EFF Aims To Launch An Open Wireless Router

[89c51]

I think that's what they're aiming for. They'll market hardware with the aforementioned firmware. The flamefest in this thread is misguided. The network/internet sharing is aimed for businesses such as hotels, convention centres, etc. If you do not desire to share your bandwidth, you don't have to. I do not understand how much different would this be from OpenWRT? Can't they just use OpenWRT or modify it to suit their needs? "I think it's wasted effort."

I am all for nice Open Source friendly hw. Since it is also aimed at business it should be really hi quality. Hope they make it. I'd buy something like that.

[Luke]

There are always intentional providers of free service

I don't even trust my friends. Have a squid proxy at home and blocked ports 443 and 22 for guests. The web usage is also logged at http header level to prevent abuse.

Libraries don't ask you to buy anything or have a library card, and some wifi access points get labelled "free wifi" to identify them for public use. Also, opening your wifi network while encrypting your computers can make it impossible for any court to prove that some "undesired" activity like filesharing was actually yours, which is a desirable characteristic when you yourself are more likely to do this than any "freeloader" who will simply be doing more of the same. Legal inablity to distinguish your activity from that of the guests can be a strong defense and is sometimes used by activists for that very reason.

[asdfblah]

Why will I want to share MY internet connection, which I am paying out of my own pocket, with strangers and passersby? Are they paying me for it? No? Then they can bugger off. My subscription, my exclusive use. Period.

"Allow" is not the same as "forced to", why the hell are you whining?

I think that's what they're aiming for. They'll market hardware with the aforementioned firmware. The flamefest in this thread is misguided. The network/internet sharing is aimed for businesses such as hotels, convention centres, etc. If you do not desire to share your bandwidth, you don't have to. I do not understand how much different would this be from OpenWRT? Can't they just use OpenWRT or modify it to suit their needs? "I think it's wasted effort."

From https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt :

CeroWrt is a project built on the OpenWrt firmware

So, it's the fork of the fork of OpenWRT... they could have gone with Gargoyle Router instead, or could have modified LuCI. Yep, more wasted efforts.

[liam]

Libraries don't ask you to buy anything or have a library card, and some wifi access points get labelled "free wifi" to identify them for public use. Also, opening your wifi network while encrypting your computers can make it impossible for any court to prove that some "undesired" activity like filesharing was actually yours, which is a desirable characteristic when you yourself are more likely to do this than any "freeloader" who will simply be doing more of the same. Legal inablity to distinguish your activity from that of the guests can be a strong defense and is sometimes used by activists for that very reason.

I am far more sympathetic to your position than sonadow's but I am much more concerned with users who'd browse child porn, and things of a similar illegal nature, than copyright infringement. That's why I don't act as a Tor exit (admittedly I'm not a tor user to begin with I would like to help those who do need to use it). Yes, it can be fought in court, and I'd probably win, but the various costs would be considerable (not just monetary, but reputation, and distraction from other endeavors).
I'm still undecided as to whether or not I'd open my network, but selfishness doesn't factor in (I've no caps or throttling).
BTW, where do you live? It wouldn't happen to be JP?

[stiiixy]

My opinion is that we need a new class of metropolitan network that will kill all providers. I have seen mobile accessory antennas that can communicate in a distance of 80km with mediocre visibility between them and outdoor fixed point ones that can do that from 190km and all that relative cheap. As more beam like the antenna is, the better, the safer. As more to the Terahertz band, the same. I have seen antennas and chips that can communicate with GBps speed or lasers with TBps speed. I have seen early quantum encryption over them. That we need is a Libre Access Point that is on the road of what i describe. That can automatically connect with other many others at once, encrypted but without password, till the last backbone. Also a GPS like channel, independent from the data channel, so you can find your position without the danger to find you. An IP over IP service, lets say IPv7 like, for the early days when we will share our cable connection. So when I connect with your ADSL Libre Router - Access Point, i have my own IP via your ADSL connection, and not your IP. MAFIA tho, can sue you for my Torrent download, but you can prove your innocence. It's not in their favor if they don't want to admit the existence of my IP system.

