Free WiFI at Panera Bread on Amherst St, Nashua

[Bill McGonigle]

On Aug 26, 2004, at 06:36, Travis Roy wrote:

> If you have a coffee shop and and a open wireless network and some 
> schmoe comes by and start playing hack the planet the poor coffee shop 
> owner is ultimately responsible.

Is there precedent for this?  If you replace 'wireless network' with 
'telephone' or 'bread knives' or 'delivery van' wouldn't the criminal 
be found responsible?  What happens if someone phones in a bomb threat 
from a privately-owned pay-phone in a cafe, does the shop owner do 
time?

Even with the 'contract' they're just as likely to get their IP 
blacklisted as they would without it.  For any kind of defense against 
hypothetical lawsuit they need to be logging MAC addresses and IP 
addresses/ports with timestamps.  Based on what Fred reported it sounds 
like they are, so vpn to your box. :)  Even with such a log, you'd have 
to prove that the MAC that did the attacking _didn't_ belong to a 
company employee.  Always hard to prove the negative, especially in a 
criminal matter since the criminal isn't going to worry about any 
company policies that might be in his way.

It's their connection, so they can do what they want, but it sounds 
like security theater.

-Bill
----
Bill McGonigle, Owner           Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC              Home: 603.448.1668
bill at bfccomputing.com           Cell: 603.252.2606
http://www.bfccomputing.com/    Text: bill+text at bfccomputing.com