No, it was half-in, half-out. By that I mean it was being used in their homes, and "leaked" out because that's what airwaves do. Which isn't typically a big deal, since one hardly expects people to be sitting outside trying to pick it up.
Yes. In other words, you need to consider more than just the most common case. You also need to consider edge cases, and the potential damage versus the likelihood versus the difficulty to mitigate. In this case, the edge case is likely - anyone with a laptop could do it, and have been known to (see wardriving), the damage is potentially severe - especially if you do stupid stuff like sending sensitive data in the clear over email, and the difficulty to mitigate is trivial.
No. You're discussing technological feasibility - and how complex it would be to implement, as well as risk-reward ratios. Which completely fails to address the matter in terms of rights in law. You do this several times throughout your response.
There's nothing technologically complicated about using a handgun either, and using one could certainly save you from a violent mugging.
No. However, securing your router doesn't inflict bodily harm on a human being, require special licensing, or open you to the possibility of charges arising from its use (yet). Are you sure you're not BadAnalogyGuy in drag? Having a gun is a complex piece of mitigation, involving training and licensing, and may not even be effective, as presence of a firearm might prevent, or it might provoke escalation. Better mitigation would simply be not to go to dangerous areas at night. Not foolproof, but it reduces the chances of occurrence down to the point where I've never been mugged in my life.
...such as here...
Whenever you leave your home, there is also a slight chance that it will rain no matter what the weather report says.
Which is why I keep an umbrella in the car.
You might get slammed by a car as you cross the street, therefore you should never leave the house without a pair of clean underwear on, in case you have an unanticipated ambulance ride to the hospital to worry about
And that's at a level of severity I really don't worry about. For various values of "clean" anyway.
And you might run into some tourists from Spain who don't speak English while you're out.
Again, level of severity is negligible. Why do I care if I can speak to the tourists or not?
Therefore, you should never leave the house without a loaded handgun, a large umbrella, a pair of clean underwear on, and a Spanish-to-English translation dictionary. Otherwise, it's your own damn fault.
Well, if you get caught in the rain without an umbrella, yes, it is your own damn fault. What do you want, the government to outlaw rain?
No. I'm demonstrating the impracticality of having a government refuse to acknowledge your rights, and leave you to fend for yourself in every eventuality.
My point, however, remains. Kismet does not come standard, you have to purposely install it - usually to sniff another person's otherwise-private network traffic.
Your threshold for "modification" seems to be unrealistically low - considering that would mean my grandma's computer with Open Office on it would be considered "specially modified technology".
If your grandmother can pick up my wifi data with Open Office, please do arrange a meeting with her for me.
Part of my point was that someone would have to modify the technology or use the software in order to pick up someone else's personal wifi data, thus legally establishing intent. If you demonstrate intent to nab someone's papers, or in this case wifi data, you've demonstrated an intent to violate their rights and act on it.
The other part had to do with the distinction between using hardware and software particularly for the purpose of packet sniffing, versus the feasibility of walking down the street and happening to look into an uncurtained window as in your example. And you appear to have ducked both parts of my point.
And a wireless router does not come standard either.
True, but irrelevant. We're not discussing how using wifi routers violates someone else's rights.
You have now dispensed with a free society's right to have open, unencrypted wifi hotspots in order to support an argument that anybody should be allowed to play Peeping Tom on someone else's data, just because they have the technological ability.
You already had.
False.
After all, you wouldn't connect to an open, unencrypted wi-fi hotspot if doing so was a criminal act (as you want to make it).
I said no such thing.
And no, wi-fi free, open wi-fi hotspots are perfectly viable under my model. You just do what any person with a clue does now, and don't transmit secure information over a wi-fi network you're willing for other people to use.
Another dodge. You maintain that in using open wifi routers, one has relinquished any right to expectations of privacy. And that is bunk.
If we tried the same argument with personal defense, society would become an arms race in which everyone had to pack an AK-47 and Kevlar before leaving the house, because any random schmuck could light them up on their way to work
Possibly because there's a distinction between a wi-fi network and an assault rifle. You may not have been aware of that, but I'd probably look into it before you go down to the range next time if I was you. It might save you looking a little silly.
Yet you neglect that the same argument would be absurd for either, which was my point.
You may as well argue that they're different shapes, or made of different materials, and that I'm a dunce for not noticing. At this point, you're visibly sabotaging the conversation.
Hopefully you now understand the point I'm trying to make there, and aren't just trying to avoid hearing it.
I knew the point you were making long before this post. It's a stupid point.
Then don't engage in pages of dialogue with me pretending to debate, when you aren't. Say my point is stupid, leave it at that, and I'll write off your argument as an invalid insult rather than the debate you tried to couch it as. That would have saved us both a lot of wasted time. Why do you come to Slashdot if not to debate, when ChatRoulette is more satisfying for what you're doing?
You have the right to your own data. You have the right to encrypt it. If someone tries to crack your encryption, the government should lock them up. If they break into your house to steal your unencrypted data, the government should lock them up.
If they read the data you broadcast in the clear
Yep. In your world, wifi signals must appear as visible hologrammatic channels of data flowing between computer and router and leaking out in a radius outside the building, where any innocent child wandering around outside. No malicious intent, no deliberate action required to pick up that data, they just slip over a banana peel because the owner didn't use additional encryption. And that doesn't work for me.
when you don't want them to, you're a moron. Sadly, that cannot be fixed by legislation.
Since you're not attempting to have a reasoned debate but dodge the discussion instead, I'm going to give it a miss myself. That way, at least we'll agree to something.