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Universities, large corporations, and other building owners frequently disallow "pirate" WiFi and a there are very popular and expensive network security produc

Universities, large corporations, and other building owners frequently disallow "pirate" WiFi and a there are very popular and expensive network security products built for identifying and triangulating pirate WiFi hotspots. It is the right of universities and employers to disallow WiFi hotspots as a condition of being on the property. Why shouldn't this apply to hotels?

dctoedt 12y ago
> It is the right of universities and employers to disallow WiFi hotspots as a condition of being on the property. Citation, please? This is an area of the law with which I'm not too familiar. I do recall from dim memory that private-property rights aren't without limits. For example: + The (U.S.) National Labor Relations Act puts limits on an employer's right to prohibit employee collective action on the employer's property; + Similarly, various civil-rights acts prohibit the owner of a business from refusing service to people on impermissible discriminatory grounds (race, national origin, etc.); + [ADDED:] Anti-trust law places limits on a business owner's ability to say, for example, I'll sell you my patented photocopier only if you agree to buy all your unpatented paper from me as well. [EDITED:] I'm not saying the first two laws apply in this case. I am suggesting that anti-trust law, and perhaps federal communications law, might analogously limit the ability of the owner of a business to require guests, as a condition of admission, to forego their lawful access to the public spectrum. That practice seems roughly analogous to the conference company saying, "you can attend our conference, but only if you travel to the conference center in one of the expensive private limousines that we've arranged for, instead of in a cab."
- skinnybatch 12y ago
  Or, you can travel in our limousines, which will drop you at the front door, or instead, you may arrange for a cab, which may only drop you off at a designated cab dropping location, conveniently 3.2 miles away from our front door down at the bottom of the hill. Are we going to treat WiFi according to airspace protocol? Can a company or operation claim ownership to a quasi-physically-contained airspace? Perhaps invoke claims of trespassing by other non-approved, non-financially viable, sources? If you're living/working/visiting under my roof, then my rules, my WiFI.
  - jedunnigan 12y ago
    Refer to jacquesm's post [0]: >Because (1) a jammer is an unlicensed transmitter and (2) jammers do not just jam with discretion they jam for as far as they reach and it is impossible to operate a jammer in such a way that you cover all the territory without extending beyond it in some places. Jammers can interfere with people's ability to contact emergency services. Obviously in the case of WiFi this is not an immediate concern because 911 is currently reached through a different wavelength, but WiFi is integrating into infrastructure (WoT, etc...) such that jammers can be a real cause for concern (especially if they are operated by poorly trained people). >If you're living/working/visiting under my roof, then my rules, my WiFI. What about the scenario where you have an ISP that offers city-wide WiFi to its subscribers. A Marriott is within the bounds of this area, they block access to a service I pay for and they have approval to provide me with. Who is in the wrong? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8407399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8407399
  - dctoedt 12y ago
    > Can a company or operation claim ownership to a quasi-physically-contained airspace? Perhaps invoke claims of trespassing by other non-approved, non-financially viable, sources? If you're living/working/visiting under my roof, then my rules, my WiFI. That's one way to look at it. But it doesn't square with an important fact, namely that under U.S. law, you don't own the RF spectrum, even though RF waves happen to exist "on" "your" property. Keep in mind that in a civil society, property ownership and the autonomy that goes with it are largely social constructs that can and are limited by the rest of us. Marriott might imagine that it "owns" a conference facility and can do what it wants with it. Certainly for most purposes that's a reasonable approximation of the truth. But: Marriott gets to exclude, say, Alice from walking into the conference facility, not by virtue of some natural right, but solely because the rest of us have tacitly agreed that our police and, ultimately, our armed forces will back Marriott up if it chooses to do so. (That is, of course, unless Marriott happen to have access to a militia or other armed force; @Rayiner has written about related topics in other threads here.) And whether Marriott likes it or not, the rest of us, via our duly-elected or -appointed representatives, have decreed: 1. that the public airwaves are no one's private property; and 2. that in certain circumstances, "tying" arrangements, in which a seller requires a purchaser to buy an unwanted product or service B as a condition of being able to buy wanted product or service A, are unlawful --- that is to say, the seller's autonomy in respect of its goods and services only goes so far. [1] It's therefore not an incoherent argument that Marriott may not require Alice, while in the conference facility, to use only Marriott's expensive WiFi network, as opposed to using, say, the phone in her pocket as a WiFi hotspot of her own. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce).
driverdan 12y ago
Disallowing is much different than actively jamming.
Karunamon 12y ago
