War Driving To Be Protected In NH 387
AllMightyPaul writes "A big article on Wired.com talks about the new House Bill 495 that would legalize the innocent stumbling upon open wireless networks. Basically, it put the burden of securing a wireless network on the owner of the network and allows people to connect to open networks that they believe are supposed to be open. This is excellent news as I'm sure we've all tried to connect to one wireless network and ended up accidentally connecting to another one. Being from NH, now I can finally drive through Manchester and connect anywhere I want with little worry, but not until after January 2004, and that's if the bill passes the Senate."
New Hampshire (Score:5, Funny)
Live free or die!
Bad analogy! (Score:5, Insightful)
You leave your T.V. pressed up against your window, and then people walking down the street watch it.
Or...
You put a speakerphone in the middle of the street, and then yell out your window whenever you make a call... and then people can listen to your conversation, and even add some comments in.
Re:New Hampshire (Score:2, Interesting)
-Jon
Re:New Hampshire (Score:2)
Re:New Hampshire (Score:2)
Legalize it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Legalize it? (Score:4, Informative)
Basically before if you were driving past a starbucks and picked up their connection you could be doing something illegal. I expect it's still illegal to crack WEP (easy as it may be) but using random open wireless is Ok.
Re:Legalize it? (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO this is not a good thing. One of the problems Americans face today is the presence of so many laws reducing explicit or implied freedoms, as you noted. Yet explicitly stating in statute tangible freedoms contradicts the Constitutional notion of preexisting rights fundamental to the human condition. The goal of the Constitution is to recognize freedom, protect it, and limit rights only to the extent necessary to support the common good.
At first blush you are right, its about time we had freedoms recognized by politicians. But I would much rather see them tear down thousands of bad laws and restrictions, and get a couple of really good, common sense ones in there, and enforce them. I don't want to start to have my freedoms enumerated by a Congress, Court, or Executive.
P.S. This is all without respect to political affiliation. Wireless, RIAA, M$ monopolies, Guns, Abortion, Environment...all these issues may have different sides, and all need applicable laws, but I am just saying that the laws should not state a freedom and protect it, only restrict abuses contrary to the will of the Constitution, the people, and the common good.
Re:Legalize it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some background, for those who need it. The first amendment (to take a well-known example) doesn't say "You get the freedom of speech." It says "Congress shall make no law abidging the freedom of speech." In other words, the freedom in question is assumed to pre-exist the Constitution, and the Constitution is just explicitly recognizing it, and declaring it as a limit on governmental power.
But there's a contradiction built in, because the Bill of Rights still enumerates particular rights, and for a couple of centuries courts have been understandably less willing to protect rights that aren't explicitly enumerated (privacy and substantive due process and the backlash against it being the exception that proves the rule) than those that are.
Yes, enumerating freedoms can have the effect of implying that we are not free to do anything except what is enumerated. But that's a built-in side effect of the way the Bill of Rights is written. It's even worse since the courts rules that the 14th Amendment "incorporates" much of the Bill of Rights applies to the states. Before the 14th Amendment, it wasn't clear that expressions like "Congress shall make no law" applied to state and local legislative bodies. The Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to rule that many of the *enumerated* rights in the Bill of Rights now could be enforced as restrictions on state and local legislatures as well. But this explicitly applies only to things enumerated, and even then only the ones the courts have picked and chosen.
In other words, when you (the previous poster) say "I don't want to start to have my freedoms enumerated by a Congress, Court, or Executive.", I'm saying it is already way, way, way too late. Maybe if that attitude was in place in the 1780's we could have a system that works that way. Of course, with that attitude, we'd still have the Articles of Confederation (which might not be such a bad thing from a small-weak-government-is-good point of view). But we don't.
Additionally (and then I'll shut up), legislative acts creating or recognizing rights are often absolutely essential to turn the abstract principles listed in the Constitution into specific and applicable rules and regulations with enforcement mechanisms. Parts of the post-Civil War amendments were widely disregarded until Congress passed the Voting Rights Act almost 100 years later. Now there were clear rules explaining what did and didn't constitute disenfranchising somebody, and a way to enforce it. If you were a black citizen in Mississippi, it was the Voting Rights Act and not the 15th Amendment that actually made it possible for you to relatively safely get to the voting booth, cast a ballot, and be confident that it was counted.
