I have seen several worrying accounts of late that detail the harassment of citizens who tape police actions. While I don’t always agree with Ed Brayton of “Dispatches from the Culture Wars” I found his recent post interesting.
It is absolutely critical that our public servants are subject to the scrutiny of the public they serve. As the title alludes, their actions must be able to withstand the light.
Interestingly, in St. Louis the ACLU is giving cameras to citizens in order to monitor the police. Project Vigilant hopes to equip up to 100 residents and train them to safely tape police contacts. A spokesman for the police department officially says they don’t have “feelings about it one way or another.” We’ll see about that. They also plan workshops to teach people their consitutional rights when approached by the police.
I have been banging my head against the wall for days trying to get my laptop’s wireless card working in Fedora 7. I have it working correctly now but it probably took me 12 hours or more over the course of a week to straighten it out. As an RHCE I took it as a personal challenge to get it working.
In defense of Fedora and Linux in general, I have had other cards automatically recognized and work “out of the box.” Plus, this particular card (Broadcom 4318 aka Airforce One 54g) seems to be particularly difficult based on the amount of complaints I found in my research. Add to that the fact Broadcom doesn’t want to work with the open-source community. But, this kind of blackhole for time is what scares off new users from desktop Linux.
I intend to write a how-to soon with detailed info on what it took to get everything up and running. But in the meantime, here are some pointers:
1) Don’t use the included bcm driver, load ndiswrapper and use the Windows driver files as detailed in the instructions.
2) If you are using WPA/WPA2 security as I am, don’t mess with wpa_supplicant directly, let NetworkManager handle it.
Speaking of NetworkManager, if it isn’t loaded (by default in the upper panel near the switch user applet and clock) install it now.
3) Here is the big kicker that got me: if you are using WPA/WPA2 you can’t have SSID broadcasting turned off at your router/AP. Even if you can see it in NM after choosing to “Connect to Other Wireless Network” it won’t work, trust me.
When I have some more time, I will write a more detailed how-to with links to the driver I used etc. Hopefully this can point you in the right direction until then.
Finally some sanity has been injected into the case of Julie Amero. She is the substitute teacher convicted of endangering minors for “allowing” porn on a school computer. Ms. Amero claimed the porn was the result of ad pop-ups on the web but the prosecutor seemed determined to make a case. She was due to be sentenced yesterday but the court heard her motion for a new trial first and granted it.
Despite the fact that there was no active firewall/content blocker and outdated virus protection, this substitute was somehow supposed to magically change the nature of the web and prevent any distasteful pop-ups. Shoddy investigation made it seem that someone was actively surfing for it. Another forensic examination has shown there is no evidence for that and seems to corroborate Ms. Amero’s story. Even the prosecutor nows admits there may have been errors.
With a competent judge, this should go away when she is retried. I hope Ms. Amero then turns around and sues those involved if only to make them think twice before trying to railroad people again. Teachers have enough problems without malicious questionable prosecution.
News Article
Commentary by Investigator
Blogs: Odd Time Signatures / Slashdot / BoingBoing
A Michigan man was arrested by police for accessing a coffee shop’s
public Wi-Fi hotspot. He was charged with a felony and faced up to 5
years in jail, but he took an offer of “paying a $400 fine, doing 40
hours of community service and staying on probation for six months.”
I am a bit disturbed by this story. While a person surreptitiously piggybacking on a neighbors connections is certainly unethical and most likely illegal, this is different. This coffee shop is operating a wifi hot-spot essentially for the public. There are systems (some free) designed for such operations that allow a shop owner to give an access password which is usually input on a gateway page when a user opens a web browser. In this case it was left completely open which to me could imply “public” status.
While the shop owner didn’t even have a problem with the man’s use of the connection, a cop took it upon himself to research whether he could find something to charge the guy with and eventually did charge him with a felony. Now I don’t argue that the cop had probable cause to question the guy due to the reports from the barber shop but to go back and start looking for something to get him with seems excessive as does the charge that the prosecutor chose.
Link (via BoingBoing)
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