EFF To Unveil Open Wireless Router For Open Wireless Movement 184
hypnosec writes A new movement dubbed the Open Wireless Movement is asking users to open up their private Wi-Fi networks to total strangers – a random act of kindness – with an aim of better securing networks and facilitating better use of finite broadband resources. The movement is supported by non-profit and pro-internet rights organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Mozilla, Open Rights Group, and Free Press among others. The EFF is planning to unveil one such innovation – Open Wireless Router – at the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE X) conference to be held next month on New York. This firmware will allow individuals to share their private Wi-Fi to total strangers to anyone without a password.
Doesn't this violate TOS? (Score:3, Interesting)
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You better not use the Internet for homework, because effectively
- your professor is sending you a request,
- you fulfill it using your own bandwidth,
- you give back the answer to the professor.
Exactly like opening up your router.
Re:Doesn't this violate TOS? (Score:4, Funny)
You better not use the Internet for homework, because effectively
- your professor is sending you a request,
- you fulfill it using your own bandwidth,
- you give back the answer to the professor.
Exactly like opening up your router.
With latency that can be measured using an hour glass...
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Frankly, if ISP's want to prevent overuse of their networks they should impose transfer caps. Within those caps it shouldn't matter whether I want to deliver my own bits or bits on behalf of someone else.
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The sharer should be able to cap, prioritize and limit the traffic already in the router. ISP should only be concerned of the capacity their already rented to the client.
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Exactly this. Some ISPs are sharing wireless from your modem for other ISP customers. But if you share your wireless you are in violation of ToS. You could already find a bomb threat sent from your network... because of the ISP.
Most people don't have that option. (Score:2)
That's an option available only to technically-knowledgeable users.
Re:Doesn't this violate TOS? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure at least some ISPs stipulate in their terms of service that a subscriber cannot provide internet access to the general public without upgrading to some other (more expensive) plan. Surely we can move towards a more secure internet without strongly hinting that people should violate their contracts.
I work for a moderately large ISP
The answer to your question is "yes"
but... but you have to understand that the majority of your agreement with your ISP is there to give them legal immunity against your activities. I've worked for several ISPs and none of them cared how their customers used their service.
They only start caring when your activity:
A. Costs them money
B. Gets them into legal jeopardy... which leads back to A
When ISPs got federal immunity from prosecution for the activities of their users, that was a great thing for the users because the ISPs were completely off the hook... so the ISPs wouldn't be policing your activity.
So, that I know of, no ISP has a program where they police what you do. That would be a waste of resources. Bandwidth caps are just there to encourage you to buy larger packages or not suck up all the bandwidth in your neighborhood. They are rarely enforce effectively. They're required to do something about DCMA notices, and I've even been on those teams. It's incredibly labor intensive, and what they are basically doing is telling a PAYING customer that some non-paying customer claims you did something wrong. If you stopped pirating, you might not need Internet. So usually it just ends up that they build some automated system to forward the complaint to you and then they forget about it. If you do other stuff or start causing problems, they yea, they might dig up that data and use it to boot you. But that's VERY rare. I can count the number of times I've seen a customer lose their service on one hand. And that's 14yrs of experience. The few that did get booted usually involved death threats to the billing department. That's how sever it has to get. Even people that launch DDOS attacks get warned that "Someone probably hacked your computer, please fix it."
Re:Doesn't this violate TOS? (Score:5, Informative)
So, that I know of, no ISP has a program where they police what you do.
Really? [zdnet.com] That's just not so. [yahoo.com] What is more, the abusive contracts/TOS [facepunch.com]/AUP [comcast.com] do restrict what you allowed to do. Whether or not that's actively policed is a different question.
These types of restrictions are one of the biggest threats to the real promise of the Internet IMHO -- the truly free sharing of ideas and information.
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Whether or not that's actively policed is a different question.
Which is exactly what I said. Yes, it violates their policies, but they dont care. Are you stupid or just trolling?
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Whether or not that's actively policed is a different question.
Which is exactly what I said. Yes, it violates their policies, but they dont care. Are you stupid or just trolling?
Your employer may not do so, but other ISPs do. As is clearly detailed in the links included. I guess I should have proofread my post a little better and modified that sentence. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I'd edit my post to make it more coherent, but this is /. Sigh.
