Wednesday, August 14, 2002

FBI Investigates "War Chalking"? Quick backgrounder: War Chalking is a modern descendant of the old Hobo-languages.  Today, War Chalking is used to alert passers-by that there is an available WiFi signal nearby.  In extreme cases, people engage in something called "war driving", where they drive around with a laptop set up with a WiFi card and software such as NetStumbler.  When they detect a WiFi net, they will leave their calling card-- a war chalk symbol indicating what kind of network it is, etc. So, it turns out that the FBI is probing this phenomenon in Pittsburgh.  They aren't sure that it's illegal yet, but if the war chalking ends up in someone breaking into a system, it could be punishible. This is BS.  I have a wireless network at home, and have considered warchalking out on my sidewalk myself-- I could easily share my Internet access, and my system is secure.  So, am I breaking some law?  I doubt it.  Fact is, companies that have sensitive information but also want to provide wireless access have to think things out a bit.  Install security.  Firewalls, authorization, etc.  Seems obvious to me!  Punishing the geeks that are war driving just to catalog access points is wrong.  Of course, if people are wardriving just to find places to break into, that's a different story. get on the horn! [] 9:28:51 AM     House Update We had the new house inspected yesterday.  No major problems, and everything that we wanted fixed will be...  I even finally called my Mom to tell her the news, so it must be official.  I'm starting to get excited, but there is just so much work to get the old house ready for showing that it's hard to find time to feel anything but tired.  I'll be glad when this is all over.  (We close on the new house in about a month). Bush is a silly man Bush declared yesterday that "Times are kind of tough".  Gee!  His "made-for-TV" (Daschle's words, not mine) forum was rather comical to watch, as Bush scurried from one seminar to the next, missing much of the discussion.  It was weird seeing Dick Cheney wandering around-- I thought he was still at some undisclosed location, hiding from the SEC. get on the horn! [] 8:43:03 AM

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