Rafael Lopez makes some interesting observations while testing out the BART beta wifi network.

From Rafael:

Today on the way home I was pleasantly surprised about this adhoc free public wifi that rode along with me from Montgomery to Balboa Park. The Bssid changed between stations. The thing that stuck out was the signal power. I had a solld half signal bar all the way down. Comparing it to wifi rail which is usually a quarter bar at best. I hope to find out how I can get on their beta list...

It stops streaming in the Powell tunnel

Edited April 24. 2007

Ok I tried streaming a video of my five year olds birthday party from my home pc. I ran the test between powell and civic center heading south at 6 pm. It didn't work. It played for about 10 seconds then the video buffered and then it didn't recover.

Maybe the BSSID changing had something to do with this? Who knows. I'd love a steady wifi connection
while riding through underground tunnels. We're still in beta - I know. I asked to be a "beta" tester from their website via their support email address. Still waiting to hear back from them.

from: http://geocities.com/rlymp/

Edited May 05, 2007

Today on the way home I was pleasantly surprised about this adhoc free
public wifi that rode along with me from Montgomery to Balboa Park. The
Bssid changed between stations. The thing that stuck out was the signal
power. I had a solld half signal bar all the way down. Comparing it to
wifi rail which is usually a quarter bar at best. I hope to find out
how I can get on their beta list.

This is such a dream come true, I'm still not convinced it wasn't a hallucination, but when I was riding BART home today from San Francisco's Civic Center Station, I opened up my laptop and ...it connected to BART's new WiFi network!

I watched in utter disbelief, as I clicked through to register an account for FREE access while the wireless network is in beta.

When the train went under the bridge, it went away. And it didn't come back up in Oakland, so when I got home I looked up this article in the SF Chronicle, which confirmed that it's only from Embarcadero through to Civic Center currently. But there is a time table for more stations to have access in the future.

San Francisco is the first in the nation to do this. How cool is that?

(article credits: Underground, but not unconnected -- BART offers wireless service to riders
by Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer)

BART has become the first transit system in the nation to offer wireless communication to all passengers on its trains underground, putting an end to miles of technological isolation for multitasking commuters with cell phones glued to their ears, Blackberry devices stuck in their palms and computers perched on their laps.

"The goal we have is to completely wire 100 percent of the underground so a passenger (on a wireless device) wouldn't know if they were above ground or underground,'' said Chuck Rae, BART's manager of telecommunications revenue. "It would be seamless.''

Some commuters riding under Market Street in San Francisco already are yakking on their phones, surfing the Web and sending e-mail. Within weeks, most passengers should be able to use wireless devices under San Francisco to phone in a pizza order on their way home.

"With the technology (making it possible), why should we go without it?'' teacher Bo Conley said Thursday on her way home to Hayward. "It's a bit of freedom to be able to call out. What if there was a disaster? It's a safety issue.''

Contractors recently wired the subways from the west end of the Transbay Tube to the Civic Center Station. Downtown Oakland is probably next, followed by Civic Center to Balboa Park, the Transbay Tube, the Berkeley hills tunnel and the Berkeley subway. The wireless companies will determine the timetable.

Five of the Bay Area's six wireless companies have signed up to use the system, Rae said, and the sixth is in negotiations. The arrangement will generate hundreds of thousands of dollars, and eventually millions, for BART.

When BART first broached the idea in mid-2001 of wiring its nether regions for wireless reception, many passengers squawked about having to listen to nonstop chatter from cellular phones.

In response, BART conducted a pair of polls -- one a random telephone survey, the other an online poll open to anyone with Internet access. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks occurred while the surveys were being taken, and BART officials believe the widely publicized use of cell phones during the attacks persuaded many passengers to support wiring the tunnels...

While not all commuters see the benefit of underground cell-phone service, it could help stave off fare increases. BART's deal with the phone companies for downtown San Francisco will bring in at least $408,000 a year. As additional stations, tubes and tunnels are wired, that amount could rise to more than $2 million a year.

It's a good deal, said Rae. BART pays nothing to install the antennas. Nextel serves as the coordinator, planning, paying for and overseeing the work. Other carriers have the right to buy in and to strike agreements to reimburse Nextel and pay annual fees to BART.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/19/MNGF2FR6C11.DTL

Underground, but not unconnected -- BART offers wireless service to riders

Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Saturday, November 19, 2005

* Printable Version
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Dwayne Jones, on BART at the Civic Center Station, is now... Anne Sparks checks e-mail while waiting for a train at BA... Chronicle Graphic

BART has become the first transit system in the nation to offer wireless communication to all passengers on its trains underground, putting an end to miles of technological isolation for multitasking commuters with cell phones glued to their ears, Blackberry devices stuck in their palms and computers perched on their laps.

"The goal we have is to completely wire 100 percent of the underground so a passenger (on a wireless device) wouldn't know if they were above ground or underground,'' said Chuck Rae, BART's manager of telecommunications revenue. "It would be seamless.''

Some commuters riding under Market Street in San Francisco already are yakking on their phones, surfing the Web and sending e-mail. Within weeks, most passengers should be able to use wireless devices under San Francisco to phone in a pizza order on their way home.

"With the technology (making it possible), why should we go without it?'' teacher Bo Conley said Thursday on her way home to Hayward. "It's a bit of freedom to be able to call out. What if there was a disaster? It's a safety issue.''

Contractors recently wired the subways from the west end of the Transbay Tube to the Civic Center Station. Downtown Oakland is probably next, followed by Civic Center to Balboa Park, the Transbay Tube, the Berkeley hills tunnel and the Berkeley subway. The wireless companies will determine the timetable.

Five of the Bay Area's six wireless companies have signed up to use the system, Rae said, and the sixth is in negotiations. The arrangement will generate hundreds of thousands of dollars, and eventually millions, for BART.

When BART first broached the idea in mid-2001 of wiring its nether regions for wireless reception, many passengers squawked about having to listen to nonstop chatter from cellular phones.

In response, BART conducted a pair of polls -- one a random telephone survey, the other an online poll open to anyone with Internet access. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks occurred while the surveys were being taken, and BART officials believe the widely publicized use of cell phones during the attacks persuaded many passengers to support wiring the tunnels.

Commuters interviewed in downtown San Francisco BART stations Thursday and Friday were mostly receptive to the idea of subterranean cell phone service, although some fretted that loud, ill-mannered callers would degrade the quality of their commutes.

Edgar Sanchez, a nursing assistant also from Hayward, can't yet receive a signal below ground on his Verizon cell. (He should be able to, Rae said, within two or three weeks.) Sanchez said it's important to him to be able to make or receive calls whether he's underground or above-ground.

"I wish it could work everywhere I go,'' he said. "Even underwater, swimming. "

But some BART riders, like Stephanie Elliott, a psychotherapist from Pacifica, aren't so sure of the need for constant connectivity.

"I don't think it's absolutely necessary,'' she said. "I think it encourages people to have too hectic a lifestyle. People are always online or hooked up and don't actually talk with other people except online.''

Besides, she said, BART's signal-free subways offer a convenient excuse not to talk with the office or answer e-mail during the commute to work.

"It's nice to be able to say, 'I'm sorry, I can't talk, I'm on BART,' '' she said. "I like that transition time. I like the ability to be unreachable. I think it's healthier for people."

But many BART riders welcome below-ground cell-phone service, although they worry about loudmouthed louts shouting into their cell phones to be heard over the train noise.

"It's great as long as people are considerate about the people around them when they use their phones -- keeping their conversations to a minimum, not being too loud or boisterous,'' said Ryan Bezenek, a San Francisco network engineer.

"Sometimes you get people who talk so loud you can hear every word,'' said Lorraine Garcy, a consultant from Discovery Bay.

Still, she favors BART's plans to bring wireless reception to its tunnels for safety and convenience.

"I'd like to see cellular availability every place,'' she said. "Would I use it? I don't think I've used my cell phone on BART ever.''

Rae said BART and the wireless companies know some riders will try to make calls over the din as BART roars and screeches through tunnels. But most of the business, he said, will be from people using wireless devices to read and send e-mail or browse the Internet.

"You could use your Blackberry to take care of all your e-mail on your way to work,'' he said. "But the trains are really too noisy (underground) to have an intelligent conversation.''

While not all commuters see the benefit of underground cell-phone service, it could help stave off fare increases. BART's deal with the phone companies for downtown San Francisco will bring in at least $408,000 a year. As additional stations, tubes and tunnels are wired, that amount could rise to more than $2 million a year.

It's a good deal, said Rae. BART pays nothing to install the antennas. Nextel serves as the coordinator, planning, paying for and overseeing the work. Other carriers have the right to buy in and to strike agreements to reimburse Nextel and pay annual fees to BART.

While other transit agencies have deals with specific cell-phone services, BART is the first in the nation to make a deal allowing underground access to all wireless companies and their customers, Rae said.

"It's nice to know we've plowed ground on this, and it's working,'' he said. "It's going to provide revenue to BART and convenience to our customers.''
BART's underground is going wireless

San Francisco stations where wireless devices work:

-- Embarcadero

-- Montgomery

-- Powell Street

-- Civic Center

San Francisco stations where wireless service is planned:

-- 16th Street Mission

-- 24th Street Mission

-- Glen Park

-- Balboa Park

East Bay stations where wireless service is planned:

-- Oakland 12th Street

-- Oakland 19th Street

-- Lake Merritt

-- North Berkeley

-- Berkeley

-- Ashby

Source: BART

E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

I know this is short notice, but it looks like there's a cool panel tonight on community wireless with Lawrence Lessig and other goodies.

http://www.media-alliance.org/calendar_event.php?eid=20050929140103620

Monday, October 10 2005 @ 07:00 PM PDT - 10:00PM
Where: 111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna Street
between 2nd and New Montgomery
San Francisco
Description:

Join Media Alliance for this dynamic panel discussion on
creating universal, affordable Internet access through municipal
broadband utilities. Featuring a presentation by Professor Lawrence
Lessig and a panel of local community Internet experts, the evening
will include Q&A with the audience.