I thought your post interesting enough to respond with my own. Unfortunately, your employers' policies are not universally used. Hopefully those ISPs that engage in abusive practices will follow suit, but I'm not holding m
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Reading Comprehension skills aren't your forte, are they? THey say 'police', you argue against 'restrict' and then say 'whether or not that's actively policed ...'.
Since I actually referred to policing, I guess I did comprehend. What's more, If you'd bothered to read the links I included you'd see that various ISPs are, in fact, enforcing port blocking as well as throttling bittorrent streams. I think that qualifies as policing.
But rather than stoop to your level and make ad-hominem remarks, I'll just assume that you were really busy and didn't have time to read the links. See how easy that was?
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Reading Comprehension skills aren't your forte, are they? THey say 'police', you argue against 'restrict' and then say 'whether or not that's actively policed ...'.
Since I actually referred to policing, I guess I did comprehend. What's more, If you'd bothered to read the links I included you'd see that various ISPs are, in fact, enforcing port blocking as well as throttling bittorrent streams. I think that qualifies as policing.
But rather than stoop to your level and make ad-hominem remarks, I'll just assume that you were really busy and didn't have time to read the links. See how easy that was?
I also work for a large ISP.
Port blocking is almost always limited to sendmail (25) and web (80, 8080), and a handful of other ports which are (or have been) common security vulnerabilities and which mostly involve network protocols that you should not have exposed to the internet directly to start with. (like netbios, windows admin, and such).
Your ISP sells you a residential account on the assumption that most people will not attempt to use the entire bandwidth, 24/7. Which is why they can afford to give you a 20meg, 50meg, 100meg, or even gigabit connection for $100 or less per month. If you DO want a 100meg guaranteed connection where you can run servers and use it for Commercial purposes, you CAN buy one- but it's a lot more expensive because you're actually paying full price. Instead of the discount you get for sharing a "pipe" with other people.
The rules are there to a) prevent legal liability, b) prevent Commercial use on a residential account, and c) give them a way to kick you off in a few rare situations where your activity threatens the rest of their network. Prior to the DMCA, they rarely terminated anybody who wasn't caught doing something like reselling access (b), and the exceptions were primarily people who were hacking (poorly)... they aren't going to risk having a /12 or /23 IP block blacklisted globally because some idiot scriptkiddy doesn't know how to hide his tracks.
Now, there are a few companies who really want to put Metered internet into practice here in the US. But they know it's highly unpopular, and although many places (Europe) are fine with it, they know it'll hurt sales. So they try to use the TOS to bully "high bandwidth" users into cutting back on usage... this is usually spearheaded by the idiot MBA's and almost always poorly handled. See the case of Comcast MiTM'ing people's peer to peer connections and spoofing packets as an obvious example. More recently, the Netflix fiasco... but unlike the torrent situation they can't shit-talk the users and portray them as thieves and perverts, because not only is it legitimate it's also highly popular.
Your points are well taken and, in my experience, relatively accurate. Thank you. In contrast, My ISP doesn't block any ports, throttle any protocols or restrict the use of servers. They even give me multiple free static IP addresses.
At the same time, I have issues with artificial restrictions (and they are artificial) on usage and access. My concerns are three-fold, and relate to the most used last-mile protocols (e.g., DOCSIS, ADSL, etc.), the asymmetric bandwidth associated with those protocols, and
Re:Doesn't this violate TOS? (Score:5, Interesting)
My ISP is Sprint/Clearwire. (Complicated corporate and branding relationship.) I got a nastygram from them about peer-to-peer downloads. They didn't care that I was downloads GNU/Linux distros, they didn't want me using PtP at all. (So I got a VPN account and flipped them the bird.)
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My ISP is Sprint/Clearwire. (Complicated corporate and branding relationship.) I got a nastygram from them about peer-to-peer downloads. They didn't care that I was downloads GNU/Linux distros, they didn't want me using PtP at all. (So I got a VPN account and flipped them the bird.)
You likely could have just ignored it. I saw people who got dozens of DMCA complaints per DAY and nothing was ever done to them. In most cases today those letters are totally automated and no-one ever sees them. I suppose its possible if the wrong person got into that job and had some boyscout attitude towards the law they could get a bit over-threatening. But they wouldn't last long in that position. It's one of those rare jobs where they don't want you to do it well.
