Techdirt is off for the long weekend! We'll be back with our regular posts tomorrow.
More On WiFi At The Convention
Following yesterday’s announcement that the RNC had decided to go sans official wireless, Newbury Networks pulled the same publicity stunt they did at the DNC where they wardrove around the convention and noted open access points and laptops that automatically logged on to their “honey pot” access point. Once again, while these announcements do make scary stories, they don’t reveal whether or not there’s a real problem. There are times when it’s perfectly reasonable to have an open access point, or to have a computer set up to see open access points. The security needs to be beyond that, in determining what your computer shares on a network or what a computer connecting to your network could do. The folks at Newbury decided against going that far, because doing so might step over the legal line, but just because a network is open or a computer connects to your network, doesn’t automatically mean danger. So, yes, WiFi security is important — and it’s quite likely that many of the access points and laptops were not properly secured, but based on the info given, the extent of the problem is not clear at all — despite the way the story is written.
