Would a firewall have protected Jammie Thomas from being sued by the RIAA Safenet

You misunderstood. It's not about punishing people who USE open Wifi networks.

It's about a woman who downloaded pirated music, claimed "Oh, somebody must have used my open Wifi", and got told by the judge that she gets at least part of the blame for the pirating.

USING open proxies etc. is legal in Germany, too - but if somebody does something illegal using such a proxy, the owner of the proxy can get serious trouble... hardly news for proxy operators, of course, but the new twist here was that the judge ruled that neglecting standard security precautions (encrypting the Wifi) is not a viable excuse anymore, as EVERY Internet user can be expected to learn how to use his equipment or to pay somebody to properly install it.

Logical next step would be to punish all the people who run zombies :-)

Juergen Nieveler

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com:

Carrying a chunk of encrypted data through national borders in todays paranoid culture - a world where we have to take our shoes off before we get on a plane - seems to me to be a sub-optimal solution.

Also, it's of doubtful use for the UK where RIPA means they could have powers to force you to provide decryption keys or face a two year sentence.

I think the OP just looked at the colo(u)rs on the map. Ten provinces, plus the Yukon, NWT, Nunavit, and hmm ... well, it does say Newfoundland _and_ Labrador, doesn't it?

But you gotta remember that this was the person talking about "all 49 states".. geography (or counting) doesn't appear to be a strong suit.

No, it was Texas...we seceded and formed our own planet.

The only way to do it is to go to a pubic wi-fi place to download. You will be safe then.

Only if they don't keep logs. Since a MAC is unique, if the public WI-FI spot was to register your MAC before giving you the key, you would be no safer.

To allow anonymous access is stupid.

The MAC usually can be changed ;-)

Juergen Nieveler

Your original post was "49 states in the Union", whereas the Union is the United Sates of America...there are 50 states in the Union

Your road map simply does not show off the states in the Union, only those on the North American land mass.

Got it? Good.

You are an idiot. Got it? Good.

PS: Can you list those Canadian provinces for us? And what is that elusive 49th state that you've found on "the landmass of North America?"

You truly are n idiot. Got it? Good. Bloody foreigners.

The landmass of NA would include Alaska, which is my guess. I thought it was a rather inelegant backpedal, but there it is.

And they say the US struggles with reading maps.

Is this the recommended procecedure for "anonymous" public hot spot?

1. Find public hot spot (using
   formatting link
   Turn off your wireless transmitter & go to that public hotspot
2. Change your MAC address to DEADBEEFCAFE (using MacMakeUp freeware)
3. Change your PC name (My Computer, Properties, Computer Name)
4. Change your login ID (create one for this session only)
5. Set up your (encrypted?) sandbox (sandboxie or truecrypt freeware)
6. ??? anything else ???
7. Start your browser sandboxed or on an encrypted disk
8. When done, turn off your wireless transmitter again.
9. Return all settings back to normal (non hotspot settings)

Are we safe if we follow these ten easy hotspot steps?

Yes, it can, but most people don't have a clue.

The US struggles with spelling (and most likely reading and writing).

Isn't the best way to be safe simply not to do illegal stuff with a wireless hotspot connection?

Launch a VPN client.

Even if it's only some free service like SecureIX, it will help preventing people in the direct vicinity to snoop your traffic.

Juergen Nieveler

anthropomorphically speaking

-Craig

Yep. But you also want to stop other people from doing illegal stuff with the data they stole from your legal connection...

If you use a public hotspot in a Starbucks or something like that, the connection is either unencrypted, or everybody knows the key (otherwise it wouldn't be public, after all).

Hence, everything you send over Wifi can be sniffed by people - if you access your POP3-mailbox using the normal protocol instead of POP3-SSL, everybody within radio range can read your username and password, and the contents of your mail. Same for non-HTTPS-webtraffic...

Juergen Nieveler

X-No-Archive: Yes

Well, with the ability to run a newspaper or radio station on the Internet, it is not uncommon for these "citizen journalists", working for these smaller outlets to hijack nearby wireless access points. And one way to avoid being identified through your MAC number is to purchase your equiipment with cash. That way there is no credit card or bank account data that can be traced to you. As a small webcaster, our radio station does do this quite often. We purchase all equipment with petty cash, so there is NOTHING that can be traced to our radio station, if they should ever try and trace any MAC numbers back to their owners. This allows us to even hijack wireless connections in Britain or Canada, despite it being illegal in both countries, and being that the equipment was paid for out of petty cash, there is no credit card or bank account trail that can be traced back to our radio station. Although the British laws on this are the most strict, there are no major figure skating events likely to be in Britain now unitil at least 2010, and that is only if Sheffield succeeds in its bid to get the World Championships.

That is the one weakness with relying on MAC addresses to indentify people who connect to your wireless access points. If the equipment was purchased with cash, there there is no credit card or bank account trail that will trace back to the equipment's owner(s).