pleasure can also encompass the joys of harvesting passwords, accounts, personal information & private pictures...
8. Re:Bad idea. by DarwinSurvivor · 2013-01-30 09:32 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You do know that the ISP's keep logs of WHEN that IP was assigned to which house right? All the MPAA/RIAA/whoever has to do is ask who had the IP at a given time.
9. Re:Bad idea. by QRDeNameland · 2013-01-30 12:34 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  In general, though, the reason this movement will fail is the same reason why people want it to work. Selfishness. The same person that says "I would like to have wifi without paying for it when I am somewhere not home" has already said "I don't want to pay for my own 3g/data plan so I can have network access when I am not home". That same attitude would result in "why should I pay for network at home if I can get it free from my neighbor".
  I can't speak for others, but I'd consider providing free access to my wifi under 3 conditions:
  1) There is a brain-dead simple way to ensure that my internal network is secure from anyone using it as an open access point,
  2) a similarly brain-dead way to limit how much can be downloaded per open access client, and
  3) legal assurance that I was in no way liable for anything downloaded from my open access point.
  While the Open Wireless Movement (OWS - is that a conicidence?) could probably easily provide the first two, the third is a matter of legislation and thus is the real sticking point. I imagine there are many others like me that don't recoil at the very idea of someone "freeloading" and would be happy to provide a service to the community, but if I'm going to face any chance of liability for doing so, or if it's just a matter of being a PITA to set up, then it's not happening. If it were easy AND there were no potential legal consequences, I think you'd be surprised how many folks would *not* be that selfish.
  
  --
  Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Open network? by Dins · 2013-01-30 07:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sure, I'd be more than happy to open my wifi network...if it meant I wasn't going to be liable for what a guest does on it....
1. Re:Open network? by Defenestrar · 2013-01-30 08:02 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  You aren't liable and you'll probably get a successful good free lawyer (well free to you) if anyone gives you grief.
  Worried about your door kicked in? I'd say it's your civic duty - and if my reasons aren't good enough for you, maybe you'd consider the optional counter-suits like winning the lottery
2. Re:Open network? by SuricouRaven · 2013-01-30 08:04 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You've really got two problems to deal with. The civil liability, and the criminal prosecutions. The first gets you in trouble for all the copyright infringement, the latter the downloading of child porn. That's a particular concern, because the usual social approach to child porn is 'Hang the perverted monster.' Even if you can prove beyond all doubt that it was someone else, a hard thing to do, you'll still find that your name is dirt, no company will hire even an accused pedophile, and your neighbours start smashing your windows in an effort to make you leave.
3. Re:Open network? by Chris+Mattern · 2013-01-30 08:27 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Frankly, I don't give a damn if no one's been *successfully* prosecuted. Getting involved in a court case--even successfully--is a nightmare timesink, and I won't risk it.
  
  What usually happens is the police bust down your door, confiscate all your computers and you maybe get them back 18 months later after spending a small fortune on legal fees.
  Exactly. When you can tell me that won't happen, I might consider it.
4. Re:Open network? by mea2214 · 2013-01-30 08:48 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I've been running an open wifi for over a year with no problems so far. I have a dual ethernet linux box running iptables with a set of white listed ports allowed through. My wifi routers are mere access points all switched on a single subnet to the linux firewall. Over time I looked at generated traffic and opened up ports various devices use for legitimate services like 993, 587, 443 etc. I block all UDP ports except 123, 4500 and 500. Some services, like iCloud, like to abuse the network using UDP. streams. That along with all unauthorized port traffic gets dropped (using -j DROP) into the bit bucket -- the device deserves no response from the firewall. Bittorrent simply doesn't work in this environment out of the box (although I acknowledge it's possible a determined someone could rig something to make it work but people who know how to do that are rare and it's probably not worth their time because I'll probably eventually catch them). I also detect bad SSL sessions by monitoring the first pushed byte sent over whatever TCP ports I leave open. Tcpdump runs constantly and I have some perl scripts to analyze the traffic and create reports of usage. This allows me to see if some new legitimate service needs a port open or if devices are trying to abuse the network which gets them banned by perl script. Skype doesn't work either and I have found it to be a particularly obnoxious service making it look like Bittorrent. Anyone pounding on Skype to get it to work gets banned by IP address. And all port 80 goes through a Squid proxy. Granted a determined user could get around my bans for awhile but for the most part I have found the real obnoxious actors are bad services like Skype and iCloud. And for the most part people use port 80 for web and 443 for encrypted stuff.
  