After years of avdocacy by MA and other groups, Mayor Newsom announced
earlier this year his goal of free wireless Internet access for all San
Franciscans. Cities across the country are implementing municipal
projects, though with varying degrees of commitment to bridging the
digital divide.

This evening will explore the significant opportunities for city-run
projects to expand Internet access and usage by under-served
communities, and improve cost, service and consumer choice for
everyone.

The talk will be followed at 9pm by music from DJ's Kid Kameleon and
Ripley.

Cost: $5, Free for Media Alliance and EFF members

7-9 pm Discussion: Lessig, Panel, Q&A
9-10pm DJ's Kid Kameleon and Ripley

Hey New Yorkers -- just reminding you that if you make it to tomorrow's primary -- put in a vote for Andrew Raseij for Public Advocate. He's running on a platform of free wireless for the whole city.

For more info, check out the NY Times profile of him from last week.

According to his peeps, he's about bringing "a net-centric, bottom-up, transparent politics to life."

Andrew Raseij is running for Public Advocate in New York City on a platform of free wireless for all -- as a public service. Nice progressive thinking.

The NY Times just profiled him too.

For Mr. Rasiej (pronounced ra-SHAY), being public advocate - the person who succeeds the mayor if he or she is incapacitated - is not just about triaging complaints from the public. It is also about fostering a revolution in the way people and government exchange information.

"The traditional model is that we elect a public official and they're going to solve all our problems," said Mr. Rasiej, 47. "I don't believe that model works anymore. I don't believe that one politician can solve the problems of eight million New Yorkers. I do believe that eight million New Yorkers can solve their own problems."

He thinks that the Internet can help people organize and share ideas, and that the public advocate should make it possible for New Yorkers to use it. He has ideas aplenty about how that high-speed Wi-Fi could look.

For instance, Mr. Rasiej has begun a Web site (www.wefixnyc.com) where people can e-mail pictures of potholes with their locations, which become part of a photographic map.

After he found himself the sole person to testify at a City Council public hearing on education early this year, he created a new way for people to submit testimony over the Internet that produced about 700 submissions to a Council commission on school reform, said Melorra Sochet, the commission's deputy director. Mr. Rasiej said that as public advocate, he would encourage people to submit testimony and view hearings over the Web.

Here is the entire text in case the link goes bad:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/nyregion/metrocampaigns/02lives.html?oref=login
A Man With a Vision for Getting New York Wired

By ROBIN SHULMAN
Published: September 2, 2005

A recent steaming Tuesday found Andrew Rasiej at the 74th Street-Broadway stop of the No. 7 train in Jackson Heights, damp across the brow at 8 a.m. A novice politician running for public advocate - a kind of ombudsman for New Yorkers - he was proselytizing his faith in citywide wireless access to the Internet.

"I don't believe that one politician can solve the problems of eight million New Yorkers." Andrew Rasiej

"It's about connecting the knowledge with the need!" he yelled to a reporter as the train sped into the station; then, as passengers rushed off the train, he offered them his fliers and his too-genuine-for-a-politician smile.

For Mr. Rasiej (pronounced ra-SHAY), being public advocate - the person who succeeds the mayor if he or she is incapacitated - is not just about triaging complaints from the public. It is also about fostering a revolution in the way people and government exchange information.

"The traditional model is that we elect a public official and they're going to solve all our problems," said Mr. Rasiej, 47. "I don't believe that model works anymore. I don't believe that one politician can solve the problems of eight million New Yorkers. I do believe that eight million New Yorkers can solve their own problems."

He thinks that the Internet can help people organize and share ideas, and that the public advocate should make it possible for New Yorkers to use it. He has ideas aplenty about how that high-speed Wi-Fi could look.

For instance, Mr. Rasiej has begun a Web site (www.wefixnyc.com) where people can e-mail pictures of potholes with their locations, which become part of a photographic map.

After he found himself the sole person to testify at a City Council public hearing on education early this year, he created a new way for people to submit testimony over the Internet that produced about 700 submissions to a Council commission on school reform, said Melorra Sochet, the commission's deputy director. Mr. Rasiej said that as public advocate, he would encourage people to submit testimony and view hearings over the Web.

Mr. Rasiej also says that more civic uses should be found for Web sites like Meetup.com that connect people to others nearby interested in the same issue. For instance, a mother in the Bronx who is frustrated because emergency rooms in local hospitals lack equipment to handle asthma cases should be able to go to a Web site to connect with a mother in Brooklyn fighting for the same thing, he says.

But Mr. Rasiej faces an uphill fight in his effort to unseat the Democratic incumbent, Betsy Gotbaum, in the primary, since she enjoys wide support among the city's most powerful politicians. And even if Mr. Rasiej were elected, his ambitious plans could prove hard to turn into reality, particularly given the limited powers of the public advocate's job.

MR. RASIEJ, unmarried and with a girlfriend, lives in Manhattan at Spring and Lafayette Streets. He was raised in Bogota, N.J., by Polish immigrant parents; his father is a retired electrical engineer, his mother a homemaker. He attended Fordham Preparatory School, then - feeling guilty because his father had paid for his high school education - applied to a tuition-free arts, engineering and architecture college, Cooper Union, without ever having taken an art course. His undergraduate study of art and architecture taught him to be creative, he said.

He spent some time working in real estate, then got into the nightclub business. He owned Irving Plaza, the small concert hall near Union Square, and founded and directed the New York Nightlife Association.

But then he found technology, and became his own kind of public advocate. In recent years he has nominated himself to respond to problems - terrorism, miscommunication, a shortage of computer expertise in New York City schools - with innovations for the use of technology.

In 1997, he started the Mouse program that trains students to fix computers in New York City schools and administer the networks. After 9/11, he organized technology experts to volunteer to help small businesses in Lower Manhattan get back into operation.

Soon after that, he lobbied for the technology equivalent of a National Guard, a cadre of fiber-optic cable installers, network administrators and others to repair downed communications systems in an emergency and create new ones. A federal National Emergency Technology Guard, or NET Guard initiative, folded into a Homeland Security bill, was passed in 2002 but has yet to be carried out.

He also recently invested in Mideastwire.com, a new service that translates Arabic and Farsi news and opinion pieces into English to improve understanding of the Middle East.

But still frustrated by the relatively poor flow of information in New York City, he decided to run for public advocate. The wireless platform came out of Mr. Rasiej's sense that access to the Internet is a basic civil right.

In New York, citywide wireless access would cost $80 million, Mr. Rasiej said, and while as public advocate he could not finance it, he said he would push for legislation for the City Council to do so.

"If you create a wireless network, a whole host of things will happen that I can't control," he said.

Emergency medical workers could have instant information on the patient they are treating, he said. Firefighters could glance at the floor plans of buildings on their way to a fire. Police officers could look up license plate numbers and gain access to databases from any location.

Of his race for the advocate's office, Mr. Rasiej said: "It's the perfect office in that it has the most potential to be reinvented. It's so poorly defined."

"I can't live in a society where the political process is so dysfunctional," he said, "that collecting information to make the city function better is a politicized thing."

This movie documents several Foo Folks demonstrating and observing Dan Egnor's GPS Tron game. This is a game that uses wireless technology and GPS devices to play a meat space two-player running game on a field of grass. I played it. It was totally cool. (The kind of thing I could have easily played all morning if I didn't have important videoing to do :-)

Part 1 explains the interface and shows some players in action (one player is the game's creator, Dan Egnor, the other is Anselm Hook).

In Part 2, Brandon Wiley and Anselm Hook give us some first hand accounts of how the game is played.

Also included in the "All" movie is a partial interview with Dan Egnor about how he built the game, its current bugs, and how he plans on addressing them.

This is from October 12, 2003.

GPS Tron - All (Small - 13 MB)

GPS Tron - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 5 MB)

GPS Tron - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 4 MB)

Jennifer Granick, Director of the Stanford Center for Internet & Society was on The Jim Lehrer News Hour last week talking about wifi.

I've created clips for the whole segment, the whole segment in two parts, and Jennifer's quotes (edited together). There's also a little clip of firemen from the South San Mateo County Fire Department talking about how much wifi has helped them.

This is from the October 16, 2003 program.

Jennifer Granick On Jim Lehrer's Wireless Segment (Small - 3 MB)

Jim Lehrer News Hour On Wireless - All (Small - 22 MB)
Jim Lehrer News Hour On Wireless - Part 1 of 2 (Small - 10 MB)
Jim Lehrer News Hour On Wireless - Part 2 of 2 (Small - 12 MB)

So. San Mateo Country Firemen talking about wireless helping them (Small - 2 MB)

This is from October 12, 2003.

Foo A-Z

Rob Flickenger (Small - 8 MB)

This is wireless technologies (and, ideally community wireless networks) are so important. They help us to organize and communicate with each other.

This time it was to organize the protest. Next time it might be to discuss an important issue or to provide eye witness accounts of some other event that has just taken place. To let loved ones know that you're okay -- or to tell friends and neighbors where not to go when there's an emergency.

Wireless can help us get organized -- which is what it's all about right now.

Power To The People! :-)
Protesters relying on wireless, Web tools
By Jessie Seyfer for the Mercury News.

Sent from the thick of Thursday's massive demonstrations, these messages are an example of how protesters are using the latest technology to communicate and coordinate their activities.

Over the past three days, activists created pirate radio broadcasts that streamed live on the Web and were rebroadcast at numerous sites across the world. They uploaded live video of marches to the Internet and sent hundreds of digital images of clashes with police to the Web. And they communicated on those cell phones to keep close track of one another's whereabouts.

Instant communications helped the protesters stay ahead of events and solidify their community...