OK, I've gone off topic, but I'll bring it home. Explicitly listing this freedom is a Good Thing. The freedom to use open wireless networks could be seen as competing with the freedom to use your own wireless network without sharing resources with intruders. We need explicit guidance on how to balance these things, and how to enforce the balance we come up with. That's what legislatures are supposed to do with the system we've got, as opposed to the one we might wish we had. That's what they are doing here.
Re:Legalize it? (Score:5, Informative)
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Wait a second... (Score:5, Insightful)
The law has decent motivation, but it's basically saying "Go ahead and break into wireless networks, because if they're not completely secure, it's not your fault." What happens when people start snooping the traffic, stealing corporate secrets, and then claim that the wireless network wasn't secure, so they can't be responsible?
Re:Wait a second... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait a second... (Score:5, Informative)
1Computer Related Offenses; Network Security. Amend RSA 638:17, I to read as follows:
I.
So, the way I read it is: the owner is responsible for securing the network, but its legal IF and ONLY IF you were legally granted access, would have been granted access if asked, or had no way of knowing whether or not you were allowed to use the network.
This doesn't protect wardriving at all: if you're knowingly going around looking for unsecured wireless access points, you've already failed 1 & 2. The only issue up for debate is 3: would you have known that you were not authorized? I'm sure once this hits court, the party with the better lawyer is going to win.
Re:Wait a second... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait a second... (Score:2)
Morals vs. Practical Issues. (Score:4, Insightful)
And as long as things are set up so that connecting to the network doesn't involve anything more than just happening to be where that network is, the idea that you could be prosecuted for 'breaking into' their network is a scary one. There's often no 'breaking' involved. If I end up connected to somebody's network, and it required nothing more than a laptop configured for my *usual* wireless access, then no, it's not my fault.
If you have a wireless network and you're using it to transmit 'corporate secrets', etc, then secure the thing. People who run around purposefully trying to find other people's networks to go online from are a little slimy, maybe, but it's not 'breaking in'. It's complaining that somebody's sitting on the chair you happened to leave on the sidewalk. It may be your private resource, but you've left it sitting in public space with absolutely nothing to indicate that people *shouldn't* sit in it. And the average stranger who does is probably just resting his feet, not sabotaging your property.
Right of use doesn't equal abuse... (Score:3, Insightful)
Come on, that's like saying that if I'm allowed to enter a business with an open door, then I'm also allowed, by default, to rob the place and give the owner a Dirty Sanchez [g0d.org].
The l
Motivation (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, harmlessing stumbling upon someone else's wireless network shouldn't be a crime. I think that's part of the point here. Maliciously using someone else's wireless net
Re:Wait a second... (Score:2)
All it says is that if you do not make basic efforts to secure the network, then you can not prosecute people for using it.
This law STILL allows you to prosecute people for using that network for illegal purposes, including stealing corporate secrets that were on that network and snooping the traffic.
It does have a side effect of making it harder to prove guilt (as merely being caught on the network is no longer a crime), but that is not that severe.
Shouldn't this be... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Shouldn't this be... (Score:2)
Wow (Score:4, Funny)
Come on, April Fool's was almost a month ago now.
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
war driving lessons (Score:4, Informative)
In these uncertain times... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In these uncertain times... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, however if someone filled up their water bottle from your hose connection, you could have them arrested for that. The same with someone who plugs in to an outlet you have on the outside of your house. Do you have hose taps and electrical outlets outside? Do you lock them up? Of course not, because it's expected that people understand they're not free for p
Re:In these uncertain times... (Score:3, Insightful)
To take your analogy further, should you have to move your lawn so it doesn't get watered by his sprinkler because you're stealing his water?
