[geeks] Unsecured Wifi connections now illegal in part of India.

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 11:02:08AM -0500, der Mouse wrote:
>All these arguments have the flaw that as far as I know nobody has
>claimed the Mumbai attackers were _operating_ an open wifi hotspot.

No, the problem that the police want to address is that they were
literally "war driving". The drove around until they found an usecured
WiFi network and used it to communicate via email with their superiors in
Pakistan. 

Whatever method the police used to this out, they traced the emails to people's
homes and raided them, expecting to find terroists. Instead they found
ordinary people who were surprised to find all these men with guns pointed
at them breaking into their homes.

You can understand the police's position, they are trying to protect 
innocent people from being hurt while not hampering their efforts to
stop terrorists. 

You can ask "why don't they just go up to the door and ask", or call them
on the telephone, but if the people in that house really were terrorists, it
would at the least allow them to escape, or at the worst force them to 
confront the police, probably shooting at them or blowing themselves up.

Geoff.


-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM