[OpenWireless Tech] The police came to the AP owner first, then sniffed the air to find real culprit​​

[Brad Knowles]

On Nov 28, 2012, at 5:50 PM, Russell Senior <russell at personaltelco.net> wrote:

> The legitimacy of that concern is a function of the jurisdiction,
> which you continue to conflate worldwide.  Please begin your
> fear-mongering with an indication of the jurisdiction you are
> assuming, because it matters.
> 
> In my jurisdiction, the US, your concern is wildly overblown, if
> constantly reinforced by FUD claims in the media.

Kettle, meet pot.  You can't claim that your jurisdiction is universal to the entire US, any more than anyone else can claim their jurisdiction is universal to any other large part of the world.

The simple fact that there are at least a couple of good-sized jurisdictions in this world where this is a "clear and present danger" means that this is a very real issue that has to be addressed by the project, regardless of what you or anyone else who is not in one of those jurisdictions might think.

Yes, FUD on this issue is real and exists in plenty of places, and that issue has to be fought in it's own way.

But just because there is FUD out there in some jurisdictions regarding this issue, doesn't mean that we don't have a very real problem that does actually have to be addressed.

> The openwireless.org effort (imho) is intended to normalize and, where
> necessary, help legalize what you call "truly open".

You can't do that if you intentionally and blatantly choose to ignore the realities of the situation in certain important parts of the world.  Okay, Germany may not be a country with a population as large as the US, but Germany is the largest country in Western Europe, with the highest penetration of computer and Internet technology, and Europe as a whole frequently tends to follow where the Germans lead on some issues.  And Europe as a whole definitely *IS* a bigger population than the US, and they have more users online than we do, too.

You can't blindly apply the model that might be appropriate in many places in the US against other places in the world, any more than you can blindly apply their model to us.

> If you are too scared (legitimately or not) to offer a "truly open"
> network, take responsibility for that fear.  Buckle to The Man, if you
> must.  Abstain, or invent some obscure solution that no one will know
> about or be able to use, but please don't try to call it "open".
> 
> Open wifi is sniffable.  VPN end points are sniffable.  The Whole
> Fucking Internet is sniffable.  The practical solution to that is to
> have decent host security and encrypt end-to-end where it makes sense.
> Then you don't care so much who snarfs your bits.

Passwords are inherently insecure.  So, everyone in the entire world should be forced to run their computers without any password security at all.  Riiiiiiight.

I think that even RMS has finally been taught the lesson that this concept doesn't work.


For everyone else living here in the real world, we have to deal with the reality that there are shades of grey.  Ignore that lesson at your peril.

--
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>