Warchalking, a terrorist tool?
"Back in the Depression, hobos would draw chalk marks on the walls of houses to show where a generous stranger lived. A top hat meant ''kind gentleman lives here.'' Nowadays you might find two back-to-back half-circles, designating an open Wi-Fi node, scrawled on walls around your home or office. ''Wi-Fi'' technology, which consists of invisible radio signals, lets you take your broadband connection and broadcast it more than 1,000 feet.Despite the fact, however, that NY Times selected it as one of their ideas of the year; there are several legal issues that the Warchalking FAQ ignores. As I've discussed before, agreements between users and service providers normally prohibit redistribution. Which means that even if users don't know that there are others accessing their node, they may be responsible to secure it. Wired and the Times have reported that failure to do so may lead to regulation by Homeland Security because officials claim that wireless access points pose a national security threat.
