Thread: Will This Amazon Idea Come to Oz?

For me, the issue I see is accidental or deliberate spoofing.
Given the reach of Australia's telecom surveillance laws how would an innocent user prove their innocence if "big brother" had a log of the child abuse websites surfed by a passerby in the street?

Telstra do a similar thing with their NBN modems if the owner enables it. Telstra Air - Your Home Gateway- Telstra Wifi Network

About 15 years ago, my son lived in a densely occupied suburb in Sydney and didn't have the internet at home. So he would prepare a bunch of emails on his laptop, press "send" and then drive around the area for five minutes. Hey Presto! All the emails would have been sent when he arrived home courtesy of the number of unsecured networks in the district.

mick

Originally Posted by ian

For me, the issue I see is accidental or deliberate spoofing.
Given the reach of Australia's telecom surveillance laws how would an innocent user prove their innocence if "big brother" had a log of the child abuse websites surfed by a passerby in the street?

There is another school of thought that say you should leave wireless networks open (i.e. unsecured) precisely because of this.

Courts will assume that if a wireless network is secured, it cannot be hacked. That is not true of course; but then it leaves the accused with the not inconsiderable burden of proof to the contrary. Whereas an open network has plausible deniability built in

I'm not advocating this. There are other reasons for securing networks that arguably are more important than the off-chance of being network spoofed by some technically savvy miscreant.