The problem here is that everyone is using analogies to prove their points. While analogies provide useful insights into certain situations, one must be careful to evaluate the argument on the facts, not clever analogies.
good. security can gain some awareness then. (Score:3, Insightful)
a law like this can't do any harm, besides the harm that has been done (or is happening) already. it sounds like to me that this is a good thing. raising awareness around network security is always a good thing.
*well, except when it fosters more fear than actual security
That's a good law, but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
And how many of those people (if any) were malicious hackers?
Why don't our legislators spend their time protecting innocent people (Skylarov, Felten, Serebryany, etc.) from laws like the DMCA that have been abused, instead of saying "hey, it's legal to wardrive, which nobody has ever been maliciously prosecuted for"?
Re:That's a good law, but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I APPLAUD them for solving the problem BEFORE it becomes important, and thereby stopping our enemies before they become strong enough to attack our freedoms.
dumb technincal questions (Score:2)
So, setting aside that there are probably tons of home Wifi installs that still use "Linksys", and assuming lots of people don't use the encryption tha
Re:dumb technincal questions (Score:2, Informative)
Re:dumb technincal questions (Score:3, Informative)
And yes, there are alot of Linksys default SSIDs
Re:dumb technincal questions (Score:3, Informative)
Re:dumb technincal questions (Score:2)
On the other hand, unless maybe you were bringing a laptop to the playground acr
You mean... (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't this explicitly mentioned on the equipment? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's a bit backward, but I think that can justify your having picked up the signal; you were just accepting interference...
What about at the state line... (Score:3, Insightful)
Won't this just encourage more SPAM? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if you have the ability to use someone's network "accidentally" how do you distinguish someone who is using a lot of bandwidth for an innocuous reason from someone using a little bandwidth for a protective screen? I seem to recall reading an article about SPAMmers using open links to anonymously go through SMTP sites to further propogate their "stuff"...
And if the company is running Windows and has shared network resources, where does my 100 page accidental printing land on the scale of things?
I agree that you don't want to arrest someone for browsing through "linkedsys" when they meant "linksys" (or picking up the wrong "linksys" which is probably even more likely). But I'm not sure this is the answer.
FWIW,
Ewan
Re:Won't this just encourage more SPAM? (Score:3, Insightful)
All this laws does is say: "If you leave your doors wide open, you have no right to complain if some someone comes into your house to get out of the rain."
The law does not in any way make it legal for you to spam/print from their network, just as the above statement would not let people take stuff out of your house just because you left your door open.
Re:Won't this just encourage more SPAM? (Score:2)
In other news its also my responsibility to make sure I'm wearing a flak jacket to protect my personal system from someone discharging a lawfully held firearm in a public place when I visit the US.
Leaving my car unlocked might be regarded as reckless - and might invalidate my insurance under a duty of care clause. But its still theft if you open the door and drive away in it.
And actually there are laws in most legislations to stop you walking in to someone's house - I'd start look
Re:Won't this just encourage more SPAM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hate to say the analogy of choice is the old "Information Superhighway". If you're driving along and get lost or take an unfamiliar turn...If the road isn't marked Closed then it isn't closed. There is no way to tell a Private Driveway apart from a side street unless it's marked. Same with networks.
With a ubiquity of connections sprouting everywhere, all different, we need to drop that house analogy yesterday. The highway analogy is much better, es
Re:Won't this just encourage more SPAM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of the problem is you fail to admit that there is a LEGAL and requested "war-driving" going on. (If you live in NYC, I know that Chelsea Market advertises the fact that they offer a free network for people to log in - I heard about it and I do not even own a network card for my computer). Shooting people is NEVER legal.
Try again but remember that PUBLIC minded groups are intentionally leaving networks open and WANT you to use it.
The TRUE analogy is NOT someone that is leaving their cars onlo
Re:Won't this just encourage more SPAM? (Score:2)
If you don't secure your wireless network, then people can use it. If you don't want people using your wireless network then it's your problem to secure it.
I would assume that something like WEP would be good enough to satisfy the bill. Since, although it is a broken security system, you can't accidently stumble into it the way you can with an open wireless network. Heck set the WEP key to your company name and legitimate users (and real crackers) won't be inconvienced at all, but pd
Road rage (Score:2)
Wardriving (Score:2)
I think that if anything, the biggest kicks I get out of wardriving is generating maps [crackrock.org] of my results.
