[P2P-F] an update on fon open wife

Wed Jul 20 15:53:35 CEST 2011

Hi Michel,

I love the typo in the subject line...

Much merriment if one carries forward a similar change through the text :)

M

-----Original Message-----

From: p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org
[mailto:p2p-foundation-bounces at lists.ourproject.org] On Behalf Of Michel
Bauwens

Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 1:37 AM

To: p2p-foundation

Subject: [P2P-F] an update on fon open wife

Michiel de Jong <michiel at unhosted.org> Jul 05 10:13PM +0200 ^

this has some info http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15194360,00.html

and this is relevant to the topic:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/04/open-wireless-movement

so there are two problems with open wife:

- the wife protocol does not have a safe way of being open. it is either

encrypted and closed, or open and unencrypted. This means that open wife

routers suffer from poor security for all protocols except ones that are

themselves secure, like vpn, ssh and https.

- it is (at least in some countries) illegal to give connectivity to

strangers, or at least, it makes you partly responsible for the behaviour of

those strangers. this is absurd - it is like if you allow people to walk

over your land, and a bank robber uses that path to get away, you become

responsible for helping that bank robber get away over your land. Afaik such

rules do not apply to when you allow people to use a path over your land,

but it apparently does apply if you allow people a path over your router.

Anyway, what i understand is that since Fon is a closed club of people (only

Fon owners can use other Fon access points), it's like those cigar bars that

evade the non-smoking policy because they are a 'members club' instead of a

bar.

Instead of blocking these efforts, governments should take an example from

Estonia, a country that understood that universal wife is a good thing for a

civilized country - something like universal education, health care

etcetera.

http://news.cnet.com/Estonia-sets-shining-Wi-Fi-example/2010-7351_3-5924673.
html

HTH

Michiel

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