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  Potato Head, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 2:12pm

  
  

  Who Will They Call?

  Well, who are they going to call for help enabling WEP?

   

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  mobiGeek, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 2:26pm

  
  

  Re: Who Will They Call?

  Whoever the product manufacturers can afford when customers insist on cut-throat prices.

   

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  Anonymous Coward, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 2:26pm

  
  

  Re: Who Will They Call?

  WEP Busters

   

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  ranon, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 2:30pm

  
  

  It's not that the terrorists were using WiFi to email each other, but that they were sending bomb threats using an open wifi network. In such a case it became impossible to track the sender of the mail.

   

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  Anonymous Coward, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 2:57pm

  
  

  Re:

  Sorry, logically explanations have been banned on techdirt's blog.

   

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  mobiGeek, Sep 18th, 2008 @ 5:03am

  
  

  Re:

  Email each other, email/chat bomb threats to others...regardless it is communication.
  
  But, as pointed out, if not WiFi then some other means of communication will be used.
  
  Why not ban the telephone? Why not ban the Internet altogether? Why not ban plain brown envelopes?

   

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  Johnny Canada, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 3:06pm

  
  

  Then they will ban
  
  Payphones
  
  Pay as you go Cells
  
  Even the Post office must close

   

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  Vinod, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 3:44pm

  
  

  They are scared

  Well - they are scared. They won't end up doing it, but I think they might take other actions to monitor all forms of communications (as we do in the US). India has already started requiring an ID in order to get a prepaid phone. You must have either a national ID, or a passport that is kept on file. Blocking wi-fi would be impossible to enforce.

   

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  Ashwin, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 4:15pm

  
  

  No go

  This is the problem with India! With a chunk of the populace illiterate and a chunk of the politicians handling portfolios they never understand properly, the laws that come out are pretty absurd. The way to solving terrorism is not by curbing the lifeblood of its new economy, but by increasing and training its law enforcement agency. India's clash with terrorism goes way back before 9/11. Yet, the number of leads and successful case records are almost zero. Bomb blasts are de riguer. The police make a lot of smoke and fire by arresting suspects and then bank on the same thing each time: the public memory is short.
  Indians are resilient and extremely shrewd. They find a way around problems, especially technical problems. You are talking about a country whose street vendors software-hacked open the iPhone even before it was made available legally in the country without any jailbreaking software. The computer tech support guy will fix your Vonage router even though it is not technically sold in the country. And you would think that after the WiFi ban (if it can be implemented), people won't find a way around it?
  As usual, the public will forget this also without holding the politician's feet to the fire about terrorism preventive measures.

   

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  Anonymous indian, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 4:42pm

  
  

  Re: No go

  I think you missed the point. One of the main reasons they want to ban open Wifi is because with the recent terrorist activity and the threats, it is almost impossible to track the senders.

   

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  Anonymous Coward, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 5:21pm

  
  

  Re: Re: No go

  Anonymous indian -> "I think you missed the point. One of the main reasons they want to ban open Wifi is because with the recent terrorist activity and the threats, it is almost impossible to track the senders."
  
  and if you tracked everything then IP and MAC spoofing would no longer work and in addition, cracking weak passwords would be made ineffective.
  
  Wow, what a good solution !

   

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  Mark, Sep 17th, 2008 @ 4:34pm

  
  

  ban everything

  then they should ban cars since they used cars for the bombs !

   

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  another mike, Sep 18th, 2008 @ 4:28pm

  
  

  my city made wardriving illegal. and connecting to someone's home wi-fi. the cable cabal had enough sway to get their TOS passed as law. they did it in exchange for promising to finally roll out a proper high speed internet and not do it as half-arsed as they'd done in the past. on the television side, the city won the argument and the cableco had to promise to offer better channels and HD or the city wouldn't renew their monopoly.

   

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  Erik, Sep 22nd, 2008 @ 2:49pm

  
  

  Officials "believe" an open Wifi signal was used but they have no way to know if their hunch is correct? Wow, that's, um, shockingly stupid of them. I get their intention but the implementation is overly draconian and utterly stupid.

   

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  Indian, Sep 24th, 2008 @ 2:36am

  
  

  Meh. Who the hell gives a damn pig's arse what they ban? As Ashwin said, morons implement laws re. things they have no mental capacity to understand. Other morons will make some sort of half-arsed attempt to implement said law. One week later, and everyone's back to their merry old ways, including the people, the cops, the politicians and the terrorists. Sigh...

   

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