"Every desktop is a publishing station now, and so is every telephone, every PDA, every laptop with a wireless connection,'' said Howard Rheingold, author of the book "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.''

Police officers have used walkie-talkies and wireless radio communications for decades. Now, the digital revolution has put mobile technology in just about everyone's hands, he said. Thursday, demonstrators used it to play a cat-and-mouse game with police. Once protesters were forced out of one intersection, they coordinated by cell phone and swarmed another intersection, Rheingold said.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/5462381.htm

Posted on Sun, Mar. 23, 2003 story:PUB_DESC
Protesters relying on wireless, Web tools
By Jessie Seyfer
Mercury News

The bulletins came rapid-fire, straight from a San Francisco protester's wireless handheld device to a Web page for all the world to see.

``6:47 p.m.: Fremont street on-ramp shut down by demonstrators.'' ``8:00 p.m.: 6,000 strong at Castro and Market.'' ``10:00 p.m.: 500 marching down Howard.''

Sent from the thick of Thursday's massive demonstrations, these messages are an example of how protesters are using the latest technology to communicate and coordinate their activities.

Over the past three days, activists created pirate radio broadcasts that streamed live on the Web and were rebroadcast at numerous sites across the world. They uploaded live video of marches to the Internet and sent hundreds of digital images of clashes with police to the Web. And they communicated on those cell phones to keep close track of one another's whereabouts.

Instant communications helped the protesters stay ahead of events and solidify their community. But whether they went beyond the ranks of committed activists to reach a public that, polls show, support the war by ever-widening margins, remains to be seen.

Within the movement, the technology that is bringing the 1960s adage ``Do your own thing'' back to life is spreading around the globe, to hundreds of Web sites and makeshift newsrooms from Idaho to Jerusalem.

Experts say the technology-enabled, do-it-yourself ``Independent Media Center'' concept was born during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. All this digital documentation represents the face of the movement that is opposing the war in Iraq.

``It's now possible for us to create our own media,'' said a 26-year-old ``Otto,'' who was shooting video at a march Saturday in San Francisco for the Web site Indybay.org. ``We don't have to rely on the mainstream media to tell us what's going on, or have someone else filter what is happening. We can do it ourselves.''

Thursday's bulletins from a protester's handheld, for example, were sent to sf.indymedia.org, a Web page where demonstrators are encouraged to self-publish in just about any possible way.

``Every desktop is a publishing station now, and so is every telephone, every PDA, every laptop with a wireless connection,'' said Howard Rheingold, author of the book ``Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.''

Police officers have used walkie-talkies and wireless radio communications for decades. Now, the digital revolution has put mobile technology in just about everyone's hands, he said. Thursday, demonstrators used it to play a cat-and-mouse game with police. Once protesters were forced out of one intersection, they coordinated by cell phone and swarmed another intersection, Rheingold said.

Mercury News Staff Writer Dana Hull contributed to this report. Contact Jessie Seyfer at jseyfer@mercurynews.com or (650) 688-7531.

How brightpathvideo.com Used 802.11 Wireless "Hotspots"
To Live Webcast The Jan 18 Peace March In San Francisco

People love to watch webcams. To capture the
constant stream of thousands of people marching
in "real time" was our goal. To accomplish this,
we decided on using popular webcam technology,
and the growing availability of wireless cafe
"hot spots" along the parade route.
Here's how it works...

On January 18th, setting up our webcams
was then as easy as can be. Once we
secured an internet connection, we then
enabled the webcams and started uploading
pictures to the brightpathvideo server and
to indymedia. We put out a message on
our site that anyone was free to use the
images on their sites, so as to increase the
exposure of this event. Because the wi-fi
signal travels at least 300 feet, we were
able to set up one of the cameras outside
on the sidewalk, to get better shots. A 164
amp tractor battery, with a dc laptop power
converter, powered the sidewalk laptop all day.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.brightpathvideo.com/802.htm

How We Did It 802.11b and J18
.
How brightpathvideo.com Used 802.11 Wireless "Hotspots"
To Live Webcast The Jan 18 Peace March In San Francisco

I had no idea that setting up "live webcams" during the January 18th
peace march in San Francisco would receive about 603,000 hits.
The idea to try this sprang from a desire to show the world, and more
importantly, the mainstream press, that many thousands of
diverse groups of people attend these marches. I, like many others
who attended the October 26th peace march in San Francisco,
were disappointed to see crowd estimates from the SF police and the
press, far below the nearly 100,000 that many observed there.
Even the New York Times had to print a retraction of an earlier
grossly underestimated crowd estimate for the October march in
Washington, DC.

People love to watch webcams. To capture the constant stream
of thousands of people marching in "real time" was our goal.
To accomplish this, we decided on using popular webcam
technology, and the growing availability of wireless cafe " hot spots"
along the parade route. Here's how it works.
To start with, we downloaded a good piece of software from
Webcam32
Their site contains all the info you need on webcams and how
to set them up. A little HTML knowledge will be helpful.
The cams themselves are the garden variety webcams you can
purchase for under $40 bucks online or in places like CompUSA.
We used laptops with wireless network pci cards installed...this is
the famous "wi-fi" connectivity everyone is talking about these days.
We logged onto 802.11 hotspots.com for a detailed directory of "hot
spot" cafes & locales around the country. We found at least a dozen
of these places on the entire length of the parade route on Market St.
in San Francisco. These hot spot cafes charge a small amount for
using the connection, which is usually dsl or faster.
The week before the march, Gabe and I walked up and down Market St.
testing the wi-fi connections and looking for the best camera locations.
On January 18th, setting up our webcams was then as easy as can be.
Once we secured an internet connection, we then enabled the webcams
and started uploading pictures to the brightpathvideo server and to indymedia.
We put out a message on our site that anyone was free to use the
images on their sites, so as to increase the exposure of this event.
Because the wi-fi signal travels at least 300 feet, we were able to
set up one of the cameras outside on the sidewalk, to get better shots.
A 164 amp tractor battery, with a dc laptop power converter,
powered the sidewalk laptop all day.

Key to getting the word out about these cameras, was a week's
worth of emailing webmasters from the international indymedia system,
as well as many other peace activist groups and webcam lists.
As people people passed our cameras, many expressed a keen
interest in what we were doing, and some even volunteered their
time helping us for a few hours.
The most important help came from a cast of young volunteers,
my son Gabe, Eli Mendez, Kena Hazelwood, and Cory Sturdevant.

For the next peace march, on February 16th, we plan to do more of the same
and perhaps add another webcam with an overhead position.
additional thanks go to the web team at sf.indymedia.org

John Parulis, webmaster

Wireless == great jukebox in the sky?

While aggregated wireless music collections won't provide everything to everyone everywhere, they do have some interesting qualities that are worth exploring.

If the community around you has the music, do you need to download all of the music to your machine? Better get another bigger harddrive, because the community will have more music than you have harddrive space. So, I hope that people will truely start sharing their collections instead of actually copying them as the current file sharing networks do. And if we're just sharing and not copying does that fall under fair use? (Never mind that fair use has been erradicated in the last few years).

Here's the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://openp2p.com/pub/wlg/2639

Its been over 5 years since the first MP3 Summit where the concept of the jukebox in the sky was hotly debated. The promise of the jukebox in the sky was to make all music available to users everywhere. Users could tap into the jukebox at home, at work, in their car or hiking up a mountain.

Five years later and the iPod is the closest thing to this jukebox we have -- not exactly what people talked about back then. With the current legal climate I'm not expecting the RIAA and its cronies to deliver this jukebox anytime soon.

Community wireless networks have a much better chance of delivering on this promise. Assume for a moment that wireless networks have come of age and in urban areas dense wireless networks blanket the neighborhoods.

Now lets assume that computer users make their music collections available via tools like iCommune. If you can aggregate the music collections of dozens/hundreds of people around you, you'll get a virtual music collection that approaches the jukebox in the sky.

This jukebox won't have everything under the sun (which physical jukebox does?), but it will have large amounts of music ready to be played, right now without waiting for it to download, which is not a bad start.

While aggregated wireless music collections won't provide everything to everyone everywhere, they do have some interesting qualities that are worth exploring.

If the community around you has the music, do you need to download all of the music to your machine? Better get another bigger harddrive, because the community will have more music than you have harddrive space. So, I hope that people will truely start sharing their collections instead of actually copying them as the current file sharing networks do. And if we're just sharing and not copying does that fall under fair use? (Never mind that fair use has been erradicated in the last few years).

And finally, if wireless networks don't rely on traditional ISPs, it conceivable to put firewalls/packet filters at locations where the wireless net connects to a traditional ISPs, so that the RIAA cannot even see these wireless jukeboxes?

Traditional ISPs unwittingly act as DMCA chokepoints, and if firewalls hide the activity of wireless networks, then how will the RIAA combat these jukeboxes in the sky?

Robert Kaye

So parts of this stuff I'd like to see happen -- and the rest of it is probably just going to happen anyway...

Cory Doctorow has gives new meaning to the term "Liberation Radio":
Liberation spectrum

The roadhouse was the kind of TAZ that got less entertaining by the second. Lee-Daniel stood in the blinking vegaslights for an eternity while he authenticated to the roadhouse-area-network, surrounded by generic ads while the giant vending machine figured out who he was and what to sell him. Once the wall spat out his token -- poker chips adorned with grinning, dancing anthropomorphic dollar, euro and yen symbols -- the walls around him leapt to delighted life, pitching their wares hard. He struggled with the rest of the corporation to make out the actual nature of the products behind the pitch and locate a tuna-melt and wave his chip at it.

The sandwich appeared in a slot by his feet and when he bent to fetch it, he was bombarded with upsell ads set into the floor tiles: "Lee-Daniel! People who bought tuna-melts also bought thousand-hour power cells. People who bought OralCare mouth kits also bought MyGuts brand edible oscopycams. People who bought banana-melatonin rice-shakes also bought tailormade sailcloth shirts by Figaro's of London and Rangoon."