  So far things have worked out and I get around 250 unique visitors per month. The vast majority of users just get on, do some stuff like check mail or train schedules and get off. I have been doing this more or less as a "science project" to see how these modern devices communicate. Plus the neighbors get Internet access. I have found the bandwidth used per month is rather trivial. I just recently got a tablet with just wifi and so far have had no problems with anything not working through my iptables with white listed ports.
Legal obligations? by danomac · 2013-01-30 07:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

Until the laws are changed to annul my responsibility for freeloaders on my wifi, I won't have it open. I'm not about to take any legal risk.
While I like the idea, it's not practical to me.
1. Re:Legal obligations? by Defenestrar · 2013-01-30 08:04 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The laws are already on your side: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/open-wifi-and-copyright-liability-setting-record
  As the courts have already demonstrated: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/judge-copyright-troll-cant-bully-internet-subscriber-bogus-legal-theory
Pay for trunk lines by JeffSh · 2013-01-30 07:45 · Score: 4, Interesting

I am not necessarily going to hate on this, but doesn't the idea kind of undermine the subscriber model of service delivery? One reason we can achieve the individual speeds we do is because of over subscription of available bandwidth, it's not as though each residential customer is actually buying the bandwidth they receive, and so that is how the provider pays for infrastructure to provide the global access they do. Isn't the eventual endgame scenario of this to be in effect undermining itself?
The only way it would not be is if:
1. per subscriber rates were to increase
2. some open source movement to supply trunk lines between point of presences... not sure how that will work out..
Two issues... by slasher999 · 2013-01-30 07:47 · Score: 5, Interesting

Fair usage based on your agreement with your provider likely prohibits this meaning you would be in breach of contract and subject to cancellation, at least here in the US, and rightfully so in my opinion. Secondly, sounds like something the child porn perverts would love to see happen to assist them in evading detection while they prey on our children. Sorry, I won't be participating in this. Ever.
but my LAN security! by MyDixieWrecked · 2013-01-30 07:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

If I decided to do this, I would need to operate my LAN like every node was bare on the internet. I've got fileservers with guest access (for, you know... houseguests), web services, my invoicing system, and a whole slew of other personal services. The thought of open wifi on the LAN kinda scares me from a security perspective.
Given that the majority of people out there aren't security conscious, there are all kinds of implications for keeping default router settings/passwords.
When I was staying in the Oakwoods in Burbank, CA for work (long-term housing, like... for months), I could see every machine on the LAN and all of the windows machines had read-only filesharing on, so I was able to loot up on all kinds of raunchy porn that people downloaded from limewire. One guy even had a bunch of tax documents in a shared folder. This included a PDF of the lease on his lexus, and some credit card statements. Another guy had 8GB of photos of his kids and family.
Shit can be dangerous out there if you're not careful.

--

...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
1. Re:but my LAN security! by inputdev · 2013-01-30 08:00 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Another guy had 8GB of photos of his kids and family.
  You don't sound like you were trying to be malicious, but didn't you consider not snooping on other peoples machines? I still like the idea of having unlocked doors and not needing security systems on houses, etc. I expect other people to have a moral compass and not walk in and go through my stuff. I get your point, but I wish you would elevate your mentality to where you aren't violating peoples privacy and feeling justified because they didn't actively prevent you from doing it.
Common Good by crakbone · 2013-01-30 07:49 · Score: 4, Funny

" the Movement To Give Away Your Internet For the Good of Humanity" For the Good of humanity? Have they been on the internet?
Did this already, was asked to stop. by NoahsMyBro · 2013-01-30 07:58 · Score: 5, Funny

Years ago I set up a free wi-fi network from my house, and called it something like 'Free WiFi'. A few weeks later a neighbor asked me to stop.
He regulated his kids' internet usage, and they had been using the free network to get online during those times when they were prohibited from doing so.
So I turned it off.
Re:Hypocrite by lister+king+of+smeg · 2013-01-30 08:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

Im giving them net access for free the telecoms are being paid for access to the net big deifference.