If I understand correctly, there's a difference between saying "If you run a hotspot here, we will find it and eject you for violating our terms" and "If you run a hotspot here, we will interfere with its operation" The first one is perfectly okay, your private property, your rules, the second is in violation of the law.
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  I believe the magic words are: This device complies with part 15 of FCC Rules. 1) This device may not cause harmful interference. 2) This device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Sounds like the transmitter would be in violation of part 1, then. And I guarantee it's got a sticker along those lines somewhere on it. My understanding of #2 in rule is that it's meant to protect against incidental interference causing complaints to the FCC. If the ham operator across the street makes your TV/dental fillings act weird, you can't ask the government to go shut him down. In any case, it also probably depends on the precise legal definition of "interference", "must accept", and so on.
jacquesm 12y ago
Because (1) a jammer is an unlicensed transmitter and (2) jammers do not just jam with discretion they jam for as far as they reach and it is impossible to operate a jammer in such a way that you cover all the territory without extending beyond it in some places.
- wglb 12y ago
  All wifi devices are unlicensed transmitters.
anigbrowl 12y ago
I was doing some research work in a downtown building that was next to a hotel a couple of years ago (not a Marriott) and I couldn't use my laptop next to the window because the hotel wifi seemed to swamp everything else. This wasn't such a big inconvenience and at the time I assumed the wifi of the place I was in was just not that great to start with, but with hindsight it might well have been a case of unlawful interference.
nanidin 12y ago
At my university, it was against the rules to plug WiFi routers or AP's into the university's network. The reason for that was that it's a huge security risk to allow anyone to run an AP on the network - if it's not configured correctly, it could allow unauthorized, open access to the network to malicious third parties.
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  It's reasonable for the university to regulate what you can do on _their_ network.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  You say it's a security risk "if your AP isn't configured correctly." It would be much more accurate to say "if the university network isn't configured correctly." If you expose unrestricted access to sensitive stuff to everyone on the dorm ethernet, sinister wifi hackers on the sidewalk outside is the least of your worries. Your university IT was trying to cover their incompetence with random authoritarianism.
  - superuser2 12y ago
    University networks generally implement 802.1x, WPA2/EAP, MAC registration, and similar authentication schemes so that every device is tied to an authorized user and malicious activity can be traced to a real person. When a network device is attached that doesn't pass this authentication requirement onto its users (i.e. by NATing, or offering a public or common-key WiFi network) the university loses its ability to see who is doing what, and to deny access to people it doesn't want on its network. IT departments don't like that. The security risk is not so much that you can now route certain internal IPs, but that IT has no way of determining who you are, or even your real MAC address, if it has questions about or objections to your traffic (whether Hopefully no one is placing sensitive services on the same network as dorm rooms with no security, but being on the LAN is often used as a front line. For one thing, sitting on the right part of the campus network gets you access to most scientific journals based on IP whitelisting. The University is contractually not allowed to provide this access to people who aren't students/faculty/staff, so it has to control who can come from those IPs. We operate separate SSIDs for guests that route to the internet through IPs not in the whitelist. We also have certain intranet-only services like Facilities work orders, printing, etc. that could be on the public internet, but don't need to be, so better to those aging, likely vulnerable applications behind a layer than not.
halfcat 12y ago
>It is the right of universities and employers to disallow WiFi hotspots as a condition of being on the property. You may be confusing a wifi hotspot with a wifi router. It's certainly reasonable for the owners of a physical network to disallow users to plug in their own wifi routers, especially because it can cause problems, even potentially taking down the entire network with loops and rogue DHCP servers. There are ways the owner can prevent those problems, but it comes at higher cost of equipment I don't see why a hotspot would be any different than a mobile phone. Some places tell you to turn them off, because it interrupts the movie, and they may ask you to leave if you don't. But they don't jam phones and provide high cost alternatives.
- DanBC 12y ago
  US universities ban wireless access points from dorms. They want to know who is using the network and wireless access points remove some of that control.
  - rahimnathwani 12y ago
    Yes but that's about controlling access to their own network. They don't ban you from operating a wifi hotspot using a 3G-connected device like a mifi or a phone with tethering.
  - zardeh 12y ago
    Furthermore, at scale, interference sucks.
cnst 12y ago
Doesn't really have to be expensive; OpenBSD's hostapd can do this easily; take a look at `deauth` and `hopping` keywords at http://mdoc.su/o/hostapd.conf.5 http://mdoc.su/o/hostapd.conf.5. Likewise, it's probably trivial to ignore these deauth packets if you're running your own boxes (although it'll probably be more problematic if you wanted tablet / phone access, too).