Spectrum Wants to Be Free
Never pay for phone, cable, or net access again
By Kevin Werbach for Wired.

In an open spectrum world, wireless transmitters would be as ubiquitous as microprocessors: in televisions, cars, public spaces, handheld devices, everywhere. They would tune themselves to free spectrum and self-assemble into networks. Anyone could become a radio broadcaster reaching millions. Phone calls would rarely need to pass through central networks; they would be handed off and relayed across devices, for free or nearly so. Businesses would track far-flung assets in real time via embedded sensors. Big TV networks and cable operators would lose their hammerlock control over media distribution. Entrepreneurs would develop as yet undreamed of applications that we can't live without. It happens any time open platforms emerge - think eBay and Amazon.com...

When spectrum licensing was established in the early 20th century, radios were primitive, as was the regulatory model used to govern them. To be heard, broadcasters needed an exclusive slice of spectrum. Today, however, digital technologies let many users occupy the same frequency at the same time. As the FCC's Powell points out, "Modern technology has fundamentally changed the nature and extent of spectrum use." Today's devices employ advanced digital signal processing and other techniques, and they're smart enough to coexist without interference.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.01/view.html

Spectrum Wants to Be Free

Never pay for phone, cable, or net access again

By Kevin Werbach

A revolution is brewing in wireless. In an industry speech in October, FCC chair Michael Powell expressed support for a radical idea called open spectrum that could transform the communications landscape as profoundly as the Internet ever did. If it works, you'll never pay for telephone, cable, or Net access again.

Open spectrum treats the airwaves as a commons, shared by all. It's the brainchild of engineers, activists, and scholars such as wireless gadfly Dewayne Hendricks, former Lotus chief scientist David Reed, and NYU law professor Yochai Benkler. The idea is that smart devices cooperating with one another function more effectively than huge proprietary communications networks. The commons can be created through distinct, unlicensed "parks" or through "underlay" technologies, such as ultrawideband, that are invisible to licensed users in the same band.

In an open spectrum world, wireless transmitters would be as ubiquitous as microprocessors: in televisions, cars, public spaces, handheld devices, everywhere. They would tune themselves to free spectrum and self-assemble into networks. Anyone could become a radio broadcaster reaching millions. Phone calls would rarely need to pass through central networks; they would be handed off and relayed across devices, for free or nearly so. Businesses would track far-flung assets in real time via embedded sensors. Big TV networks and cable operators would lose their hammerlock control over media distribution. Entrepreneurs would develop as yet undreamed of applications that we can't live without. It happens any time open platforms emerge - think eBay and Amazon.com.

The revolution has already started. Wi-Fi, a runaway success, uses a narrow slice of spectrum that is already "open." Wi-Fi is a shot across the bow, much the way the Arpanet served as a proving ground for the commercial Internet. As ever, Moore's law is on the side of the technology upstart. Radio waves resemble ripples on a pond rather than swimmers in a pool - they pass through one another. Distinguishing them can be difficult, but it's not beyond the talents of today's radio engineers.

When spectrum licensing was established in the early 20th century, radios were primitive, as was the regulatory model used to govern them. To be heard, broadcasters needed an exclusive slice of spectrum. Today, however, digital technologies let many users occupy the same frequency at the same time. As the FCC's Powell points out, "Modern technology has fundamentally changed the nature and extent of spectrum use." Today's devices employ advanced digital signal processing and other techniques, and they're smart enough to coexist without interference.

Wi-Fi's success is attracting capital and encouraging research into the open spectrum idea. Last year, over the bitter opposition of entrenched spectrum holders, the FCC granted limited approval for ultrawideband. Within the next year, half of all laptops used at work are expected to have wireless connections. And within four years, Intel hopes to incorporate transmitters into all of its processor chips.

Standing in the way of open spectrum are incumbent licensees, government agencies nervous about interference, and economists entranced by the airwave auction market.

Yet the spectrum auction markets are not free markets. Each buyer gains what is, in effect, a little monopoly - which, in the aggregate, stifles communications progress just as well as one big monopoly.

Governments have long treated the airwaves like real estate to be handed out to favored operators or auctioned for huge sums. And like real estate, spectrum makes people do stupid things. The English auctions for third-generation mobile phone licenses in 2000 left the winners choked with debt. In the US, the battle over bankrupt NextWave's licenses and the hyped transition to digital TV are multibillion-dollar fiascoes.

The problem here is not the market, but the outdated real-estate metaphor. Yet, if spectrum was seen as a commons that could be shared by all, then builders of wireless devices would rush to fill it, unleashing market forces to everyone's benefit. It's already happened with Wi-Fi: A billion-dollar industry emerged overnight with no protection against interference. And Wi-Fi is only the beginning.

Independent analyst Kevin Werbach (kevin@werbach.com) is the former FCC counsel for new technology policy.

Here's a great article by Sarah Lai Stirland for the Seattle Times that explains the truth about the amazing consumer benefits of wireless and the fallacy of spectrum scarcity:
Open-spectrum advocates say it will boost technology
(via BoingBoing)

The core of this idea is the belief that, if the rules are tweaked the right way, technology companies in the next five years will have brought to market the equipment that will make the notion of electromagnetic-spectrum scarcity, a fundamental issue of telecom economics, seem quaint.

Equipment makers would create devices that would intelligently navigate through the congested airwaves — the so-called spectrum — to avoid virtual traffic jams and allow everyone from broadcasters to kids with handheld devices to use the spectrum. Consumers and tinkerers could come up with their own ideas for new applications that would run on these devices, much as they have on the Internet. In turn, the growing number of applications and tools would drive equipment demand, fostering growth of this wireless version of the Internet.

Several chip-making companies are developing products that would power this sort of equipment. They expect to see the first products on the market in the next couple of years.

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134564261_btspectrum28.html

Open-spectrum advocates say it will boost technology

By Sarah Lai Stirland
Special to The Seattle Times

WorldCom is bankrupt. AT&T is dismantling itself. And numerous telecommunications start-ups poised to compete in the broadband revolution are dead.

In light of telecom's death spiral, the prognosis for endless bandwidth and ubiquitous networked computing looks dire.

But a growing group of lawyers, engineers and telecommunications analysts believes that it has the solution needed to finance, develop and ultimately restore the broadband vision: The solution lies with you, the consumer. All we need is a little help from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The core of this idea is the belief that, if the rules are tweaked the right way, technology companies in the next five years will have brought to market the equipment that will make the notion of electromagnetic-spectrum scarcity, a fundamental issue of telecom economics, seem quaint.

Equipment makers would create devices that would intelligently navigate through the congested airwaves — the so-called spectrum — to avoid virtual traffic jams and allow everyone from broadcasters to kids with handheld devices to use the spectrum. Consumers and tinkerers could come up with their own ideas for new applications that would run on these devices, much as they have on the Internet. In turn, the growing number of applications and tools would drive equipment demand, fostering growth of this wireless version of the Internet.

Several chip-making companies are developing products that would power this sort of equipment. They expect to see the first products on the market in the next couple of years.

The group wants the FCC to significantly modify and limit the way it uses auctions to allocate spectrum, while encouraging the spectrum's current occupants to share. The current auctions give winning bidders exclusive rights to portions of the spectrum.

In an ideal world, the FCC would treat the airwaves like a highway system nobody owns and enforce rules governing how people use its lanes without crashing into each other, the group says. And in cases where this isn't possible, the FCC would allow people to drive across other people's "property" as long as they keep a low profile and don't do any damage.

Given this freedom, inventors and entrepreneurs would invent new vehicles and new ways of using the highway, the thinking goes. Consumers would finance the development of the airwaves by buying the devices that suit them best and abiding by the rules of the road that prevent nasty accidents.

But to make this vision a reality, the devices need a slice of the spectrum that would form a virtual park or an airwaves commons where equipment makers and others could experiment. In addition, common protocols — industry standards that allow devices to understand each others' communications — and rules are needed to prevent accidents and to make sure everyone gets a fair shake.

Users also would need to adopt a common understanding of rights and responsibilities to quell potential disputes, prevent potential damage from airwave interference and minimize opportunities for litigation.

Outlining the vision

Discussions within a group calling itself the Open Spectrum Ad Hoc Consortium have resulted in a number of detailed outlines of this vision and how it would work. Among its members are such influential luminaries as New York University School of Law professor Yochai Benkler, Internet law visionary Larry Lessig and the Internet pioneer David Reed.

"To take advantage of the fantastic potential of open spectrum, we must change our spectrum policies. With few exceptions, existing laws and regulations are rooted in historical anachronisms," writes Kevin Werbach, a technology consultant and a member of the group, in a policy paper published recently.

Hundreds of other stakeholders have filed comments with the FCC on the issue of spectrum management, an issue the commission is rethinking. In June, FCC Chairman Michael Powell created a task force to examine the issue, and it is scheduled to release a report with recommendations this week.

But the open-spectrum advocates have found a powerful ally in Microsoft, which has launched a full-fledged lobbying effort in Washington, D.C., to promote the idea.

In a July letter to the FCC, Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Craig Mundie outlined a rationale for developing wireless broadband networks that sounded remarkably like the one the open-spectrum consortium espouses.

"Such networks can develop in unlicensed spectrum — using technologies, network architectures and financing models that are different than those used by existing networks," he wrote. "One of the most important and often overlooked consequences of the creation of unlicensed bands was the tapping of an entirely new source of capital to build networks: the financial resources of the users themselves."

Microsoft has hired the Washington, D.C.- based law firm of Harris Wiltshire & Grannis to lobby Congress and government agencies. In addition, Pierre De Vries, Microsoft's director of advanced product development, has been involved in explaining the company's viewpoint on the issue in workshops at the FCC this summer.