(I do like plugging my map - shameless self promotion I guess)
While I never connect to networks, it would be nice to know that if I ever did need to access one that I wouldn't have to worry about going to jail over it. Props to the government on this one.
War Driving != "innocent stumbling upon" (Score:2)
Re:War Driving != "innocent stumbling upon" (Score:2)
Plus, passive stumblers like kismet never connect to the networks in question. You are never really 'on' the network unless you choose to do so. That, I agree, is potentially immoral. But what if I have my windoze box set to SSID "any" and I connect to one of these, with 0 reconfiguration of my client
I love my NH (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm seeing a lot of "the idea is good but...", but I do think it's a good idea. I read the analogy of walking into someone's house if it's unlocked and taking their food, etc, but I don't think that's the right analogy.
A better one, (which also applies in NH) is that if you're hunting in the woods, you can't be prosecuted for trespassing unless it posted "No Trespassing" or the owner comes along and tells you to leave. This keeps people who are in the woods and might not have a convenient parcel map from the town from being prosecuted because they wandered into an adjacent lot. Do note that this is not the same as walking into land that is expected to be private, i.e. a house or an office building (during non-business hours).
Just my input.
Live Free Or Die.
Re:I love my NH (Score:2)
Re:I love my NH (Score:2)
Local control works best, and that's what NH is all about.
DHCP expresses permission (Score:5, Insightful)
- My laptop sees a signal and requests access to the network by asking for a DHCP address.
- Access point sees my request and GRANTS me a lease on an IP address with which I can access their network
- I surf using the network
- I leave.
I asked, they said YES. They could have easily denied me, but they invited me into the network when I asked if I could. There are SO MANY different ways to keep people out, that owners of AP's just have to do something to secure themselves. Shame on them if they fail to do that.
Guiness (Score:2)
A lot of people immediately ask "well how the hell do you get on or off of it then?" It has streets coming off it, but both ends are dead-ends.
How is that for a useless bit of info?
Re:Guiness (Score:2)
" Main Street? I thought it was Elm street in NH. All the 'kids' used to cruise up and down Elm for that reason I thought."
Ah, shit. I did write Main, didn't I? Yes, it's Elm.
I suck.
Re:Guiness (Score:2)
"If a road doesn't have a "dead end", then it doesn't actually have an end, now does it? All roads either continue, or have two dead ends. (Usually, they just change their name part way along.)"
I think a dead-end is defined as an end for which you must actually turn back around to exit. Most roads either bend, terminate in a T (you can go either left or right) or blend into/merge with another road.
I would imagine roads with one dead-end are somewhat rare in the grand scheme of things. Roads
Amazing (Score:2)
A law that makes sense?! (Score:2)
Re:A law that makes sense?! (Score:2)
Only applies to really open networks (Score:5, Insightful)
What this law means is that, if you don't want people to use your wireless network, you have to use some sort of technological measure to let them know to stay out. This makes a lot of sense, because there's no way to find out that someone does want you to use their network.
Reasonable security measures (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Naw - broadcast your SSID: (Score:2)
One bullet I forgot for corporations. If using wireless barcode scanners (you probably are if you are in the manufacturing business!), always segregate with a firewall, and use WEP. Of course the dumb things use vanilla telnet, have no ipsec capability. They should at least use SSH. *sigh*.
Stumbling v. Intruding (Score:2)
What about deliberate and intentional intrusions? I can understand how people can accidentally connect to a different network than they intended, but wardriving doesn't even come close.
The moral bankruptcy of Slashdot readers (Score:4, Insightful)
They see no harm in taking goods and services that they did not pay for and are therefore not entitled to.
Now they see no problem with hijacking bandwidth someone else paid good money for simply because it's available over the airwaves and unsecured? Tell you what: let me know where you live so I can help myself to your water, electricity, and internet access if your door happens to be unlocked. It's not my fault if I sneak in, you were too stupid to secure your house!