dctoedt 12y ago

> It is the right of universities and employers to disallow WiFi hotspots as a condition of being on the property. Citation, please? This is an area of the law with which I'm not too familiar. I do recall from dim memory that private-property rights aren't without limits. For example: + The (U.S.) National Labor Relations Act puts limits on an employer's right to prohibit employee collective action on the employer's property; + Similarly, various civil-rights acts prohibit the owner of a business from refusing service to people on impermissible discriminatory grounds (race, national origin, etc.); + [ADDED:] Anti-trust law places limits on a business owner's ability to say, for example, I'll sell you my patented photocopier only if you agree to buy all your unpatented paper from me as well. [EDITED:] I'm not saying the first two laws apply in this case. I am suggesting that anti-trust law, and perhaps federal communications law, might analogously limit the ability of the owner of a business to require guests, as a condition of admission, to forego their lawful access to the public spectrum. That practice seems roughly analogous to the conference company saying, "you can attend our conference, but only if you travel to the conference center in one of the expensive private limousines that we've arranged for, instead of in a cab."

skinnybatch 12y ago
Or, you can travel in our limousines, which will drop you at the front door, or instead, you may arrange for a cab, which may only drop you off at a designated cab dropping location, conveniently 3.2 miles away from our front door down at the bottom of the hill. Are we going to treat WiFi according to airspace protocol? Can a company or operation claim ownership to a quasi-physically-contained airspace? Perhaps invoke claims of trespassing by other non-approved, non-financially viable, sources? If you're living/working/visiting under my roof, then my rules, my WiFI.
- jedunnigan 12y ago
  Refer to jacquesm's post [0]: >Because (1) a jammer is an unlicensed transmitter and (2) jammers do not just jam with discretion they jam for as far as they reach and it is impossible to operate a jammer in such a way that you cover all the territory without extending beyond it in some places. Jammers can interfere with people's ability to contact emergency services. Obviously in the case of WiFi this is not an immediate concern because 911 is currently reached through a different wavelength, but WiFi is integrating into infrastructure (WoT, etc...) such that jammers can be a real cause for concern (especially if they are operated by poorly trained people). >If you're living/working/visiting under my roof, then my rules, my WiFI. What about the scenario where you have an ISP that offers city-wide WiFi to its subscribers. A Marriott is within the bounds of this area, they block access to a service I pay for and they have approval to provide me with. Who is in the wrong? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8407399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8407399
- dctoedt 12y ago
  > Can a company or operation claim ownership to a quasi-physically-contained airspace? Perhaps invoke claims of trespassing by other non-approved, non-financially viable, sources? If you're living/working/visiting under my roof, then my rules, my WiFI. That's one way to look at it. But it doesn't square with an important fact, namely that under U.S. law, you don't own the RF spectrum, even though RF waves happen to exist "on" "your" property. Keep in mind that in a civil society, property ownership and the autonomy that goes with it are largely social constructs that can and are limited by the rest of us. Marriott might imagine that it "owns" a conference facility and can do what it wants with it. Certainly for most purposes that's a reasonable approximation of the truth. But: Marriott gets to exclude, say, Alice from walking into the conference facility, not by virtue of some natural right, but solely because the rest of us have tacitly agreed that our police and, ultimately, our armed forces will back Marriott up if it chooses to do so. (That is, of course, unless Marriott happen to have access to a militia or other armed force; @Rayiner has written about related topics in other threads here.) And whether Marriott likes it or not, the rest of us, via our duly-elected or -appointed representatives, have decreed: 1. that the public airwaves are no one's private property; and 2. that in certain circumstances, "tying" arrangements, in which a seller requires a purchaser to buy an unwanted product or service B as a condition of being able to buy wanted product or service A, are unlawful --- that is to say, the seller's autonomy in respect of its goods and services only goes so far. [1] It's therefore not an incoherent argument that Marriott may not require Alice, while in the conference facility, to use only Marriott's expensive WiFi network, as opposed to using, say, the phone in her pocket as a WiFi hotspot of her own. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce).

driverdan 12y ago

Disallowing is much different than actively jamming.

