Pirate Activist Shows Politicians What Digital Surveillance Looks Like

An anonymous reader writes How to make politicians really understand the dangers of mass digital surveillance and the importance of information security? Gustav Nipe, the 26-year old president of the Swedish Pirate Party's youth wing, tried to do it by setting up an open Wi-Fi network at the Society and Defence National Conference held in Sälen, Sweden, and collecting and analyzing the metadata of conference attendees who connected to it. Nipe set up an open wireless Internet access point named "Open Guest" and over 100 delegates used this particular unsecured Wi-Fi network to go online. The collected metadata showed that, among other sites, they visited those of daily Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, Swedish private ads website Blocket, eBay, and tourism sites. "This was during the day when I suppose they were being paid to be at the conference working," Nipe noted for The Local.

Comments

Views of the World

[Anonymous Coward]

Too many people think everyone sees the world as they do. This won't get the politicians to do anything about mass surveillance. What it'll do is push them more towards making hosting your own network illegal. Anything not coming from an approved ISP is untrusted and thus for the safety of all should be banned.

It gives more teeth to hotels and other companies that say they need to actively block and ban unknown networks.

Re:People forget about people.

[theshowmecanuck]

The rhetoric and crazy gets dialed up to 11 straight out of the gate.

Same reason I stay away from churches and religion in general. Each have their own agenda, whether the people who belong realize it or not.