I've been considering doing the same thing with my own recently acquired fibre connection. I was looking at the ubiquiti stuffs. They seem cheap, reliable and powerful and ready to go. I dont mind sharing out in 100KB parcels free WiFi to locals who are in the massive park outside my door. It should be a trivial thing to configure bandwidth throttling in all routers. Tick a box to throttle, and set the max speed per IP/MAC. Then provide a list of people who are exceptions. And probably a daily data cap amount, as well.

But, what you propose in all likelihood would require a co-op of businesses, and ISP's are not in the game for sharing. They'll gladly back your cause if they're the one's providing the backbone =D

So, government (at the local level usually) would likely need to step in and provide the framework and funding for such endeavours. I believe the US has a bit of a negative outlook on 'socialist' projects (publicly funded projects paid for with government money....your defence forces are a form of socialism), so I say good luck to you guys! Maybe try a Kickstarter programme? They take a cut of your donations as payment though, dont they?

I believe there was a WiFi mesh network built in Sydney by regular people during the naughties that set out to do exactly what you said. Not sure how that's panned out now, especially with everyone just jumping on the mobile bandwagon and AUS getting 25Mb WiFi or fibre. With the naughty boys, that just comes down to implementation; speed throttling, a certificate (probably for a bigger public project), logging, blacklist porn sites and other criminal sites. Fair use for a fair go.

[Luke]

I'm a US far left activist, my security requirements far exceed those of filesharing

I am far more sympathetic to your position than sonadow's but I am much more concerned with users who'd browse child porn, and things of a similar illegal nature, than copyright infringement. That's why I don't act as a Tor exit (admittedly I'm not a tor user to begin with I would like to help those who do need to use it). Yes, it can be fought in court, and I'd probably win, but the various costs would be considerable (not just monetary, but reputation, and distraction from other endeavors).
I'm still undecided as to whether or not I'd open my network, but selfishness doesn't factor in (I've no caps or throttling).
BTW, where do you live? It wouldn't happen to be JP?

I am a far left (anticapitalist) activist in the US, and have been since the El Salvador War in the 1980's when we stopped Reagan's 1988 ground invasion of Honduras and deterred the 1980-1984 attempts to bring back the draft. This is who I am, so as you can see my security needs are a lot higher than those of someone only doing filesharing.

The 2008 raid on my house wasn't after porn or liberated music/movies. They were after raw media files from a protest they didn't like. They got nothing because I did not commit to camera anything they could use, and encrypted everything else. Under these circumstances, open wifi is good for plausable deniablity, so long as multiple potential users exist within wifi range. With copythug stuff, it's good for at least one free bite at the apple, with heavy stuff it could prevent a conviction if the cops can't crack your encrypted drives.

To us, the most likely hazard is when cops don't like reporting on militant protests(my work!) or especially when they dislike the communications hub. When I was in Pittsburgh during the 2009 G20 summit, we had a crew putting all police comms out on a Twitter feed. Evidently they did not create and service the account exclusively through Tor, as their room was raided before they could clear out after the battle. Ideally they would have run open wifi as a Tor exit node, while doing everything through Tor on accounts serviced only through Tor. This would have killed the evidence against them if they claimed to only be running a Tor node. Even kiddie porn would have been a lower priority target. OK, here's the back story:

Our target was the 2009 G20 Convention in Pittsburgh. Military police closed off downtown to the cost of about $50M in lost shopping business, trying to keep our 1,000+ fighters off the convention itself. We had the entire Pittsburgh PD outnumbered 1,000-750 or so, they brought in outside help but all they were able to do was statically defend the Convention, with little ability to project power against us in the streets. We held out against 4+ hours of rubber bullets and an LRAD sound cannon, as repeated assaults failed to disperse us. Through all of that a special action team managed to bypass all the security and get downtown. We gave as good as we got. The next day 10,000 mainstream protesters marched. Generally in one of these "Summit protests" we can control the streets for one day before the cops recover and catch their breath. A rare exception is when the cops either don't care or royally screw up: then the convention itself ends up under siege, like that Koch funded "Defending the American Dream" convention that was beseiged and nearly raided by Occupy DC in Nov 2011, or the WTO in Seattle in 1999.