Also, I don't really buy the whole "this is good, now we'll see some better security" argument. Right. You're telling me you'd like nothing better than to see ALL wireless networks secured so you can't go joyriding and stealing bandwidth? Right. A Slashdotter who doesn't want to get a free ride. Next thing you know you guys will be telling me that you'd be in favor of a foolproof scheme that protects your fair use rights for music and movies but prevents you from sharing with millions of random people.
This is really sad when you think about it. The prevailing morality among young people seems to be "screw everyone else, if it's not bolted down I'm taking it!" There used to be a time in this country when you could leave your doors unlocked because people were decent enough to respect each other's property. Not anymore, I guess.
Re:The moral bankruptcy of Slashdot readers (Score:5, Insightful)
If you accidentally get on someone's network, fine -- disconnect and try again
Re:The moral bankruptcy of Slashdot readers (Score:2)
If all you're doing is driving around and seeing if your wireless card lights up... whatever, that's fine, if a little boring and pointless. I take exception with those who actively seek
Well, someone has to pick the nits... (Score:4, Insightful)
Brian McWilliams obviously thinks this is a bad law, and he has slanted his article accordingly. I'd have thought Wired's editors would have caught this sort of thing.
First off he refers to "war driving" and "war chalking" without ever once spelling out Wireless Access Reconnaissance even though he finds the space to define WEP. Makes it sound a bit aggressive, and not by accident.
New Hampshire's existing statute says it is a crime to knowingly access any computer network without authorization. By analogy, just because someone leaves his house unlocked doesn't mean you are authorized to walk inside, sit on the couch or help yourself to the contents of the fridge. But HB 495 turns that thinking upside down, experts said.
No, it doesn't, and if you new the first damned thing about this technology you would never repeat what your (unverified) experts have told you. Walking into someone's open house and helping yourself to the contents of their fridge, is trespassing and stealing, and in showing such low regard for their personal space it becomes reasonable for them to wonder if your are a threat to safety and bodily harm. We're not talking a simple risk of data here.
What's more, if an alleged intruder can prove he gained access to an insecure wireless network believing it was intended to be open, the defendant may be able to get off the hook using an "affirmative defense" provision of the existing law.
That's not "getting off the hook." That's having committed no crime in the first place.
And here we are pandering to the fears of the masses again:
A 10-minute war drive down the main business district of Manchester earlier this month using a laptop with a standard wireless card revealed nearly two dozen open wireless access points, including some operated by banks and other businesses.
To the sadly un-geek of the world this suggests that NH is passing a law that makes it legal for hackers to hack your bank accounts. Clearly untrue, clearly flamebait.
And in closing he reminds everyone that the committee is, "...still open to arguments from anyone."
And closes with, "We want to be sure that it wasn't the case that, through trying to protect people under certain circumstances, we were opening up greater opportunity for criminal activity," said Peterson.
If Brian had wanted a decent analogy to explain WAR driving he could have used the following: It's like passing a law that claims it is legal for someone walking by on the sidewalk to let their dog drink from your sprinklers. Technically their dog is trespassing, and technically it's your water it's drinking, and technically it's allowing strangers to loiter near your house where they might become more aware of your houses security vulnerabilities. But as the lawmakers might have said themselves, "let's just get reasonable"
I like the pretty pictures in Wired, but I cannot renew my subscription in good conscience as the folks in NH are making a rare stand for reasonable behavior and a technology magazine is issuing flaimbait articles in response.
So Brian, if you're walking by my house with your wireless card in the sleeve of your IPAQ, feel free to check your e-mail and grab some headlines from
Re:Well, someone has to pick the nits... (Score:2)
My understanding was that the two terms are derived from the practice of "war dialing", which got its' name from the movie "Wargames". After all, they aren't all that different -- the blind search for previously unknown computer networks -- its' just that one search occurs in a "virtual space"
Re:Well, someone has to pick the nits... (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe because not everyone thinks WAR is an acronym?
My understanding is that war-driving is a play on war-dialing and your acronoym sounds like something made up after the fact.