While the fast-growing Wi-Fi technology — which connects computers to the Internet through high-speed wireless networks — has developed in the unlicensed portion of the spectrum, De Vries also sees the need for the FCC to establish rules and enforce etiquette in this band.

"There are an increasing number of stories where people in an apartment, for example, build a data network and a neighbor buys a baby monitor or a cordless phone, which works in the same piece of spectrum, but without taking into account that there are other radios in the spectrum," he said.

"So when the cordless phone is in use, the data network doesn't work very well."

Just a utopia?

As popular as the idea of a spectrum commons is in some circles, others write it off as an engineer's utopia. Still others have called for a more market-oriented approach, but they disagree when defining a market approach.

Gerald Faulhaber and David Farber, professors at the University of Pennsylvania, advocate a "big-bang" approach in which the FCC would hold a single auction for all of the available spectrum and then allow secondary trading of those rights.

NYU's Benkler, among others, cautions against this approach. He warns that giving people permanent property rights could put the FCC in a regulatory straitjacket that would prevent it from backing away from failed policy experiments.

Meanwhile, the FCC has moved cautiously in the past year to change its regulations to allow for the development of new technologies, such as ultrawideband and software-defined radios.

Sony, Microsoft and other companies are interested in ultrawideband for its ability to help consumers zap bandwidth-greedy content such as video around gadgets in the home.

But any move by the FCC faces a thicket of political opposition and criticism from companies holding licenses, as well as other spectrum occupants.

They worry that new applications could interfere with their existing uses of the spectrum.

"Every time the FCC tries to move forward on policy, the current stakeholders have a lot to lose if the system changes, so that slows things down," says Stagg Newman, a former FCC chief technologist, now a senior telecommunications expert at McKinsey in Washington, D.C.

While many in the community laud the vision of the open-spectrum revolutionaries, they also believe it's something that won't be implemented soon.

"If we were starting with a clean slate and clean spectrum, with no historical baggage, sure we would go build things that way, but the challenge facing us is how do we get from here to there?" says Vanu Bose, founder of Vanu, a Boston-based software-defined radio start-up.

Nevertheless, during the spectrum-policy workshops this summer, FCC Chairman Powell and Commissioner Michael Copps supported spectrum sharing, unlicensed bands and urgent reform. While acknowledging the likely political obstacles, Powell noted that Wi-Fi's explosion in popularity has significantly changed the political equation.

"Wireless is not a foreign thing to consumers," he said.

"It's becoming an indispensable thing to the average consumer and that changes minds and that changes policy. I think that's really, really important."

Sarah Lai Stirland writes frequently about public policy and technology. She can be reached at sarah@sarahstirland.com.

I'm hanging out in the Student Union here at San Francisco State University before speaking to the Broadcast Electronic Communications Arts (BECA) 200 class (as I do every fall).

I've connected to a wireless network simply titled "bogus."

Free, universal access rules!

How nice to see an article come clean with the real reason for all this fuss about Wardriving: to sell people an overpriced solution.

But to computer-security experts, "war-driving" has turned into a marketing opportunity. Past war drives embarrassed a number of companies, and in preparation for the big event this weekend, some of these experts have been pitching their services.

This week, for example, International Business Machines Corp. has been urging sales representatives to warn corporate clients of the need to secure their wireless networks. The merchandising tie-in: Your network can be safeguarded by an IBM security service that goes for $15,000 to $30,000.

However, it was still rather sad to see the rest of the usual inaccurate bullshit about Wardriving that is always included in these articles.

Hackers target wireless networks
By William M. Bulkeley

Hopefully I'll have time to clarify this puppy in greater detail over the weekend -- it really, really needs to be done. While explaining this whole concept of taking connectivity without asking for it -- they're leaving out the payback:
free universal connectivity!

So yeah, some guy walking down the street can get his email with his PDA while he walks by my house FOR FREE! And I can do the same while I'm walking by his house. How cool is that!?

Or how'd you like to check your email/surf the web while you're waiting for the Bus (that's always late), or waiting for that band to come on, or waiting to hear about that one business deal while you're in the waiting room about to make another. All that kind of stuff can happen cheaply -- in a way that everyone can afford -- using community wireless networks.

And your schools and libraries all have connectivity because it's just there.

This universal connectivity is what this kind of paranoid propaganda is fighting against. They want us to have to pay somebody for it somewhere, every time we connect, every time we use a different device, everytime we access an application even.

If we work together, we can just pay what we're already paying for at home and have easy wireless connectivity away from home, when we often need it most for whatever device we have around at the time, wherever we happen to find ourselves.

If big business wants to provide a wireless network that's cheaper and easier to use, let it. It will have to charge reasonable prices however, if it has community networks competing with it.

We don't need a World Wide Wardriving day -- every day is World Wide Wardriving Day. We need a better word for it -- one without "war" in it.
Perhaps that was the first mistake.

Or perhaps a community-based movement has evolved since then --
a Peace Driving movement.

Perhaps I've said to much :-)

Here is the text of the article in case the link goes bye bye:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/824622.asp?cp1=1
Hackers target wireless networks
Worldwide 'war drive' set for Saturday
By William M. Bulkeley

Oct. 23 - Technology sophisticates who specialize in exposing corporate-security lapses will orchestrate a world-wide "war drive" to strut their stuff Saturday.

IN 25 LOCALES in seven countries from Alberta, Canada, to New Zealand, they plan office-building drive-bys armed with laptops, radio scanners and antennas, aiming to intercept signals from the ever-spreading wireless networks used to connect corporate computers with each other and the Internet.

For many of the hacker types who will participate, war driving is a benign electronic scavenger hunt meant to alert companies and others to unprotected wireless access points that can leave owners vulnerable to spying or sabotage.

MARKETING OPPORTUNITY

But to computer-security experts, "war-driving" has turned into a marketing opportunity. Past war drives embarrassed a number of companies, and in preparation for the big event this weekend, some of these experts have been pitching their services.

This week, for example, International Business Machines Corp. has been urging sales representatives to warn corporate clients of the need to secure their wireless networks. The merchandising tie-in: Your network can be safeguarded by an IBM security service that goes for $15,000 to $30,000.

In London, risk experts at the British affiliate of accountants KPMG LLP have developed a fake wireless network called a "honeypot" that was announced at a security conference in Paris last week. It's a countermeasure designed to attract and record unauthorized wireless-access efforts-in effect, alerting network owners that they are being homed in on by war drivers or other unauthorized people. The firm hopes that the honeypot will enable it to sell more of the security services it offers through its consulting arm. Among the services: a team of "tame hackers" who attempt, under contract with the owners, to break into financial-service-company networks to expose risks.

Another company tuned into war driving is Guardent Inc., a Waltham, Mass., computer-security firm that offers monthly assessments of its customers' networks to spot rogue access points. "We make sure people are aware" of the war drive because it shows the need for vulnerability analysis, says Jonas Hellgren, director of product management at Guardent. But he adds that focusing only on the event isn't as valuable as a continuing sales effort.

War driving bedevils security types partly because it is so cheap and easy to do. Drivers amble around with a directional antenna sometimes fashioned from a coffee or potato-chip can. Their software of choice, called NetStumbler, comes free on the Web and detects the low-level radio waves coming out of wireless-network access points.

War drivers say their goal is to publicize the need for network owners to change their passwords. But people with knowledge of the location of an unprotected wireless network can also use it for free Web surfing, or to send out e-mail messages or junk mail known as spam without disclosing their identities. With more sophisticated hacking, people could use the wireless gateway as an entry point to corporate networks, security experts say.

In a related activity, called "war-chalking," participants make chalk marks on sidewalks or building fronts to signal the availability of access points. One widely used symbol for an open access point looks like this: )(. Knowing such locations permits people with laptops to avoid paying for Internet access.

In its letter to customers, IBM notes that "war driving participants generally map unsecured access points as a hobby." But it warns "since your company has a great deal invested in intellectual capital, reputation, and stakeholder trust, it makes sense to take appropriate steps to avoid unnecessary exposure."

'MORE PARANOID'

War driving was christened two years ago by Peter Shipley, a Berkeley, Calif., data-security consultant, who named it with a nod to the "war-dialing" exploits of hackers who use phone lines in their efforts to penetrate corporate computer networks. Mr. Shipley, who isn't involved in the current war drives, says that in urban areas there are now so many wireless access points that mapping them is almost irrelevant. Still, he says, war driving has been making companies "more paranoid, which is what they should be."

War drivers generally need to be within 1,500 feet or less of an access point to detect it. NetStumbler is designed to pick up wireless access points in which the owner has failed to change the default Service Set Identifier that broadcasts its location for others on the network to find. According to various Web sites, popular home wireless networks made by Linksys Inc. use the default "linksys." For Cisco Systems Inc.'s more expensive corporate networks, the default password is "tsunami." Cisco declined to comment but said that extensive security capabilities are built into its wireless equipment.

John Girard, a security consultant with Gartner Group, Stamford, Conn., says war driving "is easy to do because people don't turn on security. They leave themselves exposed." But he says vendors are partly to blame. "The documentation people get is generally poor, and they're not motivated to figure it out."

According to the Web site worldwidewardrive.org, organizers with screen names such as Roamer, Big Ezy and Tapper are helping coordinate Saturday's drive. They either declined to comment or didn't return e-mails for this story.

This will be the second such organized effort, following one in August. War-drive Web sites feature maps showing unsecured access points, denoted by green circles along highways in such technology centers as Boston; the Silicon Valley and Orange County in California; and Barcelona, Spain. According to a table of statistics, nearly 30% of the access points found were using the default passwords.

A week or two ago, the FBI got freaked out about wireless networks.

Their conclusions were confused, at best. Luckily Paul Holman, Theodore Pham,
Merin McDonell, and Skyler Fox had a nice mailing list thread to help put everything into perspective.

Thanks to Paul, Theodore, Merin, and Skyler for giving me permission to publish this email exchange in-tact.

