[David Merrill]

Call me paranoid as some of you might; this came to my attention reading an article two months ago about a fellow arrested in Britain on a garden wall for accessing WIFI. Even in Britain, where they allegedly tax the airwaves (here we regulate them - FCC) I doubt anything became of the prosecution. Mainly because if somebody installs WIFI and fails to guard the WIFI with WEP, then that is basically consent for access through that point. There is no damage done.

What is more is that nobody can damage the WIFI owner's computer or even access it. And all criminal liability falls naturally on the address owner, not the owner of the access point - should there be any wrongdoing in cyberspace.

Naturally I looked closely at a clip designed to set up WIFI in the standard domain of revenue collections. This is one step closer to criminalizing people for accessing the Web and email on any available signal. View the attached video.

In the coffee shop scenario, as I understand it, the "hacker" is the coffee shop WIFI owner, able to access the internal workings of the WIFI settings, and the "victim" has signed onto a "work group network" so that the coffee shop owner can access his computer in the same manner as a supervisor at the workplace would.

Then they take this mock victim home to the viewer by saying that anybody accessing the Internet from outside your home can steal and delete files...

Especially with a Pocket PC, it is nice for the WIFI availablity to be so abundant that I no longer even need to look around for a signal when in an urban environment. I just hit Send/Receive and most times get my email. I never even know who provided the signal but thanks anyway.

The tendency to ingrain conditioning into the American TV viewer that WIFI is dangerous to your computer and identity security is disturbing to me. It seems a harbinger to legislation that will enable police to make arrests for accessing the Internet on any available signal - for of course, revenue purposes. It seems to me that we are being set up for more hidden taxation soon - WIFI Signal Jacking.

My posting is because if I am missing something in that video, about the dangers of WIFI, I would like to know. I can only hack into someone else's computer like in the News snippet, if I first get into the WIFI access point like the coffee shop owner's computer can? Otherwise, I do not have access to the other patrons' computers; right?


Regards,

David Merrill.


P.S. I am aware of sniffer programs that access through WEP by finding the security code. Most of these programs take hours to days, depending on how many people are accessing with the code legitemately. So for me, it is easier to try again later from a different location. No need to violate anyone's desire for security. Just the same; even this kind of hacking does not give access to the computers' files and peoples' identities. All that one achieves is as if the WEP was not enabled.