Free WiFI at Panera Bread on Amherst St, Nashua

[Travis Roy]

> 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?

If a customer was able to get to a knife because the staff left it in an 
easy to get to spot I bet that at least civil charges could be brought 
up against the shop or that person.. It's not right, but I bet it could 
happen, you can sue for just about anything now a days.

Plus you have to remember that most ISPs now have in their contract that 
you are responsible for your connection and any unauthorized access 
through it.

> 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.

Well there are two ways they could deal with it.. I think a stupid 
little click box is worthless, so in reality it's basically open. If you 
have an open network with no accounts then I would assume that it would 
be the shop keeper that is responsible. It's their network, they opened 
it up to the world, they're the ones not keeping track of who's on it.

The other way would be to require a user account to login. You put in 
all your information and you log their mac, IP, login time and logout 
time. Sure, somebody could put bogus info, but at least the shop keeper 
can say "here's when that person logged in, logged out, their IP, Mac 
address, and all the info they put in when they signed up for the account"

If somebody called in a bomb threat from a coffee shop you bet the cops 
will be there and probably ask you if you noticed anybody using the 
phone at the time of the call. I don't think it would be much different 
with internet access, except that if it causes a hassle to your ISP, 
your IPS will probably shut you off.