(Theodore Pham) Say I forget my wallet containing my credit cards in a restaurant. Wardriving/warchalking is essentially posting a sign saying my wallet is sitting their out in the open and it contains credit cards. That signage in and of itself is NOT THEFT. But the moment someone uses my credit cards without my specific permission IS THEFT. My credit cards should NOT be
considered a public resource just because I FORGOT to put my wallet back in
my pocket out of public access.

(Merin McDonell) I think your wallet analogy is wrong. I think an apple tree is better. You have a nice big apple tree in your back yard and the apples fall in your neighbors yard and in the alley. Is it a crime if people eat the apples that
are on the ground and off your property? If you DON'T want anyone to eat any
of the apples that grew on your tree, if for some reason you need all 347
apples, you could trim your tree so that all the branches end right on your
property line and all of the apples would fall in your yard. Done.

Original letter sent out by FBI

From: Bill Shore [mailto:billshore@fbi.gov]
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2002 9:56 AM
To: billshore@fbi.gov
Subject: Wireless networks - Warchalking/Wardriving

It has recently been brought to my attention that
individuals/groups have been actively working in the Pittsburgh area as
well as other areas of the United States including Philadelphia, and
Boston, and the rest of the world for that matter, to identify locations
where wireless networks are implemented. This is done by a technique
identified as "Wardriving." Wardriving is accomplished by driving around
in a vehicle using a laptop computer equipped with appropriate hardware
and software http://www.netstumbler.com/ to identify wireless networks
used in commercial and/or residential areas. Upon identifying a wireless
network, the access point can be marked with a coded symbol, or
"warchalked." This symbol will alert others of the presence of a
wireless
network. The network can then be accessed with the proper equipment
and
utilized by the individual(s) to access the Internet, download email, and
potentially compromise your systems. In Pittsburgh, the individuals are
essentially attempting to map the entire city to identify the wireless
access points, see here,

http://mapserver.zhrodague.net/cgi-
bin/mapserv?mode=browse&layer=all&layer=q
uadsheets&layer=borough&layer=roads&layer=ap&zoomdir=1&zoomsize=2&imgxy=458+
165&imgext=-80.175489+40.268422+-79.733217+40.621536&map=%2Fmnt%2Fhog%2Fwebs
ites%2Fmapserver%2Fpublic_html%2Fpa%2Fpgh.map&savequery=true&program=%2Fcgi-
bin%2Fmapserv&map_web_imagepath=%2Fmnt%2Fhog%2Fwebsites%2Fmapserver%2Fpublic
_html%2Ftmp%2F&map_web_imageurl=%2Ftmp%2F&img.x=250&img.y=197.

Also, check this article from pghwireless.com,
http://www.pghwireless.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=19

Identifying the presence of a wireless network may not be a
criminal violation, however, there may be criminal violations if the
network is actually accessed including theft of services, interception of
communications, misuse of computing resources, up to and including
violations of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Statute, Theft of
Trade
Secrets, and other federal violations. At this point, I am not aware of
any malicious activity that has been reported to the FBI here in
Pittsburgh, however, you are cautioned regarding this activity if you
have
implemented a wireless network in your business. You are also highly
encouraged to implement appropriate wireless security practices to
protect
your information assets,
http://www.cert.org/research/isw/isw2001/papers/Kabara-31-08.pdf

There are several articles available with additional details
including http://www.warchalking.org as well as
http://www.pghwireless.com. A copy of the coding symbols is
attached in .pdf format. If you notice these symbols at your place of
business, it is likely your network has been identified publicly.

If you believe you may have been compromised or if you have any
questions regarding this activity, you are encouraged to contact the
appropriate law enforcement agency. The FBI office in Pittsburgh and
High
Tech Crimes Task Force can be contacted at 412-432-4000.

Bill Shore
Special Agent
FBI-Pittsburgh
3311 East Carson Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15203
412-432-4395
billshore@fbi.gov

Letter from Paul Holman to Bill Shore

To: billshore@fbi.gov
From: Paul Holman <pablos@shmoo.com>
Subject: [XGEEKS] Wireless networks - Warchalking/Wardriving

Bill,

Blocking public access to a wireless access point is a simple matter
of configuration. While this measure will not provide a great deal
of security, it is enough to stop casual surveillance and abuse of
resources.

As both an active member of community wireless networking
initiatives, and an expert on internet security, I would encourage
the FBI, and all other entities to consider open access points as a
shared resource available to all. Anyone not wishing to share their
resources can easily prevent it using the various controls built into
all wireless access points.

Drawing the line here is both practical and rational. It requires no
further legislation, no technical development, and affords the
greatest flexibility for innovation and exploration of how we can all
benefit from wireless networking technology.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions about this
approach. If you're interested, I'm happy to expand on any aspect of
wireless network security.

Thanks,

pablos.
--
Paul Holman
The Shmoo Group
pablos@shmoo.com
415.420.3806

From: "Theodore Pham" <telamon@roguesolutions.com>
To: <dev@seattlewireless.net>, <billshore@fbi.gov>
Cc: <xgeeks@lists.soma.net>, <tsg@shmoo.com>, <dev@seattlewireless.net>
Subject: [XGEEKS] Re: Wireless networks - Warchalking/Wardriving

With all due respect Paul, I think you are missing the point.

NOT everyone who owns and operates a wireless network has the technical
savvy to understand the implications of the way they configure their
wireless equipment. The rapid growth and popularity of wireless networks
has been a direct result of the dropping prices of equipment and the ease
with which this equipment can be installed.

Being a wireless networking consultant in the Pittsburgh area, and having
experimented with Netstumbler to map out channel usage (for the purposes of
evaluating the feasibility of a shared, potentially commercial, wireless
network) I find that the majority of networks are setup with NO type of
public access blocking AND with the DEFAULT out of the box parameters. As a
reseller of wireless networking equipment, I find most of my customers have
LITTLE TO NO idea that by just plugging one of these boxes into their DSL or
cable line they are making their networks open to the world. They choose
wireless networking for the simplicity and asthetic values.

The fact of the matter is that wireless equipment is connected to some type
of internet connection and that connection is paid for by the owner of the
wireless equipment. I have always been of the opinion that the use of any
resource I have NOT paid for or been given SPECIFIC PERMISSION to use is
THEFT.

Say I forget my wallet containing my credit cards in a restaurant.
Wardriving/warchalking is essentially posting a sign saying my wallet is
sitting their out in the open and it contains credit cards. That signage in
and of itself is NOT THEFT. But the moment someone uses my credit cards
without my specific permission IS THEFT. My credit cards should NOT be
considered a public resource just because I FORGOT to put my wallet back in
my pocket out of public access.

If you want to allow public access to your wireless network, then that is
your choice and I encourage you to post some signage indicating that fact.
And for your sake I would also post some terms of service for those who
would seek to use your wireless network for malicious purposes.

Sincerely,
Theodore Pham
Rogue Solutions

Subject: Re: [XGEEKS] Re: Wireless networks - Warchalking/Wardriving
From: "Merin McDonell" <merin@merin.net>
To: Theodore Pham <telamon@roguesolutions.com>
CC: xgeeks@soma.net

I'm not at all savvy about this kind of technical stuff, so in this case I
feel especially qualified to reply. I'm just a dumb user, however every
program I use has to be configured and you can choose whether or not you
have a password to access it. So...if I were to venture to set up a wireless
network, which I can't believe is so easy to install, I'd be sure to look at
the directions since it is, uh, wireless, and I get the concept that it
doesn't stop at the walls of my house.

I think your wallet analogy is wrong. I think an apple tree is better. You
have a nice big apple tree in your back yard and the apples fall in your
neighbors yard and in the alley. Is it a crime if people eat the apples that
are on the ground and off your property? If you DON'T want anyone to eat any
of the apples that grew on your tree, if for some reason you need all 347
apples, you could trim your tree so that all the branches end right on your
property line and all of the apples would fall in your yard. Done.
______________________________________________________________________
* Merin McDonell * Graphic Designer * 415-826-3500 * mm@merin.net*

From: "skyler fox" <skyler_fox@hotmail.com>
To: <billshore@fbi.gov>
Cc: <xgeeks@lists.soma.net>, <tsg@shmoo.com>
Subject: Re: [XGEEKS] Re: Wireless networks - Warchalking/Wardriving

I find the argument that digital access, and the access to your wallet are
similar, quite confusing. In one case we are talking about a resource that
exists in time(access to the network) and in the other, access to a limited
an irreplaceable resource (your cash). Only in the most remote circumstances
will someone surfing the net on your wireless network translate into any
loss that you would be cognizant of. I understand that people pay money to
have DSL access in their home, I pay the current exorbitant rate myself. But
it would take a herd of hackers to impact the usage I put on the line. In
fact most times during the day, the system is idle. You could make the
argument, which the Telco industry would hate, that communal use of a single
DSL line makes more sense than over-amping a single house.

There is certainly no excuse for a corporate network to be exposed. Any
company that does not control it's network, and computers is guilty of
malfeasance. It would be on the order of not locking the door.

You are right that most people are ignorant of what is necessary to protect
their line, but as we have seen all through the computer revolution, there
is a price to be paid for the power the computer gives you.
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*****

Theodore,

I think you may have dropped this conversation already, but just in
case, I'll complete my discussion here. The crux of our disagreement is
where to draw the line on how you advertise/explain/discover/determine
policy. Based on the current state of the technology, and societal
issues in play, I'm suggesting that we draw the line where it is most
practical. If a wireless network is configured to allow association and
provide an internet connection, then it should be construed as something
intended to do that. You are actually advocating the same thing, but
with a "fail closed" social/legal policy rather than my "fail open"
approach. To make that happen, you want the burden to be on those
running free networks to advertise them as such. The current technology
doesn't cleanly support this, and I prefer the burden to be on those
running closed wireless networks to keep them that way. This is how it
works for web servers, and all the issues about what happens when things
go wrong are covered by legislation/policies/social norms that out of
band from this issue.

