3 ms·

Australian police to patrol streets looking for unsecured wi-fi.

23 points by vaksel 17y ago

danw 17y ago
I like the assumption that wifi shouldn't be open. Why would you want to share your resources with friends and neighbours?
- Zak 17y ago
  I used to until they started using my network for bittorrent to the point that it consistently had poor performance. I'd set something up to throttle bandwidth and restrict certain protocols from unregistered MACs, but I'm not motivated to make that much of an effort to share my network.
  - LogicHoleFlaw 17y ago
    I leave my network open with a note to please not abuse it :) I haven't had any problems yet, but I do have QoS set up to preserve the traffic I care about. Honestly, it's rare that I've had guests log in to the network. Looking at the MAC analyses it seems that it's mostly sporadic visitors with laptops and so on. Which is exactly the sort of borrowing I encourage.
  - danw 17y ago
    This is where the FON wifi routers are designed to fit in, with a private AP for yourself and a throttled public AP. Shame the 'public' AP is only available to other FON users. It would only take a few hours to create this set up yourself I guess, but FON is ready after being plugged in.
  - froo 17y ago
    The thing about having an Open Wireless connection here in Australia is that we generally have caps on the amount of bandwidth our internet plans come with. Once you go over that cap, your connection becomes rate limited and it feels like you're back in the stoneage. So, even for that reason, sharing connections here in Aus is a bad idea because all you need is one bandwidth hog to screw up your internet. Blame Telstra :(
- poiuytrrew 17y ago
  Because they are spending millions of $ on internet spying systems and it's all pointless if the terrorists can control their kangaroos with laser beams from an open wifi. http://www.censordyne.com.au/ http://www.censordyne.com.au/
jacquesm 17y ago
They shouldn't drive in to my street then, there must be 50 open access points within 100 meters. But then again, I'm not in Australia. As a response to this if I were in Australia and I had my wi-fi locked down I'd open it up. Terrorists, downloaders and pederasts will do their thing regardless of unsecured wifi routers.
- arohner 17y ago
  > Terrorists, downloaders and pederasts... Pretty harsh to group all of those in the same group.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    I did that because of the usual reasons that are being trotted out whenever open wifi is discussed: - terrorists might use your open wifi to communicate with each other - downloaders are going to use your open wifi so you will get caught for their crime - pederasts will use your open wifi to download child pornography
    - poiuytrrew 17y ago
      This is a good reason to open it. With an open wifi there is no good case that it was you. With a secured wifi - you simply have to convince an 80year old judge and a jury of sheep shearers of the mechanisms of an attack on a WEP secured link.
biohacker42 17y ago
Australia may be an extreme case but there's plenty of this desire for tight control going around. From Iran to the US, to Holland, the UK, Germany, etc. The bottom line is, the cold war struggle between communism and capitalism is over and fascism won. Fascism briefly lost due to being on the losing side of WWII but in the long run it's clearly winning. Everybody look at Singapore that's where we're all going. This: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourse... is about us living in a combination of 1984 and a brave new world. We (except for Singapore) aren't quite there yet in terms of government control but that's where we're headed. And because it will never be as extreme or obvious as 1984, there's no need to go that far, nobody will be rioting to stop it. The only difference between Iran and Singapore is, Singapore's economy is strong and they don't bother with tight social restrictions.
jrockway 17y ago
In a world with Tor and cheap anonymizing proxies, the criminals are not using open wifi networks anymore.

23 points by vaksel 17y ago

danw 17y ago

I like the assumption that wifi shouldn't be open. Why would you want to share your resources with friends and neighbours?

Zak 17y ago
I used to until they started using my network for bittorrent to the point that it consistently had poor performance. I'd set something up to throttle bandwidth and restrict certain protocols from unregistered MACs, but I'm not motivated to make that much of an effort to share my network.
- LogicHoleFlaw 17y ago
  I leave my network open with a note to please not abuse it :) I haven't had any problems yet, but I do have QoS set up to preserve the traffic I care about. Honestly, it's rare that I've had guests log in to the network. Looking at the MAC analyses it seems that it's mostly sporadic visitors with laptops and so on. Which is exactly the sort of borrowing I encourage.
- danw 17y ago
  This is where the FON wifi routers are designed to fit in, with a private AP for yourself and a throttled public AP. Shame the 'public' AP is only available to other FON users. It would only take a few hours to create this set up yourself I guess, but FON is ready after being plugged in.
- froo 17y ago
  The thing about having an Open Wireless connection here in Australia is that we generally have caps on the amount of bandwidth our internet plans come with. Once you go over that cap, your connection becomes rate limited and it feels like you're back in the stoneage. So, even for that reason, sharing connections here in Aus is a bad idea because all you need is one bandwidth hog to screw up your internet. Blame Telstra :(
poiuytrrew 17y ago
Because they are spending millions of $ on internet spying systems and it's all pointless if the terrorists can control their kangaroos with laser beams from an open wifi. http://www.censordyne.com.au/ http://www.censordyne.com.au/

jacquesm 17y ago

They shouldn't drive in to my street then, there must be 50 open access points within 100 meters. But then again, I'm not in Australia. As a response to this if I were in Australia and I had my wi-fi locked down I'd open it up. Terrorists, downloaders and pederasts will do their thing regardless of unsecured wifi routers.

arohner 17y ago
> Terrorists, downloaders and pederasts... Pretty harsh to group all of those in the same group.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I did that because of the usual reasons that are being trotted out whenever open wifi is discussed: - terrorists might use your open wifi to communicate with each other - downloaders are going to use your open wifi so you will get caught for their crime - pederasts will use your open wifi to download child pornography
  - poiuytrrew 17y ago
    This is a good reason to open it. With an open wifi there is no good case that it was you. With a secured wifi - you simply have to convince an 80year old judge and a jury of sheep shearers of the mechanisms of an attack on a WEP secured link.

biohacker42 17y ago

Australia may be an extreme case but there's plenty of this desire for tight control going around. From Iran to the US, to Holland, the UK, Germany, etc. The bottom line is, the cold war struggle between communism and capitalism is over and fascism won. Fascism briefly lost due to being on the losing side of WWII but in the long run it's clearly winning. Everybody look at Singapore that's where we're all going. This: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourse... is about us living in a combination of 1984 and a brave new world. We (except for Singapore) aren't quite there yet in terms of government control but that's where we're headed. And because it will never be as extreme or obvious as 1984, there's no need to go that far, nobody will be rioting to stop it. The only difference between Iran and Singapore is, Singapore's economy is strong and they don't bother with tight social restrictions.

jrockway 17y ago

In a world with Tor and cheap anonymizing proxies, the criminals are not using open wifi networks anymore.