Re:Well, someone has to pick the nits... (Score:3, Informative)
War Driving != Malicious (Score:4, Insightful)
War driving is going around looking for open networks to connect to and use. The person war driving isn't necessarily connecting to be malicious and this bill (that isn't law yet) wouldn't legalize malicious connections. However, what it specifically does is designate open wireless networks as networks that you can connect to without getting in trouble. As one person said, it's like the "No Trespassing" sign. If it's there, you have to follow it, but if it's not, you're allowed to walk onto the property (for the most part, there are exceptions).
War-driving isn't malicious. You're just looking for open networks, which this proposed law will protect. Once you're on the network, you're still subject to laws regarding spam and cracking and all those other things that are already illegal.
Burden is on the operator (Score:4, Informative)
The wireless protocol stands for themselves, and in a court of law they would be easy to examine line by line until the judge/jury is brain dead from the tech-jargon. Not to mention the various accredited folks who can demonstrate with freely available software that WEP is more of an annoyance. MAC based filtering is weak since it is possible to spoof the mac address with most 802.11b hardware drivers. Simply bombard the AP until the ARP table refreshes with you mac as the end point that *should* be getting the traffic. The solution most folks I know use is a hybrid of various methods. One way is to make each wireless node use VPN to the router behind the AP, and use WEP (as an annoyance) on the ether. Disabling the 802.11 beacon is the first thing that should be done, else it your fault for advertising the existence of your wireless network in the first place. As I mention before, MAC filtering helps as an annoyance to would-be-infiltrators. Finally, rename your SID to anything except "WIRELESS" as many folks get on by simply looking for the default SID.
This is my advice, as a war-driver, I know all the tricks. Enjoy!
On the side of good. (Score:3, Insightful)
A use for WEP! (Score:3, Insightful)
By turning on WEP one would be clearly signalling that the network was not for public use...
Bad Analogies (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a bad analogy. Why? Because there is a widely growing movement of setting up open networks that anyone can connect to. There's no widespread movement to leave homes unlocked and free food in the kitchen.
This bill doesn't give people the right to break WEP encryption or spoof MAC filtering. They probably couldn't even use it for defense if the SSID had the word 'Private' or something similar in it. The bill simply recognizes the growth of free connections and tells people that if they don't want to be mistaken for a free connection then it's their responsibility to do something about it.
Re:Bad Analogies (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't do this, then you are tacitly agreeing to allow passersby to view the content. However, if you do set up some kind of privacy (bushes, a fence), then you may become upset at people that purposely attempt to circumvent your security.
I believe that this more close
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not? It's legal to listen to your neighbors phone conversation if he chooses to braodcast his phone conversation into your house using an older portable phone that doesn't have any anti-listening technology built into it even though you have politely informed them of this.
As other posters have pointed out... (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly, I'm kind of appalled at this line of thinking. When did it become out of fashion to be a decent human being?
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I feel that this is a good approach to hacking in general. Why should buisineses, who often lobby to pay the state less in tax revenue and whatnot, still expect the state to prosecute people who break into thier networks because they were too lazy to apply a patch?
Now, as a caveat to this, I feel that if the company can show that they took all reasonable precautions to secure thier network, then the state should go ahead with prosecution. This way a company that is 'following the rules' is not unduly punished, but the company that is too lazy or too cheap to implement good security is, and cannot fall back on fear of the state to be thier security apparatus.
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, I think it's completely different with wireless networks precisely because you don't even know what network you're picking up -- and you can pick up the network completely by accident. This is in effect similar to the case where an non-scrambled phone conversation is picked up via a scanner accidentally...perfectly legal to listen in, at least in most states.
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:2)
And frankly, yes, I do believe that if you do not lock your door, you are just begging for people just to waltz in. I have lived in some pretty bad neighborhoods. To me these concepts are common sense. If you don't want people walking into your house, lock your door. If you do not want people accessing your wireless network, secure it. If you have taken these precautions, and somebody forcibly enters either, then you are well within y
Difference between US and UK (Score:3, Insightful)
Trespassing per se was not a crime. So you can stand in someones yard or unlocked house without committing a crime. Of course if you do criminal damage that *is* a crime. Breaking and entering is a crime - entering an open door is not.