Thanks for the discussion, I had been meaning to bring this issue up.

pablos.

On Monday, August 5, 2002, at 09:58 PM, Theodore Pham wrote:
>
> Again, you are confusing access to a resource with LEGAL USE of a
> resource.
> Yes, most web servers are meant to be a public resource and yes some
> block
> access to only authorized individuals. But consider what happens if
> Microsoft tomorrow accidentally posts a portion of the Windows XP source
> code on their website? Are you allowed to use it? Are you allowed to
> incorporate it into your products because you just happen to have gotten
> access to the code? If you park your car on a public road and leave it
> unlocked accidentally, is it legal for me to jump in and drive away
> with it?
> If someone hacks into a online store and posts their credit card
> database on
> the front page of the store, am I allowed to use the credit card
> numbers?
> ACCESS DOES NOT ENTITLE AUTHORIZED USE.
>
> It costs me money to have a SDSL line run into my house. And that SDSL
> line
> and the associated wireless network are a resource I OWN. If I wish to
> leave the whole dang network open for my ease of use, does the network
> still
> belong to me? YES. Does that give you the right to use my property
> without
> first asking me? NO. I might say yes, I'll kindly let you use this.
> Or
> no, I don't want you using my network. But in the end that is my
> decision
> and I don't waive that right just because I choose or forget to put a
> lock
> on it.
>
>> On wireless security:
>>
>> A typical wired network is wildly insecure, adding a wireless access
>> point with all the security features enabled (WEP, MAC auth, etc.)
>> would
>> reduce security. So most APs are put outside a firewall. In this
>> case,
>> association with the AP would provide internet access and nothing more.
>> Surveillance of the network does not require association. In a typical
>> home or office network that has no firewall, adding a wireless AP for
>> convenience without thinking of security will be a liability. I
>> contend
>> that the security implications are not affected by whether users
>> associate and use the network connection. If the AP is unsecured, your
>> network is insecure, and no law can save you.
>
> Yes, not securing your network is a liability to the owner of the
> network.
> I'm not arguing that it isn't.
> I'm not arguing with you over security at all. But your statement is
> that
> ANY resource which IS NOT SPECIFICALLY restricted should become a public
> resource. This is where I think you miss the point. I believe the
> statement should be ANY resource SPECIFICALLY ADVERTISED as public
> should be
> considered a public resource. I don't think my attaching a wireless AP
> to
> my network and choosing NOT to secure or FORGETTING to secure it should
> be
> taken to mean I'm SPECIFICALLY ADVERTISING it as public.
>
>> On fixing security:
>>
>> Wireless networking equipment vendors should be lobbied to fix WEP,
>> implement captive portal (NoCatAuth) functionality, and enable these
>> features by default. Almost all of them have horrible management
>> tools,
>> these should be drastically improved for usability. Organizations
>> concerned about security should learn that the issues on wireless
>> networks are the same as for wired networks, just magnified. The same
>> approach needs to be taken in order to make significant security gains.
>> Use strong authentication and encrypted protocols. WEP doesn't count.
>> VPNs, SSH & SSL do. Anything less will only serve to give users a
>> false sense of security.
>
> I agree. Any organization worried about it's information should take
> the
> precautions to preserve and secure it comensurate with the value of the
> information. But again, I'm not arguing with you over how secure or
> insecure wireless is.
>
>> On free access:
>>
>> When you are walking or driving around, how often do you see a license
>> agreement posted to indicate where you can go? Probably never. You go
>> wherever you want because there are roads and paths that just happen to
>> be accessible. You don't know what is public and what is private land,
>> you just make reasonable guesses. If somebody doesn't want you on
>> their
>> roads, or their property, then they post signs telling you not to go
>> there. Or gates and fences, or walls, maybe even towers with machine
>> guns. It turns out you can drive coast to coast, on almost any
>> continent, without reading a single license agreement that tells you
>> where you can go. You just avoid the ones that tell you where you
>> can't
>> go. I'm fine with that. I'd like to have my internet access work the
>> same way.
>
> How often do you drive through someone's backyard on your way to work?
> Just
> because there isn't a fence there and just because your car is capable
> of
> driving over their lawn, do you? I don't see a sign that says DON'T
> DRIVE
> THROUGH MY LAWN posted, but I don't take that to mean that I can. In
> fact,
> I don't recall every driving on a private road where I haven't done so
> INTENTIONALLY without permission of the owner or without paying a toll.
>
>> Lastly, it is important to understand that the current wireless
>> protocols have no mechanism for communicating their usage policy. The
>> way it works today, you wave your laptop around, connect to a network
>> and see if it works. Prior to that it is impossible to know if it is a
>> free network. Wardriving and Warchalking are legitimate ways to
>> find/test/use free wireless networks and we should keep it that way.
>
> I agree that wardriving and warchalking can be legitimately used to
> find/test/use wireless networks. But I think there must be some
> protocol
> established to contact the owner of the network in question and ask
> their
> permission BEFORE you go and ADVERTISE their network as freely
> accessible.
> I don't own your house, but just because I can see it and take photos
> of it,
> does that mean I can rent it out for a party or place it on the market
> for
> sale? Basically, if you want to use what possibly could be a public
> resource, EXPEND THE EXTRA EFFORT TO FIND OUT IF IT IS REALLY PUBLIC.
>
>> Thanks, pablos.
>>
>> Paul Holman deployed the first SeattleWireless Community Network link
>> <http://www.seattlewireless.net> and is a member of The Shmoo Group of
>> security, crypto & privacy professionals <http://www.shmoo.com>. The
>> Shmoo Group builds AirSnort for demonstrating the limitations of WEP
>> security and created the Global Access Wireless Database (GAWD), the
>> first online database of open wireless access points.
>>
>> On Monday, August 5, 2002, at 06:09 PM, Theodore Pham wrote:
>>
>>> With all due respect Paul, I think you are missing the point.
>>>
>>> NOT everyone who owns and operates a wireless network has the
>>> technical
>>> savvy to understand the implications of the way they configure their
>>> wireless equipment. The rapid growth and popularity of wireless
>>> networks
>>> has been a direct result of the dropping prices of equipment and the
>>> ease
>>> with which this equipment can be installed.
>>>
>>> Being a wireless networking consultant in the Pittsburgh area, and
>>> having
>>> experimented with Netstumbler to map out channel usage (for the
>>> purposes of
>>> evaluating the feasibility of a shared, potentially commercial,
>>> wireless
>>> network) I find that the majority of networks are setup with NO type
>>> of
>>> public access blocking AND with the DEFAULT out of the box parameters.
>>> As a
>>> reseller of wireless networking equipment, I find most of my customers
>>> have
>>> LITTLE TO NO idea that by just plugging one of these boxes into their
>>> DSL or
>>> cable line they are making their networks open to the world. They
>>> choose
>>> wireless networking for the simplicity and asthetic values.
>>>
>>> The fact of the matter is that wireless equipment is connected to some
>>> type
>>> of internet connection and that connection is paid for by the owner of
>>> the
>>> wireless equipment. I have always been of the opinion that the use of
>>> any
>>> resource I have NOT paid for or been given SPECIFIC PERMISSION to use
>>> is
>>> THEFT.
>>>
>>> Say I forget my wallet containing my credit cards in a restaurant.
>>> Wardriving/warchalking is essentially posting a sign saying my wallet
>>> is
>>> sitting their out in the open and it contains credit cards. That
>>> signage in
>>> and of itself is NOT THEFT. But the moment someone uses my credit
>>> cards
>>> without my specific permission IS THEFT. My credit cards should NOT
>>> be
>>> considered a public resource just because I FORGOT to put my wallet
>>> back in
>>> my pocket out of public access.
>>>
>>> If you want to allow public access to your wireless network, then that
>>> is
>>> your choice and I encourage you to post some signage indicating that
>>> fact.
>>> And for your sake I would also post some terms of service for those
>>> who
>>> would seek to use your wireless network for malicious purposes.
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>> Theodore Pham
>>> Rogue Solutions
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Paul Holman" <pablos@shmoo.com>
>>> To: <billshore@fbi.gov>
>>> Cc: <xgeeks@lists.soma.net>; <tsg@shmoo.com>;
>>> <dev@seattlewireless.net>
>>> Sent: Monday, August 05, 2002 8:19 PM
>>> Subject: Wireless networks - Warchalking/Wardriving
>>>
>>>
>>>> Bill,
>>>>
>>>> Blocking public access to a wireless access point is a simple matter
>>>> of
>>>> configuration. While this measure will not provide a great deal of
>>>> security, it is enough to stop casual surveillance and abuse of
>>>> resources.
>>>>
>>>> As both an active member of community wireless networking
>>>> initiatives,
>>>> and an expert on internet security, I would encourage the FBI, and
>>>> all
>>>> other entities to consider open access points as a shared resource
>>>> available to all. Anyone not wishing to share their resources can
>>>> easily prevent it using the various controls built into all wireless
>>>> access points.
>>>>
>>>> Drawing the line here is both practical and rational. It requires no
>>>> further legislation, no technical development, and affords the
>>>> greatest
>>>> flexibility for innovation and exploration of how we can all benefit
>>>> from wireless networking technology.
>>>>
>>>> Please feel free to contact me with any questions about this
>>>> approach.
>>>> If you're interested, I'm happy to expand on any aspect of wireless
>>>> network security.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> pablos.
--
Paul Holman
The Shmoo Group
pablos@shmoo.com
415.420.3806

These guys confuse just about every issue surrounding "wardriving" and wireless. The point of "wardriving" isn't to hack the networks you find -- just to use them.

If wardriving were a bad thing, why would people be warchalking to let others know where their networks were.

