This is worse.

Disturbing story from the Kansas City Star about a homicide last summer.  Apparently the victim was sitting in his car in a restaurant parking lot using the establishment's Wi-Fi (either after hours or while only the drive-through was open) when he was accosted by a robber apparently attracted by the glow of his laptop's screen.  The victim resisted and was fatally shot; the stolen computer was eventually tracked down and suspects arrested.

While my sympathies are totally with the victim and his loved ones, I feel this should serve as a cautionary tale.  If you wouldn't feel safe walking alone or stopping your car somewhere at a certain time, you probably shouldn't whip out a laptop then and there either.  I imagine this poor fellow didn't have access at home for some reason, which is why he was out and about at that hour.  Anyone else in that same situation ought to consider that cheap dialup (or free dialup from NetZero, if you're running Windows and can get by with ten hours a month) is still around and can serve as a stopgap for your at-home hours.  Don't have a landline phone at home anymore?  Check with your cellular provider to see what they offer with regard to getting either your phone or both it and your laptop online, or perhaps look into the growing number of prepaid/pay-as-you-go mobile broadband options.

Incidentally, I can't think of any 24-hour venues that are unwired and offer inside service around the clock, which may be safer from a crime-prevention standpoint.  Can anyone else?

This is bad.

Burning off a few vacation days gave me the chance this morning to catch financial guru Clark Howard's somewhat belated take on the Firesheep/sidejacking situation.  As has been his wont, unfortunately, he showed once again that, just like a lot of other people when it comes to issues involving open Wi-Fi, he doesn't grasp what the real danger is-in this case, sites that use cookies for authentication and then transport them in the clear because all their pages aren't SSL-encrypted.  He again spouted his outdated "don't bank or shop when you're connected to open Wi-Fi" nonsense, a clear indication he doesn't understand that it's sites which don't collect or transmit sensitive financial information-mostly social networking venues like Facebook-that are susceptible to this exploit.  Any site that does in this day and age is going to have all its pages fully protected-or it won't have insurance coverage.

You've got to wonder-has anyone ever taught Howard how to use a search engine?  Try looking up "Firesheep," Clark.  Pay particular attention to its author's explanations of how it works and his motivations for creating it.  I think you may find them somewhat enlightening.  

Not on Uncle Sam's dime, you don't.

Given our disdain for getting entangled in politics here, I'd been pretty much ignoring the furor over the Wikileaks disclosures...until one of my periodic searches for Wi-Fi related news came across this report from Library Journal that the Library of Congress-which I didn't realize offered what is apparently free and open wireless access to its visitors- is completely blocking access to the entire Wikileaks site on that connection as well as on its own staff computers, giving this rationale on its blog.

Hmmm...interesting. Clearly the library is on solid ground as far as its own machines and staff-who, it should be remembered, are government employees-are concerned. However, a government agency's imposition of a prior restraint against published works not by preventing their publication but by prohibiting the public from reading them is somewhat troubling.

Can we expect a push in the new Congress to expand the Children's Internet Protection Act to unambiguously cover Internet access provided to patron-owned devices in public libraries receiving relevant federal funding and modify the categories of prohibited content just to handle this sort of situation? One certainly hopes not. It's bad enough that the Rehnquist Supreme Court sanctioned this kind of Chinese-style "we can't stop them from publishing it but we can stop you from reading it" form of censorship when it upheld CIPA in the first place. Granted, CIPA at present only covers (for the most part) material that doesn't enjoy First Amendment protection (I'm still not convinced that its definition of material "harmful to minors" won't eventually prove to be unconstitutionally vague). However, if we aren't careful, we could easily find ourselves on a steep and very slippery slope.

What's that, you say? Classified material, once leaked, isn't protected by the First Amendment? Well, what do you know? That's just what Rehnquist argued as an assistant attorney general when the Pentagon Papers were published. Too bad for him that the Supreme Court-then still presided over by his predecessor as Chief Justice, Warren Burger-didn't see it that way.

Whoops-missed the bus.

Sorry I didn't catch this tidbit from the Kansas City Business Journal way back in August:  Johnson County Transit has unwired buses on some of its routes. 

Strictly speaking, of course, these rolling hotspots aren't really free and open-you have to pay the fare to board-but I'm interested in how they're working out.  Seems they'd run into something of the same problem the airlines have had with trying to sell "fly-fi" on shorter routes; the less time you have to actually use the connection before arriving at your destination, the less likely you are to use it at all-or pay for it.  While additional money isn't involved on the buses, I still wonder how many riders will bother with booting up unless they're commuting a really long distance.

Any bus surfers out there care to weigh in with your experiences?