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So, that I know of, no ISP has a program where they police what you do
Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner, Cablevision, AT&T, and Cavalier Telephone do. The last one was my DLS ISP around 2008. I got email notifications from them for downloading with bittorrent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.dailydot.com/news/c... [dailydot.com]
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These companies really need to be vertically separated.
Why stop halfway? Let's go all-in; draw and quarter the bastards.
Re:Doesn't this violate TOS? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure at least some ISPs stipulate in their terms of service that a subscriber cannot provide internet access to the general public without upgrading to some other (more expensive) plan. Surely we can move towards a more secure internet without strongly hinting that people should violate their contracts.
I pay for my bandwidth. What I do with it once I've paid for it is none of my ISP's goddamned business. They aren't my parents, they aren't the government, they aren't the police. They're service providers. So let them provide the service that's paid for, then shut the hell up. If they don't like it they can suck eggs, because I ALREADY PAID FOR IT.
I am literally a block away from my ISP. I've been running an open access point for more than 5 years. And it's a good signal... they can probably see it in their office.
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This.
ISPs are now a basic utility. They provide bandwidth through which you perform your online activities. That "series of tubes" analogy, while simplistic, applies quite well here. You're renting a small tube.
In no way should a utility be liable for the actions of its customers. When a psychopath electrocutes puppies in their garage is the electricity company held liable?
When someone floods their neighbours basement with a garden hose is the water company liable?
Then it should not be so for ISPs, who
Grow up. (Score:2)
I pay for my bandwidth. What I do with it once I've paid for it is none of my ISP's goddamned business. They aren't my parents, they aren't the government, they aren't the police.
You signed a contract.
One of many contracts you have signed which insist that you play by the rules --- and no less enforceable when push comes to shove.
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They aren't my parents, they aren't the government, they aren't the police. They're service providers.
No, it's a private company with which you have a contract, part of which is that you will not open access to their service to a third party. You are breaching your contract, and they can terminate your agreement at least, sue you for it at worst.
I run a Tor relay 24/7 on my connection, so I'm sort of in the same boat as you. I'm under no misconception, however, that this breaches the terms of my contract. I'd be happy for the situation you refer to above, where internet service is provided as a utility, bu
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I pay for my bandwidth. What I do with it once I've paid for it is none of my ISP's goddamned business.
You signed a contract that said you won't share it with another residence. There might even be local laws around it too, since it is local laws that gave the ISP the right to run the cables. If the contract did not state that, then one person one the street could run a cable to neighboring houses and cut the ISPs revenue significantly. Similarly, you can't run a cable TV wire to your neighbors house either, for the same reason.
When you say "I ALREADY PAID FOR IT" that isn't necessarily true. You didn't
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I have a cunning plan, my lord.
- The guest doesn't get open internet access.
- The wifi provider opens up a secure tunnel with a server designated, or owned by the guest. The ISP is foiled.
- The guest connect to it and sets up a secure tunnel itself, through which he accesses the internet. The wifi provider is foiled as it cannot snoop on it and cannot be considered responsible by what the guest does, morally. Legally it's another matter, but then, the law is immoral. Also if the gues
Reckless (Score:5, Insightful)
Recommending this to users who don't know exactly what they are doing can only be described as reckless. Without significant changes to the law and/or the way the internet works, opening up your network to complete strangers is a minefield and a lawsuit waiting to happen, even if you keep the public Wifi separate and only allow internet access. Please don't put "civilians" at risk to further your cause.
Re:Reckless (Score:5, Insightful)
This. If I didn't have to worry about people torrenting movies or downloading kiddie porn, I'd be happy to share some bandwidth. Unfortunately, the real world dictates I not even consider this.
Re:Reckless (Score:4, Insightful)
Just wait till someone sends a bomb threat using your Wifi and you find police at your doorstep wanting to arrest you! The legal framework and the enlightened enforcement do not exist as yet for sharing your internet connection safely with strangers.
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If someone wants to send a bomb threat using someone else's wifi there is a Starbucks or a McDonalds on every corner.