It's like the twilight zone or something. These guys are living in their own reality -- one of hype and misinformation.
Anyway here's the story by Frank Fiore and Jean Francois:

Unwitting Collaborators, Part 6: Wireless Insecurity.

Here's the whole article:

Introduction

To avoid the hassles of installing LAN lines or to hasten deployment of LANs, or even to allow for more mobility in the workplace, many organizations are installing wireless networks. These networks are being installed by organizations at a rapid rate.

Unfortunately, organizations don't see the threats posed to their network security by wireless networks, or don't understand that a wireless network should be treated as you would any other medium—using it as a transport layer only. Sending information through a wireless network potentially opens your network for the entire world to see. It's akin to sending a postcard through email and could open your network to "drive-by hacking."

***

The "Wardriving" Scenario

The District Clerk of Harris County, Texas was in for an unexpected surprise. Based on a demonstration by a computer security analyst and upon the recommendation of the head of the county's Central Technology Department, District Clerk Charles Bacarisse shut down the wireless computer network in his office. The computer security analyst had met with the department head and used a laptop computer and a $60–75 wireless card to show him how to tap into Bacarisse's system by "wardriving."

The security flaw in the county's wireless network created a dangerous potential for vandalism—or even more serious problems. Using the practice of wardriving, someone with just an 802.11 device and sniffing software such as NetStumbler could gain access to the county's system and use it as a platform to hack other systems, including those of government agencies and businesses, leaving few traces.

Once tapped into the county system, a hacker could conceivably send emails appearing to come from county officials that could not be traced to the true author. Just as worrisome was the potential for someone to crash county computers, reroute printers, alter or delete records, or post illegal material on one of the county's network computer servers.

***

The Security Breach

Wardriving is easy. Just buy a wireless card, slide it into a laptop computer equipped with easily obtainable software, and with little trouble you can scan for and capture the radio signals linking computers on a wireless network. Then you can gain complete, unfiltered access to that network.

Essentially, wardrivers use the wireless signals to enter into a computer network. What many organizations fail to understand is that the wireless signals emanating from their network are not confined to their offices—or even their building. Wireless signals can easily pass through office ceilings, walls, and floors. As many incidents have shown, an unauthorized user could gain access to a wireless network by simply sitting in his car across the street or in an office above or below the organization in the same building.

A perfect example is the large retailer Best Buy. Some Best Buy stores use a sophisticated wireless network that lets their cash registers beam information—including the credit card numbers of customers—to a central computer elsewhere in the store for processing. But it was shown that a wardriver can sit in a Best Buys store parking lot and pick up and view this data. Once alerted to this security breach, Best Buy shut off wireless cash registers at all its stores.

So how do the wardrivers do it? By using simple software products that are easy to obtain over the Internet. Here are some of the tools that wardrivers use to crack wireless networks:

*

NetStumbler is a piece of Windows software that, when coupled with a GPS unit and a wireless card, lets you snoop on the location of 802.11b networks. Think your network is not known to wardrivers? Think again. NetStumbler's web site includes a map showing the locations of U.S. networks people have found using the software.
*

AirSnort is a wireless LAN (WLAN) tool that recovers encryption keys. AirSnort operates by passively monitoring transmissions, computing the encryption key when enough packets have been gathered. Using the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol, 802.11b is crippled with numerous security flaws. AirSnort requires approximately 5–10 million encrypted packets to be gathered. Once enough packets have been gathered, AirSnort can guess the encryption password in under a second.
*

WEPCrack is another Open Source tool for breaking 802.11 WEP secret keys. While AirSnort is popularly known, WEPCrack made the first publicly available tool for a wardriver attack.

Remember, the practice of wardriving is simple: All a hacker needs is a device capable of receiving an 802.11b signal, a device capable of locating itself on a map, and software that will log data from the second when a network is detected by the first. You then move these devices from place to place, letting them do their job. Over time, you build up a database composed of the network name, signal strength, location, and IP/namespace in use. The network is then open to illicit use.

****

Corrective Actions

Wireless technology is inherently insecure. But you can plug many of its security holes. Though not entirely foolproof, when used in unison the following corrective actions act as a "defense in depth" and should close the majority of security flaws in your wireless network.

*

Create a wireless network policy. Think about what your staff is trying to do when using the 802.11b network. Do they need Internet access? Do they need access to services on the local wired LAN? In short, plan your use of your wireless network and be as restrictive as possible without interfering with your users' requirements.
*

Educate users about the possible dangers of using wireless network technology. Hold training sessions periodically to review their understanding of the security risks and the how to use the network properly.
*

Avoid default configurations. Never rely on the basic configuration that's given you for the base station if you're connecting to a wireless LAN. Default installations and configurations are the security professional's worst nightmare. That's an open invitation to a wardriver. Don't use the default service set identifier (SSID)—the identifier that designates a particular network. You can better secure your wireless network by creating a unique SSID. WEP currently exists in 64-bit (40-bit key) and 128-bit (104-bit key) modes. Finally, don't make your WEP key identical to your SSID.
*

Avoid using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) with wireless networks. Having a static network address will slow down the hacker, although he can still get on your network using a sniffer program.
*

Drop unencrypted packets. Don't let unencrypted data pass through your wireless network. Access points for your wireless network can be configured to drop packets that aren't encrypted using the right WEP key.
*

Use access control lists. Configure your internal network to allow access only to known and trusted NICs. The problem here is your MAC address. The only authentication that identifies your NIC is transmitted unencrypted, and a lot of wireless cards allow the MAC address to be changed. Filtering MAC addresses will stop the casual "snooper" but not the skilled cracker. This makes the use of access control lists somewhat limited, but it's another barrier the intruder will have to get through to reach your network.
*

Place the wireless network behind a firewall in a DMZ. Isolate access points so they're placed on their own segment or virtual LAN (VLAN). Use a stateful IP-filtering firewall separating the restricted wireless LAN and unrestricted "internal" wired LAN.
*

Use VPN technology and strong authentication. If you want a wireless user to be able to use protected services on the internal network, a virtual private network (VPN) can be the best solution to the problem. However, because VPN depends on trusting the IP address of the connecting host alone, a compromised machine on the restricted network would be given access to the unrestricted network as well. Thus, username and password authentication should be required to gain access to the unrestricted LAN. In addition to an IPSec-based VPN, use tools like SSH and PGP to encrypt messaging and/or traffic that contains sensitive information to further prevent compromise.
*

Place wireless access points physically inside buildings, but outside corporate firewalls. Keep the company VPN behind the firewall. If you have meeting rooms or conference rooms that sit along the perimeter of your building, consider using Tempest-rated glass.
*

Turn down the gain. If you set up an access point near an exterior wall, turn down the gain. Gain is what controls the signal strength and how far that signal will travel. This could curb the use of your network by someone sitting in their car on the street or in the park across the street from your building.
*

Implement port security on your LAN switches and hubs: 802.11b access points are relatively inexpensive now. You don't want any employee buying a base station and plugging into your corporate network.
*

Test your network. Use tools like NetStumbler to test your network, to know the potential risks to your wireless network and where they may come from.

Because of the insecurity of wireless technology, administrators and IT security professionals are challenged to build secure foundations for 802.11b wireless technologies without limiting the beneficial functionality it provides. But help is on the way. In Summer 2002 Netsec will release intrusion detection system (IDS) boxes that will help system administrators identify outside users quickly. Each box is about the size of a 3x5 index card box. An organization can place these IDS boxes on the four corners of their building and keep the network secure.

In the meantime, network administrators should always know the five "W's" of their network:

* What was accessed?
* Who accessed it?
* When did they access it?
* Why did they access it?
* Where did they access it from?

****

Don't Be an Unwitting Collaborator

In many senses, adding a wireless capability to your network is like adding a miniature Internet to your network, in the sense that you're creating an opening for potentially hostile elements. A cyberterrorist would only need to drive around an area until a LAN could be found that either had lots of bandwidth or vulnerable systems, and use those resources to launch attacks on local and/or remote networks and systems.

In effect, your wireless network can be a cyberterrorist dreamland. Chris O'Ferrell, chief technology officer of the wireless technology company Netsec, knows this firsthand. He keeps an eye out for vulnerable 802.11 networks, and is amazed at how many he finds. Located in Herndon, Virginia, Netsec's offices are in the heart of "Spook Valley," where the Pentagon, the CIA, and many information-security companies are located. While driving through Washington's Dulles International Airport, O'Ferrell says he can often see baggage-operator networks on his computer.

So much for increased airport security in our nation's capital.

Would you really want a cyberterrorist using the bandwidth in your company to launch attacks against you or others? How easy is it? This easy. Just click here and follow the easy-to-use instructions.

Sleep tight.

See the Redherring Story by Mark Mowrey:
Coming soon to your cable box Providers are bringing wireless connectivity to your set-top

Cable providers are upping the ante in the competition for broadband subscribers. By combining cable TV, broadband service, and wireless connectivity in one set-top box, cable companies could soon offer consumers value that DSL firms won't be able to match.

In the "pinch me, I must be dreaming" department, Glenn Fleishman has written about Warchalking for the NY Times. (Right on Matt!)

The Economist has a new article on "emerging wireless" technologies (smart antennas, mesh networks, ad hoc architectures, and ultra-wideband transmission):
Watch this airspace.

Ran into a cool site, Textploitation (while looking for http://www.techsploitation.com).Textploitation has some kind of government money for an SMS project. Those interested in such things might want to check it out.

Or should I say "The First Wireless Communication Infrastructure?" Looks like we could learn a thing or two about messaging from our bacterial friends (and presumably our viral friends).

See the BBC News article:
Bacteria 'message' to each other.

It is known that bacteria exchange messages by releasing substances into the fluid in which they are growing, but new research suggests they can send signals through the air.

It is the first time airborne communication has been identified, say the team who carried out the study.

The messages sent by bacteria are a wake-up call to other roaming bugs to head towards the bacterial colonies called biofilms.