--
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
"Precious Bandwidth"? by Kurt+Granroth · 2013-01-30 08:00 · Score: 3, Informative

I'm not entirely certain why the article lists "siphoning precious bandwidth" as the reason most people would lock down their Wi-Fi. It seems highly unlikely that that would come into play at all, most of the time, much less be the main reason.
No, there are three reasons why I don't have an open AP:
1. Legal liability for a guest's action is spotty. Technically speaking, I know that I am not liable if a guest performs an illegal act using my AP. What's the likelihood that a police officer or prosecutor would give me the benefit of the doubt while investigating the crime, though? The most likely course of action is that I spend some time in jail or under arrest until my innocence is proven.
2. My ISP TOS expressly forbids sharing the service. As long as they aren't doing deep packet sniffing (and they might be), it's possible I could set up the open AP such that everything is NAT'ed through a known server. The risk of doing so is getting my service cut off, though.
3. Allowing a rogue agent in my network drastically reduces the security of the network. I could create a locked down subnetwork just for the open AP, but that would be a notable amount of work.
So I have risks that involve jail time; termination of service; and/or loss of my personal data. What are the rewards? I feel good about helping my fellow man?
Not worth it at all.
More challenging than most users are capable of by macemoneta · 2013-01-30 08:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

In order to do this without exposing your LAN to security issues, and not create liability issues because of the action of guests, it would require more setup than most end-users are capable of.
The WiFi interface would have to be kept separate (not bridged to the LAN), and the WiFi interface would have to be VPN'd to a (legally) safe termination. If companies want users to be able to use open WiFi, they need to step up to make this a default configuration on routers. Sure, those that use openwrt or dd-wrt can configure this, but there's a vanishingly small percentage of users with that skill set.

--
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Re:Hypocrite by MozeeToby · 2013-01-30 08:10 · Score: 5, Informative

QoS gives packets different priority based on the type of data and net neutrality allows for that. What net neutrality doesn't allow for is differing priority based on the server; specifically, it doesn't allow you to treat packets from your servers preferentially and it doesn't allow you to blackmail other service providers for faster speeds. As for providing a guest with a slower connection than yourself, that is no different than an ISP giving different bandwidth speeds depending on your service level and has nothing to do with QoS or net neutrality.
Re:Too bad it probably violates all current TOS by dpilot · 2013-01-30 08:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

Mod this up. Comcast is the same as ATT, in this respect.
I'm rather surprised that only one A.C. mentions TOS. I was about to, but I was scanning the comments looking to see if anyone else had. In all of the comments you're the only one. Most of the comments were concerned about the MafiAA, kiddie pr0n, and loss of bandwidth.
But TOS is a civil matter. Share your connection and they're entitled to cut you off.

--
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
DONT DO IT! I have personal experience with this by Anonymous Coward · 2013-01-30 08:33 · Score: 3, Informative

I was doing just this very thing for about 3 years. I even thought I was protecting myself somewhat because I put a splash page on the WiFi using nocatsplash with DD-WRT to display a page that says "Hey, I'm doing this to be nice. Don't do anything illegal, please." I thought at the worst I'd get a DMCA notice if someone downloaded a movie or something, but it was much worse.
The FBI and ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) knocked down my door, pointed guns at us, confiscated all of my computers, interrogated my fiance and I for a few hours, they told my fiance that I was a pedophile and it nearly cost us our relationship. Seriously - when the FBI tells your fiance that you're a pedophile, it's hard to convince her otherwise. Some jack ass had apparently downloaded child porn using eDonkey/eMule over my wifi network. The FBI ended up returning most of my computers, but not all of them (I probably could have got them back, but I would of had to go to court to do it, and the computers were only worth about a grand). It also took almost a year to get that far. They also eventually told my fiance that I wasn't a pedophile.
It was a rough fucking year.
Don't do it. Keep your wifi locked down with as much encryption as you can. It's not worth it while judges are issuing search warrants based upon nothing more than an IP address.
Better idea: standard open mesh wifi by CityZen · 2013-01-30 08:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

Rather than have all these individual routers competing for air space with each other, it would be even better if they cooperated with each other to route packets and let clients roam from one to another.
Just like we graduated from lots of individual BBS's to the Internet, we need to make similar progress at the "consumer" end.
The technology is already present; all that's needed is support.