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Just wait till someone sends a bomb threat using your Wifi
That's why I don't own a cellphone. Someone might clone my phone and phone in bomb threats.
I also don't throw away any garbage, i just pile it up in my basement. If I throw it out it might end up at some crime scene somehow and get traced back to me. I just can't take the risk. SWAT teams could break in at night and kill the dog... its happened to people.
Me, I've always liked the state motto of NH... "Live Free or Die." because that about sums it up.
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Unfortunately, the real world dictates I not even consider this.
Just to split hairs - the legal world is the fictional one. In reality people can just share their connections with others in a grand mutual aid* collaboration. It's the made-up rules (legal fictions) that screw it all up.
Granted, there are large numbers of men with guns who hold these fictions to be reality.
* mine blocks outgoing SMTP, limits to 1Mbps max with a floor around 384Kbps if I'm using the rest.
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Yes, and in the 'real' world anyone can break into your home, take your stuff, rape you, kill you, and eat your liver with fava beans and a nice chianti.
So forgive me for staying in the fictional 'legal' world; I'm not quite ready to throw away all of civilization whenever it happens to inconvenience me.
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mine blocks outgoing SMTP
Including authenticated [wikipedia.org] message submission on port 587 with STARTTLS [wikipedia.org]?
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mod +10 informative (Score:2)
this is one of the times in which busting the top off the thermometer is justified. unless the MafIAA is vanquished, this is infinite jeopardy.
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This. If I didn't have to worry about people torrenting movies or downloading kiddie porn, I'd be happy to share some bandwidth. Unfortunately, the real world dictates I not even consider this.
I hear this all the time, but I've yet to see a single example of someone being prosecuted for someone else's use of their bandwidth. On the other hand, I've seen numerous cases of judges ruling that merely because activity occurred on a specific IP address, that doesn't prove that the owner of that address did them. If anything, it seems to me that sharing your connection provides you with plausible deniability.
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People have had their homes raided and their equipment seized or have been sued for damages because someone else abused their internet connection.
Cite?
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People have had their homes raided and their equipment seized or have been sued for damages because someone else abused their internet connection.
Cite?
wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting
Way to pretend to answer the question while really ducking it. Have you considered a career in politics?
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This. If I didn't have to worry about people torrenting movies or downloading kiddie porn, I'd be happy to share some bandwidth. Unfortunately, the real world dictates I not even consider this.
Hm. For several years in Colorado Springs, I shared out my internet access to any and all. The SSID was PublicDontAbuse (just in case anyone here on Slashdot saw it.) I did not monitor or log anything that happened on it.
Normally, I would notice police cars and real estate agents parked on the street behind my house for a half hour or so. I felt good knowing that I was helping random people and making their lives just a bit better.
It has been a few years now since I have done it (long story) so I am sure if
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Without meaning to sound harsh, it sounds as though you've got nothing left to lose, and in this kind of situation that is a definite boon; such people are nigh on unstoppable. However, a father of two young children dragged through the courts on CP charges and
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Reckless (Score:2)
Nonsense. There is no law that makes you responsible for what other people download. (at least, not in any sane first world country)
It is a disgrace that you are so terrified of your government that you think sharing your bandwidth with a stranger is dangerous.
I have been helped many times in the past by the kindness of strangers who left their wifi open - and I will continue to leave my wifi open for other strangers to benefit in return.
Many (most?) modern routers support this safely by allowing you to pro
Something like this already exists... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Something like this already exists... (Score:5, Informative)
No, this is different. FON gives all guest users their own network address and keeps their account on file for the connection, so whatever they do isn't tied to your account. The OpenWireless router does no such thing. While it separates the guests from each other and your local network, their internet access uses your public IP address and if they do anything illegal or offensive, your account comes up for that. This is intentional, sort of, because these "freedom activists" want to create a critical mass of open wireless networks where the IP can not be used to identify the actual perpetrator. One can only hope that they make this very clear to anyone interested in their router. It's one thing to stand up and say "I am Spartacus", it's quite another to point at someone else and say "he is Spartacus".
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these "freedom activists" ... the actual perpetrator.
If someone is active in supporting freedom then they are a freedom activist - no scare quotes needed. Which concept are you implying is dubious: freedom or being an activist? OTOH people can be identified and punished for saying or doing things online that have no victims apart from political ideologies - so they are 'perpetrators' not perpetrators.
