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

[Brad Knowles]

On Nov 29, 2012, at 12:53 AM, David Fine <dfine at sonic.net> wrote:

> This is a whole lot of concern trolling. The VPN software you use would be illegal if not for all those who fought for the right to use strong encryption. See Bernstein v. United States 1995.

That wasn't about the right to USE strong encryption.  That was about the silliness of trying to limit the EXPORT of strong encryption in certain computer-readable forms, while allowing the export of the same encryption algorithms in other forms.  There are those of us here who remember those fights -- my particular contribution can be seen at <http://www.shub-internet.org/brad/cacm92nov.html>.

If you want to talk about the right to USE strong encryption, then a better reference might be the failed attempt to standardize on the "Clipper Chip".

> Those who wish to tunnel through a VPN may do so. But the movement as a whole seeks to normalize open wireless both socially and legally. We must push back against antisocial laws and support people who fall victim to them.

If you can't get anyone to follow you, then it doesn't matter whether you are morally or ethically "in the right" or not.

For practical reasons, if we want this project to have any chance of success, we have to offer people alternatives as part of our solution that do not require that they run a completely open network.

Once we get enough users who are members of the project and offering at least one of the solutions we can help them provide, then we will have a stronger voice that we can use to make calls for changes in the laws.  Until then, we're just a lone voice, screaming into the frankenhurricane.

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