Karunamon 12y ago

If I understand correctly, there's a difference between saying "If you run a hotspot here, we will find it and eject you for violating our terms" and "If you run a hotspot here, we will interfere with its operation" The first one is perfectly okay, your private property, your rules, the second is in violation of the law.

bunderbunder 12y ago
I believe the magic words are: This device complies with part 15 of FCC Rules. 1) This device may not cause harmful interference. 2) This device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Sounds like the transmitter would be in violation of part 1, then. And I guarantee it's got a sticker along those lines somewhere on it. My understanding of #2 in rule is that it's meant to protect against incidental interference causing complaints to the FCC. If the ham operator across the street makes your TV/dental fillings act weird, you can't ask the government to go shut him down. In any case, it also probably depends on the precise legal definition of "interference", "must accept", and so on.

jacquesm 12y ago

Because (1) a jammer is an unlicensed transmitter and (2) jammers do not just jam with discretion they jam for as far as they reach and it is impossible to operate a jammer in such a way that you cover all the territory without extending beyond it in some places.

wglb 12y ago
All wifi devices are unlicensed transmitters.

anigbrowl 12y ago

I was doing some research work in a downtown building that was next to a hotel a couple of years ago (not a Marriott) and I couldn't use my laptop next to the window because the hotel wifi seemed to swamp everything else. This wasn't such a big inconvenience and at the time I assumed the wifi of the place I was in was just not that great to start with, but with hindsight it might well have been a case of unlawful interference.

nanidin 12y ago

At my university, it was against the rules to plug WiFi routers or AP's into the university's network. The reason for that was that it's a huge security risk to allow anyone to run an AP on the network - if it's not configured correctly, it could allow unauthorized, open access to the network to malicious third parties.

rahimnathwani 12y ago
It's reasonable for the university to regulate what you can do on _their_ network.
PhasmaFelis 12y ago
You say it's a security risk "if your AP isn't configured correctly." It would be much more accurate to say "if the university network isn't configured correctly." If you expose unrestricted access to sensitive stuff to everyone on the dorm ethernet, sinister wifi hackers on the sidewalk outside is the least of your worries. Your university IT was trying to cover their incompetence with random authoritarianism.
- superuser2 12y ago
  University networks generally implement 802.1x, WPA2/EAP, MAC registration, and similar authentication schemes so that every device is tied to an authorized user and malicious activity can be traced to a real person. When a network device is attached that doesn't pass this authentication requirement onto its users (i.e. by NATing, or offering a public or common-key WiFi network) the university loses its ability to see who is doing what, and to deny access to people it doesn't want on its network. IT departments don't like that. The security risk is not so much that you can now route certain internal IPs, but that IT has no way of determining who you are, or even your real MAC address, if it has questions about or objections to your traffic (whether Hopefully no one is placing sensitive services on the same network as dorm rooms with no security, but being on the LAN is often used as a front line. For one thing, sitting on the right part of the campus network gets you access to most scientific journals based on IP whitelisting. The University is contractually not allowed to provide this access to people who aren't students/faculty/staff, so it has to control who can come from those IPs. We operate separate SSIDs for guests that route to the internet through IPs not in the whitelist. We also have certain intranet-only services like Facilities work orders, printing, etc. that could be on the public internet, but don't need to be, so better to those aging, likely vulnerable applications behind a layer than not.

halfcat 12y ago

>It is the right of universities and employers to disallow WiFi hotspots as a condition of being on the property. You may be confusing a wifi hotspot with a wifi router. It's certainly reasonable for the owners of a physical network to disallow users to plug in their own wifi routers, especially because it can cause problems, even potentially taking down the entire network with loops and rogue DHCP servers. There are ways the owner can prevent those problems, but it comes at higher cost of equipment I don't see why a hotspot would be any different than a mobile phone. Some places tell you to turn them off, because it interrupts the movie, and they may ask you to leave if you don't. But they don't jam phones and provide high cost alternatives.

DanBC 12y ago
US universities ban wireless access points from dorms. They want to know who is using the network and wireless access points remove some of that control.
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  Yes but that's about controlling access to their own network. They don't ban you from operating a wifi hotspot using a 3G-connected device like a mifi or a phone with tethering.
- zardeh 12y ago
  Furthermore, at scale, interference sucks.

cnst 12y ago

Doesn't really have to be expensive; OpenBSD's hostapd can do this easily; take a look at `deauth` and `hopping` keywords at http://mdoc.su/o/hostapd.conf.5 http://mdoc.su/o/hostapd.conf.5. Likewise, it's probably trivial to ignore these deauth packets if you're running your own boxes (although it'll probably be more problematic if you wanted tablet / phone access, too).