It's one thing to stand up and say "I am Spartacus", it's quite another to point at someone else and say "he is Spartacus".
I don't quite get this, if you explicitly allow some dissident (called 'Spartacus', say) to use your network and identify as yourself, how isn't that you yours
I am fine with sharing as long as QoS and firewall (Score:5, Insightful)
I am fine with sharing my network and wi-fi bandwidth, as long as two conditions are met
1. That the open public Wi-Fi is QoS, so it cannot max out my connection, and starve my own private WPA2/AES wi-fi of needed bandwidth (So yes, I will share, but am gonna be a bit frugal on how much I am willing to share. Don't want someone streaming HD movies for free, but email and regular web browsing bandwidth is OK.)
2. That the open Wi-Fi is fully firewalled and separate from my own home network.
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Spammers or hackers could get your IP turned off. But I'd do it anyway to be helpful.
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funny you have no conditions regarding the legal framework; you are perfectly fine with getting blamed for the actions of those who use your network (e.g. door getting kicked in at 3am and armed statsi knocking you and your loved ones to the floor)
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oh, sharing wifi is a moral obligation and "the right thing to do"? you are funny
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Sharing wifi is moral, but it's not an obligation.
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maybe your neighbor had equipment that couldn't deal with particular security method, and so had open network and really felt you and others were stealing from him. how moral would that be?
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8 years and running:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FON
But keep in mind FON has weaknesses. It uses MAC filtering/whitelisting on an open network (at least it was when I stopped using it 2 years ago), users are at risk of session hijacking, so always logout when you are done using the accesspoint and avoid setting up any connection other that VPNs)
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Yup. If tomato or dd-wrt had this as a simple on/off feature, I would happily share 1/4 of my bandwidth.
Eh? (Score:3)
"with an aim of better securing networks and facilitating better use of finite broadband resources"
If we have finite broadband resources, and they are already scarce enough that customers are demanding more from their connections that can be given to them, why will allowing random passing strangers to decrease the amount of available bandwidth to everyone else help?
Sorry, it's just an open wifi hotspot. We don't want really them in our homes. We certainly don't want random passing strangers to have them on our connection and traceable only to ourselves, for the hassle if nothing else.
Surely my freedom of using my own computing resources trumps anyone else's?
The only thing I can see them useful for is hacking their firmware. Otherwise, I could just switch back on the various options my ISP tries to force onto my router to share with random strangers that I turned off in the first place.
Problem #1: Usage Cap (Score:5, Insightful)
My current router allows me to grant guest access to my cable modem with no fear of the guests accessing my local network. Unfortunately thanks to Netflix and Amazon, I'm barely staying within my usage cap with Comcast as it is. Comcast is looking for any excuse to automatically "upgrade" my monthly service for an additional fee, and I'm not going to make that possible by giving away free internet access.
Re:Problem #1: Usage Cap (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem #2: Liability
In my country, the owner of a router can be held liable for the data transmitted throught it. If some anonymous user uses an open WiFi connection to download child pornography or hacks the pentagon servers, the owner of the router can be held atleast partly responsible. I don't know about regulations in the USA, but I'd damn well make certain the law protects the owner of a router before advising them to open up the connection.
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Then again if everyone did this would that law make sense / be resonable to uphold?
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Uhh, practically everybody is pirating music and movies, and there is still a law that says this is criminal behavior.
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Then you're doing it.
If you just allow anyone Internet access through you?
(Which in itself isn't a crime.)
But ok.
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The EFF has more than a few lawyers. I would like to see their statement on legality, but I doubt they would trick the masses into a liability that large.
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There is an easy fix to this law. Just reprogram the Google van to connect to every open wifi and download something illicit. Make sure the van drives to affluent neighborhoods where politicians live.
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> in my country, the owner of a router can be held liable for the data transmitted throught it.
what country is that?
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Can't you disable wifi on their cable modem and connect the modem to your own wifi access point? Or if not, put the modem into a Faraday cage and then connect it to your own access point?
(Yes, I know, outside the limits of ability of "most" of their customers.)
