Unsecured wifi might be contributory negligence

Igor Mozolevsky mozolevsky at gmail.com
Sat Feb 18 15:32:41 GMT 2012


On 18 February 2012 15:19, Roland Perry <lists at internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:

>> Is there anything of the sort wrt "securing" the wifi routers?
>
>
> Not yet, but policy is being formed in this area. Currently the USA is
> leading, but the UK often follows. Pardon me for bringing this to the list's
> attention.

>From a cursory reading of the article you pointed to, there doesn't
seem to be a codified obligation to keep your wifi secure State-side,
hence the obscure civil "test" lawsuit (although the article doesn't
actually provide a link to the court paperwork that was filed, which
would undoubtedly benefit this discussion).

If you are going down the road of forcing wifi routers to be secure,
then who is "responsible": the end user who "owns" the ISP connection,
the ISP who provides the router and goes out of their way to keep the
users from tinkering with the settings to minimise support costs, or
the router manufacturer? You can't force WPA2 on everyone (assuming
WPA2 is deemed "secure"), people still use computers with wifi cards
that are only capable of WEP, should those users be forced to junk
their laptops and upgrade or invest in more equipment? What happens if
that "security" is compromised? The landscape is entirely different
from the car examples discussed previously.


-- 
Igor M.



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