6 ms·

Activist pulls off clever Wi-Fi honeypot to protest surveillance state

151 points by etiam 12y ago

godgod 12y ago
It'd be funny if one day someone would play a little game of "catch a fed" and make it the goal to catch all the digital communications of a federal agent then see how they like it. I doubt they'd be for the surveillance state if after visiting facebook suddenly realizing someone has access to information on their entire family.
excitom 12y ago
> Still, he concluded his statement to Swedish media by observing the “good news that through our reconnaissance we could not find any preparation for terrorist activities.” Well played, sir.
- psykovsky 12y ago
  Now we know their actions were justified!
shitlord 12y ago
It would be pretty funny if he had actually modified the web pages people view, especially considering the attendees. They would go to http://www.example.com/economy http://www.example.com/economy and see that everything is crashing, when in reality, everything is fine. It would send a stronger message, IMO. :)
- justatdotin 12y ago
  > in reality, everything is fine. what world do you live in?
  - lazzlazzlazz 12y ago
    This one? Earth? What about you?
    - sp332 12y ago
      On the planet I'm from, the economy is crap.
      - wyager 12y ago
        >On the planet I'm from, the economy is crap. By what metric? For some reason, it seems to be a pretty common media complaint that "the economy is bad", and people seem to take that at face value. In reality, by most metrics, the worldwide economy is doing pretty well, and the media is just manufacturing artificial problems per usual.
        vdaniuk 12y ago
        By the metric of more than 3 billion people living on less than $2.50 a day[0]. Artificial problem, right? [0]http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-sta...
        gambiting 12y ago
        But by that metric economy was NEVER doing well. Ever. So what is your suggestion, do we just keep saying that economy is bad until .....what exactly? How do you define "bad" or "good" economy? I would say that an economy where we have achieved the lowest poverty levels across the human race in the history is "pretty damn good". As for the starving children in Africa(or America,or anywhere else) - we will fix that too.
        collyw 12y ago
        Depends on how you define poverty. Living on a couple of dollars a day was probably quite good many years ago. So now we have millions living on $2.50. we are doing better, right? I personally want to see a far greater redistribution of the wealth. What the point in a county having economic growth if it only affects 1% who are already comfortably well off? As for staving children in Africa, what have you done to help exactly. You claim you are fixing it? How? Writing a mobile app?
simplicio 12y ago
Seems like kind of a weak attempt at a 'gotcha'. I don't think there's really any expectations that attendees at a conference are only doing work related things 100% of the time. The fact that politician X was reading the paper online while waiting for a talk to start is pretty weak tea. If anything, I think this sort of reinforces what a lot of people think about these sort of surveillance concerns. That their web-traffic isn't particularity interesting, so they don't really care if the gov't, or whomever, knows about it.
- belorn 12y ago
  I think a large portion of this was to make the people who make policy about surveillance also feel surveilled. Any one who was there will have to ask themselves about what places they visited, what emails they read, and if leaked, what impact that can have on them personally.
- ersii 12y ago
  So, this isn't any regular conference. This is a conference filled with mostly Swedish politicians, some in government/office and a lot of different Swedish agency officials. Then there's of course some foreign dignitaries, as well as press and a few select normal persons. It wasn't translated, but in the Swedish press release - they note that "Myndigheten för Samhällsskydd och beredskap", the Swedish equivalent of FEMA in the US - had at least one official agency staffer connecting to their agency e-mail server over this insecure/open network. That said, most conference attendees are at the conference in their official capacity, ie. at work.
  - hvidgaard 12y ago
    If that is a security risk, then they ought to make the mail unconnectable outside their own network and demand VPN usage. You cannot blame the person for a poor security setup within his organization.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  I think it's a good idea actually. Make politicians feel what it's like to be monitored, to have their privacy violated, that kinda stuff. Protests and objections in themselves probably won't sway politicians into opposing surveillance; being the subject of said surveillance probably would.

151 points by etiam 12y ago

It'd be funny if one day someone would play a little game of "catch a fed" and make it the goal to catch all the digital communications of a federal agent then see how they like it. I doubt they'd be for the surveillance state if after visiting facebook suddenly realizing someone has access to information on their entire family.

excitom 12y ago

> Still, he concluded his statement to Swedish media by observing the “good news that through our reconnaissance we could not find any preparation for terrorist activities.” Well played, sir.

psykovsky 12y ago
Now we know their actions were justified!

shitlord 12y ago

It would be pretty funny if he had actually modified the web pages people view, especially considering the attendees. They would go to http://www.example.com/economy http://www.example.com/economy and see that everything is crashing, when in reality, everything is fine. It would send a stronger message, IMO. :)

justatdotin 12y ago
> in reality, everything is fine. what world do you live in?
- lazzlazzlazz 12y ago
  This one? Earth? What about you?
  - sp332 12y ago
    On the planet I'm from, the economy is crap.
    - wyager 12y ago
      >On the planet I'm from, the economy is crap. By what metric? For some reason, it seems to be a pretty common media complaint that "the economy is bad", and people seem to take that at face value. In reality, by most metrics, the worldwide economy is doing pretty well, and the media is just manufacturing artificial problems per usual.
      - vdaniuk 12y ago
        By the metric of more than 3 billion people living on less than $2.50 a day[0]. Artificial problem, right? [0]http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-sta...
        gambiting 12y ago
        But by that metric economy was NEVER doing well. Ever. So what is your suggestion, do we just keep saying that economy is bad until .....what exactly? How do you define "bad" or "good" economy? I would say that an economy where we have achieved the lowest poverty levels across the human race in the history is "pretty damn good". As for the starving children in Africa(or America,or anywhere else) - we will fix that too.
        collyw 12y ago
        Depends on how you define poverty. Living on a couple of dollars a day was probably quite good many years ago. So now we have millions living on $2.50. we are doing better, right? I personally want to see a far greater redistribution of the wealth. What the point in a county having economic growth if it only affects 1% who are already comfortably well off? As for staving children in Africa, what have you done to help exactly. You claim you are fixing it? How? Writing a mobile app?

simplicio 12y ago

Seems like kind of a weak attempt at a 'gotcha'. I don't think there's really any expectations that attendees at a conference are only doing work related things 100% of the time. The fact that politician X was reading the paper online while waiting for a talk to start is pretty weak tea. If anything, I think this sort of reinforces what a lot of people think about these sort of surveillance concerns. That their web-traffic isn't particularity interesting, so they don't really care if the gov't, or whomever, knows about it.

belorn 12y ago
I think a large portion of this was to make the people who make policy about surveillance also feel surveilled. Any one who was there will have to ask themselves about what places they visited, what emails they read, and if leaked, what impact that can have on them personally.
ersii 12y ago
So, this isn't any regular conference. This is a conference filled with mostly Swedish politicians, some in government/office and a lot of different Swedish agency officials. Then there's of course some foreign dignitaries, as well as press and a few select normal persons. It wasn't translated, but in the Swedish press release - they note that "Myndigheten för Samhällsskydd och beredskap", the Swedish equivalent of FEMA in the US - had at least one official agency staffer connecting to their agency e-mail server over this insecure/open network. That said, most conference attendees are at the conference in their official capacity, ie. at work.
- hvidgaard 12y ago
  If that is a security risk, then they ought to make the mail unconnectable outside their own network and demand VPN usage. You cannot blame the person for a poor security setup within his organization.
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
I think it's a good idea actually. Make politicians feel what it's like to be monitored, to have their privacy violated, that kinda stuff. Protests and objections in themselves probably won't sway politicians into opposing surveillance; being the subject of said surveillance probably would.