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yeah and you leave cans of coke on the street with a sign saying free coke and sue the people who drink it too?
and it doesn't matter how they accessed your network.. it just matters more for you that you can show that someone else accessed the network(possibly).
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Thing is, this helps your defense attorney: "Your honor, my client allowed others to access his network, so there is no clear evidence that he was trafficking in child pornography. The computers (and Nintendo 3DS) that the police broke his door down to seize show no evidence of such pornography. Certainly your honor isn't trusting the newspaper headline published the day after the raid. Since there is no evidence, I ask that he be released from jail, and that the police department return his computers.
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See Bill you are the problem. If ten years ago you promoted open wifi and shared your network, and it was widely adopted in 2014. Then Companies like comcast would've had a much harder time implementing bandwidth-caps. But bill you live in a police state, scared all the time, so to pacify your fear you must instil it in your neighbours.
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Unfortunately thanks to Netflix and Amazon, I'm barely staying within my usage cap with Comcast as it is.
What the hell are you downloading? Raw uncompressed blu-ray images? According to Netflix's usage page [netflix.com], the highest quality streams use HD: 3 GB per hour, 3D: 4.7 GB per hour, Ultra HD 4K: 7 GB per hour.
For a HD stream, it would take you over 80 hours to reach 250GB. 40, 2hr HD movies. Wow. Just Wow. The average American watches 2.8hrs [bls.gov] of TV per day. If you download 100% of only HD content from Amazon/Netflix every month you'll be about at the 80+hrs / month of usage. Still a lot of downloading, given that
Over 330 hours per month for family of four (Score:3)
For a HD stream, it would take you over 80 hours to reach 250GB. 40, 2hr HD movies. Wow. Just Wow. The average American watches 2.8hrs of TV per day
With four Americans in a household, that could reach 11.2 hours per day, or over 330 hours per month.
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You should vote with your dollars, find a provider that will give you unlimited usage with higher bandwidth. I'm sure there's plenty of ISPs that would be willing to drop an OC48 (2.4Gb) into your house for a quite a few grand a month.
That's like saying if the local gas chain started charging $4 per fluid oz you have no grounds for complaint since you could have a tanker truck fill up a 10,000 gallon tank in your yard. And why do you need more than a moped anyway? Caps are not justified by the ISP's level of congestion or by the price the ISP pays for bandwidth, it's price-gouging. As long as ISPs hang their wires all over the public ways and get exclusive franchise agreements customers should not put up with being scammed.
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I average 400-500GB per month, no torrents.
I have a family of 4 with Amazon Prime and Netflix.
Since we don't use cable TV, many of us just have streaming shows on for background noise while working. We treat it like broadcast but stream it.
Don't do it in totalitarian USA (Score:1, Insightful)
This country is out of control. No other country on Earth puts large number of its own citizens in jails. Streets are filled with security forces like in some banana republic.
Two of my sons are welcomed by cop at the entrance to school. It is the same at grocery shop and movie theater. Police is buying military equipment and heavily trained forces in Iraq are under direct control of Washington administration in case people will unleash their unhappiness on the street.
North Korea man, it is freaking North Ko
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If you happen to need cops when you're in Canada, simply go to your nearest Tim Hortons.
this a test (Score:1)
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You mean like CableWifi does? (Score:2)
Help Yourself (Score:2)
My WiFi SSID has been called "Help Yourself" for years. I've never had any issues, probably because every router I've had has turned out to be so crappy that I can barely get a signal from the other side of the house, let alone the street. Every now and then I see some people joining. I don't use WiFi encryption, because I don't think the speed loss is worth it, and all of the websites I visit that contain information I don't want to share use HTTPS.
Open your Wifi and your mind will follow (Score:1, Interesting)
The gov't would like every act online to be traceable to an individual who can then be held responsible for it.
Freedom of speech means freedom from punishment because of your speech. The Soviets used to have a joke "everybody in Russia is free to say wha
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Open Wireless - Protections for Client? (Score:1)
The FAQ and info on https://openwireless.org/ [openwireless.org] doesn't seem to address security and privacy from the "guest user" point of view. They do have a link at the top "Using a network named "openwireless.org"? Check out important information about this network." which provides information for a guest user - but only mentions about being considerate and not abusing the service.
