Bruce Schneier is a very smart guy, but let's not deify him; he can be wrong about things too.
For example in the above column he repeats an urban myth: that running an open WiFi access point provides an affirmative defense against prosecution for things like piracy, hacking, or child porn.
I call it an urban myth because, personally, I have yet to find a court case in which such an argument was made, let alone one in which it was a determinant in the verdict. It's endlessly repeated online, with seemingly no evidence that it is true. (If someone reading this is aware of such a case, please reply with it! I would love to know.)
Also be aware that this was written when WEP was the state of the art in encrypting WiFi, and long before tools like Firesheep were widely available. You can't expect Schneier to make security arguments that will be true forever. Today it is so easy to snoop on open WiFi traffic that any given 11 year old could do--and today WPA2 is sufficently good to stop that.
At the same time, Bruce can be really right about things too, like how to properly secure a laptop. If anyone could run open WiFi and still be secure, it's a security expert. As opposed to my dad, who until recently was running Windows XP SP1 on his computer. He benefits from an encrypted WiFi signal as the first layer of the security onion.
People assert the counterexample, too, but in reality it's hard to find real cases where anything bad happened as a result of running an open wifi network.
The article mentions three cases, which I would not call "many". I have not been able to find any real numbers on this scenario; only a scattered handful of anecdotes, most of them referring to the same original news articles.
I'm not worried. It is extremely unlikely that there are any kiddie-porn fans in my neighborhood to begin with, much less any within range of my wifi signal.
not quite what you're looking for, but effectively the right thing. an ip address does not identify you personally, the same way a drivers license does.
>Certainly this does concern ISPs. Running an open wireless network will often violate your terms of service. But despite the occasional cease-and-desist letter and providers getting pissy at people who exceed some secret bandwidth limit, this isn't a big risk either. The worst that will happen to you is that you'll have to find a new ISP.
^ FTA. Not "ignorant", but more flippant. Not everyone has options when it comes to ISPs.
Or unlimited bandwidth. There's no way I'd run open WiFi in Australia because I only have a finite amount of downloading I can do, and I pay for the amount I expect to use myself so can't afford other people leeching off my connection.