Under conditions like this, you are far less worried about kiddie porn, etc over your Tor node than about being directly targeted. The kiddie porn will go out anyway over another Tor node, so you can't stop it by shutting down. The guys who investigate that sort of thing move a lot slower than a police chief with angry ideas about "later" after his troops got their badges handed to them in the streets. A delay of two days past the end of the event is all you need for this when working from a temporary location. Tor delays or prevents the cops from finding you, open wifi plus encrypted disks keeps them from convicting you if that first line of defense (Tor) is breached. In my community our pro bono lawyers also give as good as they get, deterring casual harassment and winning millions in judgements for things like illegal mass arrests. What do you think paid for my 8-core video editor's parts and my 1080P camera?

[artivision]

I've been considering doing the same thing with my own recently acquired fibre connection. I was looking at the ubiquiti stuffs. They seem cheap, reliable and powerful and ready to go. I dont mind sharing out in 100KB parcels free WiFi to locals who are in the massive park outside my door. It should be a trivial thing to configure bandwidth throttling in all routers. Tick a box to throttle, and set the max speed per IP/MAC. Then provide a list of people who are exceptions. And probably a daily data cap amount, as well.

But, what you propose in all likelihood would require a co-op of businesses, and ISP's are not in the game for sharing. They'll gladly back your cause if they're the one's providing the backbone =D

So, government (at the local level usually) would likely need to step in and provide the framework and funding for such endeavours. I believe the US has a bit of a negative outlook on 'socialist' projects (publicly funded projects paid for with government money....your defence forces are a form of socialism), so I say good luck to you guys! Maybe try a Kickstarter programme? They take a cut of your donations as payment though, dont they?

I believe there was a WiFi mesh network built in Sydney by regular people during the naughties that set out to do exactly what you said. Not sure how that's panned out now, especially with everyone just jumping on the mobile bandwagon and AUS getting 25Mb WiFi or fibre. With the naughty boys, that just comes down to implementation; speed throttling, a certificate (probably for a bigger public project), logging, blacklist porn sites and other criminal sites. Fair use for a fair go.

First choose a vendor that you can install open source software. Then do not block rates above 100kbps, just buy something that you can program it to give you an 70-80% when you are in (20-30% to others) and a 90% to others when you are not. 100kbps its the down limit for all connection you give. Then have a username like "Pass: free", so they understand the password.


In my previous comment I use a wrong word: backbone. I mean that a simple laser can fire from the village in the boarders of one country to the village in the borders of another, like 200km.

[dee.]

blacklist porn sites and other criminal sites.

Porn is a crime now?

[My8th]

It be cool if all devices had this router capability. 39% of the world is internet users and this tech could improve this situation.

If porn is a crime I'm screwed.

[torsionbar28]

Why will I want to share MY internet connection, which I am paying out of my own pocket, with strangers and passersby? Are they paying me for it? No? Then they can bugger off. My subscription, my exclusive use. Period.

I agree, I have no desire to share services that I've paid for with freeloaders off the street. Especially since their online activities, nefarious or otherwise, can now be traced back to my IP address at my home. No thank you.

That said, I would like the ability to share my connection with trusted guests who are visiting, friends, family, etc.

Porn is a crime now?

No but many folks do not want that stuff in their home. In particular, parents need the ability to protect their children from accessing inappropriate web sites. Not to mention the malware that frequently comes from non-savvy users accessing those sites.

I am a far left (anticapitalist) activist in the US

Ha! Howdy rival! I'm a far right (anti-liberal) activist in the US, active since the Carter years, fighting against the liberal progressive agenda. Our privacy concerns are the same though. With Obama's love of domestic spying, and illegal targeting of conservative groups, I don't want him snooping on my activities or attacking my civil rights.