How does a user establish trust with each Open Wireless access point in order to determine it is not a rogue/fake AP? How are potential guest
For those interested in HOPEX (Score:1)
Come to NYC on July 18-20, http://x.hope.net/ [hope.net] at the Hotel Pennsylvania, just across the street from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.
Tickets are only $120 for all three days.
This year's keynote is Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame.
Tor router (Score:1)
Who pays for my bandwidth? (Score:2)
I've got a reasonably fast connection (50 megs down, 10 megs up), but I have a cap. My ISP charges $0.50 per gig overage, who is going to pay for that when strangers pump my monthly bill up?
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Now THAT is impressive. Here in the Northeast US, where we have AT&T for phone and DSL, each GB over your cap, costs $15.00. It used to be $10.00, but they jumped it 50% without warning a few months ago.
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My ISP is an indie ISP. They used to charge $0.25 per gig, but then the incumbent carriers got the federal regulator to increase their tariffed costs to smaller ISPs by an order of magnitude (incumbents now get to charge indies up to $20/megabit/month for connecting to their networks), so it had to go up.
My ISP does still have overage caps (of $50) on their slower tiers (as in it's unlimited after that much overage), and they are trying various strategies to ease the pain on customers (I have a 300GB cap, b
Run it all through Tor? (Score:2)
I've had a FON device, and I think its main protection against malicious (illegal, stupid) use is that other users on the open FON channel are either authenticated FON users roaming to your access point or paid users who again aren't really anonymous.
What I was wondering though is whether each of these openwireless devices could also be set up as a Tor entry node for all of the free traffic going out that way? Think something like the Tails distro, where you don't record anything, and don't really want to e
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TAILS is an interesting suggestion, because it includes a general IP 'replacement' stack called I2P. And THAT is what the EFF should be encouraging people to spread as far and wide as possible: A P2P-routed, mesh-like, torrent-ready, anonymized network connection that isn't limited to TCP and browser stuff. Its even got secure decentralized messaging (also inspired by bittorrent as it uses DHT), so no more Tormail type incidents.
I almost feel like the current generation of network experts, even people like
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Something comprehensive would indeed be much better than solving for one layer. The challenge I find is trying to get people to pay attention to any of it at all, never mind changing everything they do in one fell swoop. For sure, making secure options the default is a huge step, but in this case, we're still relying on whatever compromised client gets allowed on to the wifi.
I do this as EFF has asked before for others to it (Score:2)
I've seen 34 people (connections once), it all works fine until you can feel something odd, as which time I'll shut down my HotSpot, for a few days.
I do help many people (34 mayhaps) as it's always being used, and I noticed cars parked across the street or out of the way.
Yes I run a HotSpot as per EFF, yet will shut it down in a heart beat if it just feels funny (my connection).
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What does "funny" feel like?
(Serious question, not trolling you.)
Open Wifi over Tor (Score:1)
How about open wifi over Tor - that would allow you to share but avoid problems associated with liability for actions done on your connection and an ISP would have a job proving you were sharing their network capacity too.
All you need is a router that supports multiple SSID's and segmentation of them, a couple of clever firewall rules and Tor's Transparent Proxy [torproject.org] support.
OpenBTS (Score:2)
Fools! They should be doing this with OpenBTS. WiFi range sucks.Yes the fight would be harder but WTF, the EFF has gotten wussy.
Dreams of reality (Score:2)
In an alternate reality where every packet is magically stamped with an identifier of person directly responsible for its generation by an infallible "packet fairy" would the world be better or worse off?
Personally I believe as long as humans continue to prove themselves incapable of handling power the more access and anonymity the better off on balance we all are.
Seems insufficient to consider only risks on one side of the ledger when weighing a course of action. At least RTFA's FAQ...
Opposite problem (Score:2)
Why would I trust your wifi to start with ? It's name is "freewififorall" and I should hope it is not a honeypot to eavesdrop my credit card number when it is transiting on the wire(less), or scan my open ports if I connect ?
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On my side, every single packet across the wireless side of the router, goes through a local Squid instance. Not only can I inspect the logs, but I have Squid filtering out tens of thousands of sites, domains, ad spamming pages and other things, so if there were any abuses coming, I could just block those too, or turn on other block index files and filter off even more.
Easey peasey.