Unsecured wifi might be contributory negligence

Igor Mozolevsky mozolevsky at gmail.com
Fri Feb 24 17:41:37 GMT 2012


On 24 February 2012 17:20, Ian Batten <igb at batten.eu.org> wrote:

> Surely his solicitor would respond that the accuracy of the logs can
> only be discussed by an expert witness with the skills to forensically
> analyse them?   You can't attest to the accuracy of something you
> don't understand.  The whole thing's absolutely absurd.

I, too, was thinking that the idea is utterly unworkable---what
proportion of the population at large knows that their router a) keeps
some form of a log, b) knows how to access those logs, and most
importantly c) have the technical knowledge to comply with such
legislation if it were enacted?

Moreover, if we are talking about the "open" APs, surely the only
things that would be logged are MAC addresses of stations that connect
to that AP? As no doubt, we all know, the technological skill involved
in spoofing those addresses to look like ones actually coming from AP
owner's network is next to most basic---all modern OSes even provide a
nice native GUI to do so. So even if there was a legislation forcing
those logs to be kept, the value of information in those logs would be
next to nothing...

Since as we are making absurd propositions, why not just force all
routers to use WPA-802.1X and have the state issue a certificate for
each station and access point upon homeowner's application?.. This,
certainly, would make Internet-banning orders easy to manage---all
someone has to do is disable access on the state-run RADUIS box ;-)

-- 
Igor M.



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