This, the machine-mediated online price comparison (and goods review accesses), will become a major war once augmented reality glasses become common. Look at a barcode, see the “major discount” is scam.
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It can’t block your Wi-Fi by interference (Section 333), but I don’t believe there’s any right to use it for connectivity within an event by a vendor — I’m not sure there’s a principle that can be espoused there. By individuals in their hotel rooms or at a trade show, almost certainly supportable because it’s individual use.
Thanks for the replies- And that does make sense.
So, to recap, the violation was in restricting airwaves, which are federally regulated public property. The hotels do have a right to restrict the use of outside lines in their contracts, but the enforcement of such begins and ends with the ability to kick someone off their property if they violate that contract. So the problem was with the application of technology that infringes on federal territory (the airwaves themselves), rather than their customers using those airwaves.
Is that more or less accurate? Mind you, I’m talking legal issues, not moral.
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Rogue APs generally means APs connected to your wired/internal network. Such as employees setting up an AP at their desk and using it to connect unapproved devices to the corporate network. This is a legitimate security risk, and involves unauthorized access to company owned property.
There is no legitimate reason to disable APs that are private,. connecting my personal device to my personal cell phone and to the internet through licensed LTE spectrum as long as the AP isn’t used for gaining unauthorized access (for instance by impersonating an approved network and tricking devices into connecting to it).
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Sometimes you need to go extralegal. I had a case when a new, noncooperative AP had to be moved to a different frequency. A solution was a script that kept it crippled until it moved out to elsewhere. (Straddling between frequencies, interfering with (and being interfered with) multiple networks. Wifi does not transmit on just one channel, the one set is the center frequency. The signal spills over to one or two channels on each side.) Next day the thing was at other frequency and problem was solved.
Book of Mormon? Better: download Dianetics. And a copy of Battlefield Earth, just to be sure. Hell, might as well throw in the collected works of Ayn Rand while yr at it. Especially all the essays where she quotes herself.
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Ayn Rant. You are evil. I like you.
But Marriott is a Mormon corporation… even before the Hobby Lobby debacle.
It’s fun (and relatively common in IT circles) to talk about ‘rogue’ APs, and it’s even somewhat meaningful in the context of security research describing APs that misrepresent themselves in the attempt to lure targets to connect to them for MiTM or similar purposes; but it’s pretty much a bunch of bluster for FCC purposes.
You don’t have the right to use jammers against devices in the ISM or U-NII bands (though those devices are pretty much on the bottom of the list if inadvertent interference from licensed transmitters ends up being an issue). Yes, trying to maintain an enterprise/campus wireless network in the presence of random APs is a pain in the ass; but that’s what you get for choosing the low cost and convenience of running your data network in an unlicensed band.
The FCC has fairly limited resources, so you can probably get away with it; but that doesn’t help once you attract attention.
It’s a little more complicated than that, as there are often regulatory or compliance regimes that one has to work under.
As an example in the public domain, the COBIT framework from which Sarbanes Oxley IT controls are taken requires a corporation to put controls in place to keep rouge WIFI off a network, and maintaining compliance is important for any publicly traded company.
In the private domain, if you’re processing credit cards the PCI standard also enforces controls on maintaining the integrity of any WIFI used, If you don’t, you can loose your ability to process customer credit cards. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? Just allowing anyone to set up a WIFI point on a network with sensitive PII is gross negligence, IMO.
Bottom line is that many organizations have a legal requirement to keep foreign WIFI off their networks.
Except these aren’t ON their networks. They’re completely separate. Someone setting up an AP on the floor using the Marriot’s bandwidth? Block away. One that’s completely separate? That’s not going to come close to touching SOX.
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I don’t disagree with you.
I was just pointing out that mvannorman’s statement that people have “no legal basis for interfering with access points that aren’t theirs” is too overly broad to be meaningful.
Wired-network thought. ARP-poisoning of devices with unapproved MAC address, or with MAC indicating certain known AP vendors. Something that monitors the ARP activity on the LAN and fakes responses to either fail connections or to connect to a server with the banned-AP policy explanation. May work on its own or in tandem with the deauth system. A combination of active probing/spoofing/poisoning and passive activity-monitoring methods can be even used for probing if the given MAC on the LAN side belongs to the other MAC on the wifi side.
Yes, and that can all be done be limiting the wired connection or tightly controlling your wireless clients. It need not be done by violating FCC regulations. One could control “rogue” access points by torching them and shooting the operator, but I think we would all agree that murder and property damage both cross a legal line. An extreme analogy, but SOX and PCI compliance don’t give one license to ignore all other laws and regulations. If you are not controlling what you plug into your network, you are already failing in the compliance area. Over the air interference is the wrong solution and too late for real compliance in any case.
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I guess throwing folk out, could lead to a wi-fi disobedience protest where everyone at the conference turns on their wi-fi hotspots and dares the management to throw them all out.
considering the existing hall had been owned by marriott for about a year at the time of the offense, I suspect this was existing conv center management.
that and i have some insider baseball on Marriott, and its not their style. not saying they are saints, but disrupting like that really isn’t their style.
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