If you want to extend the analogy to hacking, if someone puts their info on a web server with de
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why compare to obviously different cases (walking into someone's front door versus wireless networking)? The difference between clearly marked physical resources and wireless resources is a clear one, both ethically and legally.
The NH law would seem to inject some much needed personal responsibility into the equation. Somebody sitting at a cafe shouldn't be accused of breaking into an unsecured network across the street, unless they really do break some security.
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:2)
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were to hypothetically sniff some of these packets, I might hypothetically discover that they are going to different ISPs, which makes me hypothetically believe that most if not all of these belong to different companies.
So imagine you are an employee of one of these companies and the boss tells you "hook up to the linksys"
This law puts the burden on the hardware owner to make the fucking tiniest effort (I'm not talking IPsec or even turning on WEP
This is GOOD, not BAD.
The signal is physically going through my body and if it doesn't say "Don't Use Me", then by fuck, I'm going to use it! I figure that's in exchange for the 0.00001% increased cancer risk.
I debated going into these businesses and telling them that I'm a computer security professional and would be happy to give them some free consulting but then I decided at least one of them would get panicky and have me arrested. "But
No good deed goes unpunished you know.
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:2, Informative)
You're right in that stealing is stealing
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:5, Insightful)
In your example, would you think the person that takes your car is guilty if the city you lived in routinely leaves cars with the keys in the door as a public service, allowing anyone to use them.
The truth is, that your example is not even accurate. A better example would be if cars come with an optional LOCK. They give strict instructions that if you do not want everybody in the world to use your car, you should install a Lock. If asked, they say they build them without locks so that you can get your own lock, not one that they can open, and to allow pbulic oragnizations to make them available for general use without a Lock
If you get a car without a LOCK, then it is YOUR fault if someone takes your car, and the person that took it has the RIGHT to claim they thought it was a one of the cars made available to the general public for free.
Re:Its excellent news..... (Score:2)
Yeah, well, I'm sure some marketeer somewhere would like to install a pay-per-viewer model for cable tv...
Re:Where is NH? (Score:5, Insightful)
New Hampshire is bordered by Canada on the north and by Massachusetts on the south. On the east, New Hampshire is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Maine and on the west, New Hamsphire is bordered by Vermont.
And for all you Wardrivers... it's
Longitude: 70 37'W to 72 37'W
Latitude: 42 40'N to 45 18'N
Re:Who brought out the clue-by-four? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're talking about this law protecting the innocent person who accidentally connects to a different network than they intended, I'd agree.
If you're talking about somebody who is intentionally wardriving looking for networks that he/she can get into and explore for juicy stuff, then I'll disagree.
Certainly, the admins of such networks have acted irresponsibly (assuming it wasn't some incredible new hack that broke into a secured network); but that doesn't mean the wardriver has no culpability in this situation.
This is one of those areas where the law can't cover everything. It's wrong to walk into an open house and take things when you know the owners didn't want you in there. Whether or not the door was open, and whether or not there was a welcome mat on the porch, you damned well know you shouldn't walk into a stranger's house and take their things.
And when you did, it wouldn't be the owner's fault that you're a worthless amoral turd. It would still be yours; whether or not they were stupid.
Re:Who brought out the clue-by-four? (Score:5, Insightful)
This law does NOT make it legal to take things at all, let alone things that you know the owner did not want you to take.
All the law does is make it LEGAL to enter the house if you leave it open. Which makes a LOT of sense considering that a lot of people are intionally leaving their doors open so that if you want to get out of the rain, you can enter their house. (Analogy - public groups are offering free services).
The law does not allow you to steal data, it just lets you wardrive. war drive is using their network to access the internet. If you use their network to access the private, secret data of the company, that is theft, and you can still be prosecuted.
Admittedly, the law does make it harder to prosecute you, as you have to be caught with the goods, but that is fair. After all it SHOULD be harder to prosecute a theif when the MORON of an owner takes ZERO effort to protect their property.
