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August 3, 2008
"Nobody Got Shot" Isn't an Argument Against WPA.
Programming Note: I’ll be on vacation this week, and I probably won’t be blogging. Be back next Monday. Hope you all have a great week.
This could have gone much worse:
“When Indian police investigating bomb blasts which killed 42 people traced an email claiming responsibility to a Mumbai apartment, they ordered an immediate raid.
“But at the address, rather than seizing militants from the Islamist group which said it carried out the attack, they found a group of puzzled American expats.
“In a cautionary tale for those still lax with their wireless internet security, police believe the email about the explosions on Saturday in the west Indian city of Ahmedabad was sent after someone hijacked the network belonging to one of the Americans, 48-year-old Kenneth Haywood.
“The IP address for the email claiming responsibility for an obscure group called the Indian Mujahideen was traced by police to Haywood’s laptop. They then raided the plush 15th-floor apartment.
“Officers believe the email could have been sent by anyone within two floors of Haywood’s flat.
“‘He has never been detained, but we have called on him and questioned him as part of the investigation,’ said Parambir Singh, a senior officer in the anti-terrorism squad.”
Back in January I noted that Bruce Schneier doesn’t secure his wireless network, and at the time I said:
“there are lots of open access points businesses are happy to provide, and unless you’re the type to shrug off stuff like ‘cops impound all your computer stuff and you end up having to cop a plea for something that’ll end up getting you on a registered sex offender list,’ the consequences of not flipping the encryption switch will be brutal.”
He remains unmoved, arguing “the terrorists are more likely to use the open network at the coffee shop up the street and around the corner.”
To which I still have to argue “better them than me.”
And this commenter on his blog:
“I have a dream that maybe some day, law enforcement will be aware of the facts of open wireless networks and networks like Tor.”
I like geek self-pity as much as the next guy, but come on! The police traced the e-mail to a specific IP, quickly conducted a raid, then let the matter rest at some questioning. Nobody was detained, nobody was, apparently, harmed. The police seem to be quite aware that there was an open wireless network involved (something they couldn’t have known, in a residential case, anyhow, until they got a look at the premises). How much more aware do they need to be? Omniscient?
It just sucked for the people hanging out in the apartment to stare down the barrel of a counter-terrorism squad’s guns.
And to bring it back around to the point I made in January, India’s police seem a lot more chill about this matter than the average American prosecutor would seem to be about pornography.
Posted by mhall at 4:03 PM | Add Comment
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