Open 802.11b wireless access points and remailers

[Petro]

At 10:43 AM -0700 7/24/01, gbroiles at speakeasy.org wrote:
>Several years ago, there was discussion on the list about creating headless or throwaway remailers (likely hidden in some institution where they could get power and net access for a long time until they were discovered)- I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about that, because I thought that the necessary Ethernet (or other network) connection which would be made between the hidden machine and the host network would make it easy enough to detect and disable that it wasn't a productive direction for exploration. (There are also any number of legal issues related to trespass, unauthorized network use, etc., which may apply.)
>
>However, that limitation may be withering away, with the spread of 802.11b (or similar) wireless networks - the attached email describes a Seattle-area system apparently set up by Microsoft in a shopping mall providing free network access to people within the reach of its radio units.
>
>An old laptop, a solar panel, some auxiliary batteries, and an 802.11 network card might be able to stay
>online for a long, long time in that sort of environment.

	There are several companies making embedded systems boards that use 
very little power and are capable of running linux. I don't know if any of 
them are quite low power enough to run off a solar panel yet, but some of 
the mips/arm designs might be.
	
	It would seem to me that if it's a box you don't expect to get back, 
it might be a better idea to build a special purpose machine--just the 
motherboard, 802.11 device and a reduced Linux installation running out
of flash ram. 

>And, if you're the sort that's worried about permission, etc., the nice thing is that these networks are explicitly intended for the use of guests on the premises, so at least the first level of concerns about trespass or unauthorized use are addressed.

	Depending on the area covered, you wouldn't even need to trespass.
If it's in a mall area, coverage would probably extend to certain areas of
the outside of the building where it might be feasible to mount a small 
enough box that it wouldn't get noticed. Epoxy your box to the wall next to 
some other sort of electrical equipment (if the interference won't get 
in the way) and it will probably remain undiscovered for a while. 

>These days, remailers aren't as exciting as they once were - perhaps the next important tools are going to be Freenet or Mojo Nation nodes - but the combination of wireless access plus anonymous access provides an interesting opportunity for network participants which are physically within a jurisdiction yet unavailable for punishment.

	Another interesting possibility is "Public VPNs" (I'm sure 
someone else has come up with this concept and given it a different
name) but use VPN software to establish a connection to a box 
as described above, and your home IP is lightly masked. 

	It might, given a big enough network, be possible to 
do some sort of "anonymous packet forwarder" like remailers, only
in real time. Well, no. I'm sure it's possible, it'll just take 
a lot of bandwidth.