[Nottingham] Considering the last talk...

Paul Tew binarybod at gmail.com
Sat Apr 30 10:51:10 UTC 2011


On Wed, 2011-04-27 at 13:21 +0100, Sergiusz Pawlowicz wrote:

> I always had, and will have my wifi open, forever. I am paying for it
> and I can do everything I want with it. It is not my job to relive
> police.
> 
> 


Speaking as a police officer I have no wish whatever to restrict your
right to have an open wireless network. This is a free country and long
may it remain so.

You just need to be aware that if someone uses your IP address to
download some unlawful material then the police would be reasonable in
suspecting that you did it. This would involve them applying (and
probably getting) a warrant. You would then receive a knock on the door
one morning and suffer the indignity of being arrested on suspicion of
downloading unlawful material and having ALL your computer and storage
devices seized. The process of finding out that you are in fact innocent
is potentially quite lengthy and all this time you would be without your
machines...

It's a horrible process, I wouldn't wish it on any innocent person,
truly I wouldn't. It isn't the police who need the relief, they are just
following up on a report of unlawful activity and doing their job.
No-one has a responsibility to make their (my) job easier.

For my part, I have WPA2, MAC filtering and hide the SSID. None of this
is foolproof but it ups the ante a bit. In addition, when the wifi isn't
being used, it isn't on - try using it then (also stops google
harvesting my MAC address) ;o).

Paul
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