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

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 05:03:56PM +0200, Jonathan Groll wrote:

>You could of course open up your system as a tor node, or is that also
>illegal?

I think the whole point is to prevent people using someone else's 
home for "terrorist activities". That way when they trace an email or
VoIP call to a particular IP address, they can determine if it is
a public access point (e.g. a cafe) or someone's home.

If it's a home, they can use the email/VoIP call to get warrants to
wiretap, search, etc. 

The search after the Mubai killings was hampered by the fact they traced
an email (it may have been before actually) to a foreign national's rental
property, which made it suspicious. The owner of the connection was there
on a tourist visa, made many trips in and out of the country, sent photos
often, had VoIP conversations, etc. 

Upon investigation they found out he was a legitimate reporter. The 
terrorists just happend upon his unprotected connection. Meanwhile the 
police spent a lot of time investigating this guy for what could have
been easily avoided by putting an encryption key on his network.

It would not have stopped the terrorists, nor probably slowed them down
much, but it would have saved the police a lot of uncessesary work and
prevented them from braking into his house guns blazing, which did not
happen, but was a possibility.

Geoff.

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