[geeks] Unsecured Wifi connections now illegal in part of India.

Jonathan C. Patschke jp at celestrion.net
Mon Jan 12 20:50:33 CST 2009


On Mon, 12 Jan 2009, Lionel Peterson wrote:

>> Dang, these governments have it all figured out.  They should just
>> outlaw terrorism, so that there won't be anymore terrorists.
>
> Better they should ignore that this may be how terrorists were able to 
> communicate?

Yes.

How many exabytes of data per year are transmitted via unsecured 802.11
connections, and how much of that data is terrorism-related?  For that
matter, how -trivial- is it to crack WEP and WPA-Personal?

Let's license paper and ink, too, since I hear terrorist print training
manuals on them.  And let's not allow people to have access to unsecured
video cameras that might be used to case targets for an attack.

If all the wireless network devices in India had spontaneously self-
destructed before the Mumbai attack had occurred, the terrorists wouldn't
have said "Oh, shit.  To bad we can't figure out how to communicate and
blow stuff up without WiFi.  Let's go home for tea, instead."

People will do bad things.  This alone is insufficient cause to harass
people who are not doing bad things.

To put it another way: those terrorists likely moved explosives along
"unsecured" roads.  Should we place checkpoints along all roads?

-- 
Jonathan Patschke ( "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever
Elgin, TX         (  figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."
USA               (                                     --George W. Bush



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