Re:Who brought out the clue-by-four? (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is, how can I tell that I'm not supposed to be on a network?
In New York State, where I live, the computer crime laws state a person must defeat an access control mechanism when accessing a computer for it to be considered tresspass. That means: If your computer is accessible via a public network and with no password, it can assumed to be open to the public.
If you leave your "juicy stuff" on a computer with no password, on a publicly accessible network, it your fault. It's like posting it on a webpage (they fall under that definition). If I visit the webpage, passwordless FTP server, windows share, etc where you put all this information I should be legally in the clear. You are the one who put out there for the public. If you didn't meant to: "How the hell should I know?" Your incompetentcy shouldn't mean that I'm a criminal. There shouldn't be any arguement over what my intent was in looking for/accessing that information. You put it there! You made it publicly accessible.
This law just makes sense. If you want to be able to take someone to court for accessing your network, you should have an access control mechanism in place on that network. If you aren't making minimal the effort to control who gets onto your network, then you shouldn't expect the courts to care.
I have no problem with the assumption that open APs are meant to be that way.
Finding an open AP is like finding a PC set up and running in the town square. If I sit down at it and it doesn't ask me for a password, then I can assume that the public was meant to be able to access it.
Your "It's wrong to walk into an open house and take things when you know the owners didn't want you in there." analogy fails for lots of reasons. The airwaves are a public resource. You don't own them and neither do I. The obviousness of entering someone else's house isn't there with wireless networks. If I see an ESSID "linksys" how do I know if that person doesn't want me using their network? Maybe they want me to so they left the router in is default open state. Maybe they didn't, but were too incompetent to configure the router to implement their desires. Maybe they want me to, AND didn't know how to to configure the router to implement their desires and it just happend to work for them that way.
The point is, it's more like leaving something by the side of the road and having it get taken then inside your house. As a little kid I left my bigwheel at the end of our driveway and someone took it. They had a reasonable right to assume that it was there for anyone who wanted it to take, or it was going to get picked up with the trash. I'm sure the guy who took it wasn't an "amoral turd" for taking it. It was my fault for leaving it there. I may have been too young to understand what would happen at the time, but that doesn't make they buy who took it home to his kid a bad guy.
I left something publily accessible and in such a position that someone could reasonably assume they could just take it. You're doing the same thing with your bandwidth when you set up an unsecured AP.
again with the house? (Score:3, Insightful)
I am so sick of this house analogy being applied to wireless networks. It doesn't apply because a wireless network by its very nature is ephemeral. You can't broadcast a house.
It is more akin to having a conversation with so
Re:Legal ? (Score:3, Insightful)
However it's not illegal to own or modify a device in order to receive cell bands...unless you actually use it. Makes sense doesn't it?
There are so many grey areas and conflicting legislation, it's going to be a very long time before all this is sorted out.
Marconi never knew what he was getting us into.
BZZT! Wrong (Score:2)
BZZZT! WRONG. Sorry, but manufacturing and selling devices [p25.com] capable [rfimage.com] of [testequity.com] intercepting [rfimage.com] cell phone conversations is exactly what we [ifrsys.com] do all day.
It is not even unlawful for us to sell such a device to anybody.
It is unlawful for you to use such a device to intercept a telephone conversation without a court order, but that is YOUR responsiblilty, not ours.
Re:Legal ? (Score:2)
No, the problem is that we have declared a natural phenomonon to be divisible and parceled as "property" despite the fact that there is no failsafe way to defend your rights to a patch of spectrum. You can't make ownership of a radio interception device illegal, because with open source software defined radio [gnu.org] any piece of 50' wire (plus some very basic circuitry) becomes the hardware required to intercept any radio transmission (antenna) -- all processing is d
Re:war-driving innocent? (Score:2)
A) You know that someone is advertising in the area that they have an open network and want you to use it (Happens a LOT - Chelsea Market in New York City publicly gave out business cards to get people to "war drive" their network ... and maybe do a bit of shopping while you were there.)
B) That someone makes it easy for you by using the standard Linksys without a password setting so you do not have to remember anything.
C) The MORON running the top secret finance