What if every household enabled an open "guest" SSID on their Wifi router? Wouldn't it have a huge positive impact of giving access to people who can't afford mobile data or home internet?
The idea was roughly this:
Such a large portion of wifi equipment sold at the time had the SSID "Linksys" and no password. So everyone's devices had a saved setting to connect to that, even if we later configured our networks differently.
Therefore it's super convenient if you just call your guest network that. When you actually have guests over, chances are good that their devices will automatically use your wifi with zero hassles whatsoever.
(Also implied but unspoken: The existence of this craptastic webpage explaining the Linksys Community Network Project is plausible deniability if you get caught using someone else's open wifi that they shared out of ignorance rather than because they read this page and agreed with it.)
Ah! Of course! https://web.archive.org/web/20030402170927/http://www.linksy...
Most of their defense is based on the assumption that you have all the same protections as a network operator. However, as the article points out, this has never been tested in court. So you might be fine, and you might go to jail, we don't know.
And even if you do get network operator status, there are still legal notices and copyright systems you have to comply with.
And thats all just copyright. That article doesn't deal with more serious online crimes.
If the FBI finds someone downloading child porn from your network, you will be arrested. You will have to convince the police that it was someone else. Even if you don't end up with any serious penalties, that's a hell of a lot more hassle than I'm willing to put up with.
There are only downsides for me, but I think they are limited: - My router lets me set the bandwidth limits for the guest network. I set it to 10Mbps down/1Mbps up which is unnoticeable. - My ISP has no data caps. - The laws here are not draconian
It looks like this concept is super old: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirel...
If you were a crook, would you use a random open wifi for your illegal stuff? Wouldn't you use Tor or some proxy on top of that?