[dundee] Open Wi-Fi 'outlawed' in Digital Economy Bill

[Iain Barnett]

Sorry for the slow reply, I didn't have any internet access! :D

On 2 Mar 2010, at 09:41, Lee Hughes wrote:

> Correction Iain, reading the thread (that my email client manged beyond
> belief) that you do understand wifi and encryption etc etc,
> 
> I'll take those comments back! sorry! :-)
> 

Well, your karma was that after the first line I didn't read your comments either :-)


On 2 Mar 2010, at 01:22, Rick Moynihan wrote:

> 
> Equating "crap network security" with open hotspots is a sweeping
> generalisation, and I find it hard to believe that legislation is
> going to improve the security of the average household.
> 
> Networking is not a crime any more than building roads is, and we all
> know bank robbers use Roads for their get-aways!  The world needs more
> free, open registration-less WiFi, not less.

I _do_ equate anonymous access with a bad setup. If you can give me one good reason to run a network that allows entirely anonymous access (at the local level) that would make sense to anyone who spends their time running a network, you go for it! I can't see "Completely Open and Anonymous Networks 101" reaching a (good) network security course any time soon :-p

I could only come up with avoiding the long arm of a totalitarian regime, but that stretched the point into a new one. Or the "Sex And The City meets the Spice Girls" argument - because we want to! :-p Always a poor one for me. 

However, due to this discussion I had a look and I did find an article in which Bruce Schneier advocated it (for himself, at least). Schneier's arguments rely on the practical aspect of (and I paraphrase) "it doesn't matter to me" or "it's bad elsewhere so why bother, better to focus on other aspects", because the technical reasons are so weak, which, to his credit, he admits.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html

It didn't convince me at all. Comments section was quite good though.


On 1 Mar 2010, at 19:34, Arron M Finnon wrote:

> Under the DPA your only allowed data which your have a right to have, not data you wish you had.  A forum requires interaction via email, not too hard of an argument to make, not quite the same for wifi.  either way what small business need is a little more red tape in supplying services to its customers, and an increase in insurance for the risk i mean that seems the way to encourage a digital britan

That's not right and never has been. For a start, it's the person giving the data who has rights, not the service. A service can ask for whatever they say they require to set up a contract, not what is needed to actually run the service. Quick search... ah!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998#Conditions_relevant_to_the_first_principle

Furthermore, you can run forums with anonymous access, they're not some sort of special service apart from everything else, and neither is wifi. The logic, therefore, didn't hold.

I increasingly lost the will to keep reading after that*, as you were arguing against points I hadn't made, having characterised them as black and white thinking, which only really showed up in your own responses as they set up a false dilemma. When dealing with humans there are things like "reasonable" and "mitigation". Things like leeway exist, or demonstration of having made a decent effort. Making somebody legally responsible for a road doesn't make them responsible for every bad piece of driving on it - that's obvious and _implied_ by use of the word "responsibility" - its use begs further definition, agreement or examination. Otherwise we all slip into the whirlpool of doom that is the Perfection Fallacy. But I'm not going to answer every point because it would be fighting a strawman.

I'm not saying you set that up deliberately, but it just seemed to me you missed the point of what I was trying to say. Maybe I put it across badly, or maybe you're suffering from the same non-reading/mis-characterisation disease as Lee? :-p

Regards,
Iain

*I did read it though ;)

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