[OpenWireless Tech] A small question about tracking

Sun Nov 4 18:14:23 PST 2012

That might work for laptops, but that feels rather hard to implement on a smartphone. And it seems a bit far from the model of “open wireless.” Can’t we think of a solution that does not require the visitor to do anything special? A true “open wireless” should mean just that, click connect and be there.

From: Natanael [mailto:natanael.l at gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2012 6:09 PM
To: Christian Huitema
Cc: tech at srv1.openwireless.org
Subject: RE: [OpenWireless Tech] A small question about tracking

I did suggest a possible solution before - allow access to only one IP, specified vy the client. Maybe some kind of VPN detection too.

In other words, we ask the client to specify what VPN it will use and limits it to that one.

If he has none, we can provide tunneling to a 3rd party service that lets the user set up a VPN (listing paid ones along free low bandwidth ones and free-for-a-day VPN:s, etc). Then the connection resets and this time the user has a VPN to specify.

Den 5 nov 2012 03:02 skrev "Christian Huitema" <huitema at huitema.net>:

Germany definitely puts the onus on the router owner, and it is not hard to imagine other European countries following Germany’s example in the future. It is also not hard to imagine “the police”  conducting a smear campaign against open wireless with that argument. At a minimum, that’s a point that should be discussed in the FAQ.

I did actually study the scenario in details when I was in charge of Wi-Fi development for Microsoft Windows. We looked at the various objections to connection sharing, which we wanted to make easy. Most could be solved convincingly, security of the local provider network, bandwidth utilization, security of the visitor using the open access. But the accountability issue was really what prevented the vision of “free, open network.” The best we could do was “almost free,” i.e. requiring some kind of explicit registration.

The VPN is an interesting mitigation, as it shifts the burden away from the local provider. But how would we implement that exactly? With a filter on packet type? With a “white list” of accepted VPN provider addresses?

From: Natanael [mailto:natanael.l at gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2012 5:48 PM
To: Christian Huitema
Cc: tech at srv1.openwireless.org
Subject: Re: [OpenWireless Tech] A small question about tracking

This has been dealt with before.

Only very few countries put the responsibility on the router owner. And you can route everything through Tor anyway. We might also let router owners require VPN:s.

Den 5 nov 2012 02:40 skrev "Christian Huitema" <huitema at huitema.net>:

I love the idea of open wireless access, but I have a what if question. What happens if someone uses my open access point to connect to the Internet and commit some sort of crime? Isn’t the police going to trace that back to my home, and accuse me of doing it? 

-- Christian Huitema

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