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A flight from Los Angeles to London was delayed on Sunday night after a passenger on board the aircraft discovered a Wi-Fi hotspot named "Al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork." ...a passenger expressed concern to a flight attendant. It's believed that he spotted the suspiciously named hotspot on his phone while searching for Wi-Fi networks.

We took a hacker to a café and, in 20 minutes, he knew where everyone else was born, what schools they attended, and the last five things they googled. In his backpack, Wouter Slotboom, 34, carries around a small black device, slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes, with an antenna on it. I meet Wouter by chance at a random cafe in the center of Amsterdam. It is a sunny day and almost all the tables are occupied. Some people talk, others are working on their laptops or playing with their smartphones. Wouter removes his laptop from his backpack,...

SF Mayor Gavin Newsom has declared universal access to wireless Internet to be a "fundamental right of all citizens" and stated that access to the Internet "is a civil rights issue as much as anything else."  This is the same San Francisco government pushing a complete ban of all handguns within city limits.  They are putting it to a referendum and proposition H will be on San Francisco city ballots next month.  If it passes, any possession of a handgun within city limits will be banned.  Everyone but government personnel and security guards will have to surrender their handguns within 90 days. ...

Is access to the Internet a "civil right?" Each individual's answer to this question is generally dependent upon a variety of factors — political affiliation, geographic location, economic status and the like. While one side of the debate claims that high speed broadband access is most certainly a right that everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, should enjoy, others disagree. Really, the entire debate is focused upon the "haves" and "have nots" (i.e. the people fortunate enough to have access at home or in their local communities and those who do not have the ability, for a variety of reasons, to...

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a potential Democratic White House contender, said in an interview published Wednesday that "Wi-Fi is a human right." O'Malley, a two-term governor who has fundraised vigorously for Democrats running in midterms races this year, said in an interview with CNN that he can relate to his 20-something daughters. "I am noticing a generational shift. While baby boomers were led to believe that sometimes our prosperity comes from separating from other[s], people under 40 believe that it will come from being closer to others," he said. O’Malley said young people are no longer following the path of...

Reading this made me feel like Ron Burgundy listening to Baxter tell him he ate a whole wheel of cheese: I’m not even mad. It’s amazing.Jon Ward of Yahoo News wonders if the next human right is the right to Frosted Flakes. “Baby boomers and older were often told that if we specialize in terms of our skills, we will be more secure and prosperous, that the definition of ‘making it” was living out in the suburbs as far way as possible with the biggest lawn possible,” he said. “Young people have flipped that on its head. Younger people...

Governor of Maryland and potential 2016 Democrat presidential candidate Martin O'Malley raised eyebrows on Wednesday when he was quoted in a CNN profiledeclaring access to wireless internet (WiFi) as a "human right." The quote occurred when O'Malley was discussing the "rebirth" of the American city and the skills of young people that make these changes happen. 

Marriott International has agreed to pay a $600,000 penalty for jamming guests' mobile WiFi hotspots at a hotel and conference facility in Nashville, Tenn.In a consent decree filed with the Federal Communications Commission, Marriott acknowledged that "one or more of its employees used containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system at the Gaylord Opryland to prevent consumers from connecting to the Internet via their own personal Wi-Fi networks."At the same time, the FCC says, the hotel was charging consumers, small businesses, and exhibitors from $250 to $1,000 per device to access Marriott's WiFi network."Consumers who purchase cellular data plans should...

The [StreetView] cars had vacuumed up Wi-Fi e-mail messages, user passwords, and other communications from 2007 to 2010. With a consolidated class-action lawsuit seeking up to $10,000 for each affected private Wi-Fi user captured by Google, lawyers are about to go national with billions of dollars of claims for potential damages to virtually every U.S. e-mail user. ******** Under federal law, it is illegal and subject to up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for any third party to intercept any telephonic or electronic communication between other individuals. However, if one of the parties to the conversation...

http://www.dump.com/airplanewifi/https://hub.united.com/en-us/news/products-services/pages/united-installs-satellite-wi-fi.aspx

How to Use Your Cat to Hack Your Neighbor’s Wi-Fi It appears that wired.com cannot be posted per their copyright complaint. Ignore the clickable link, it only points back to the FR index page... The link has more info... and a few pics. :) http://www.wired.com/2014/08/how-to-use-your-cat-to-hack-your-neighbors-wi-fi/

Asking for opinions on the best budget tablet. Something big enough for me to work on -- i.e., be able to type easily and see the display without holding it six inches from my face. Not worried about communications -- as long as it's got WiFi built in (which I'm sure they all do), I can use my cellphone as a mobile hotspot to transfer/send files. This is intended to be a replacement for a working laptop/notebook. And again -- "budget" is the keyword. Thanks all!.

Sources have revealed Google has plans for its own wireless networkIts customers could make calls, send texts and browse the web on mobiles Rumours claim it will be initially offered to cities that have Google Fiber Google Fiber is superfast broadband available in Kansas, Texas and Utah Instead of building masts, however, Google is said to be looking at becoming a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) This means the firm will buy access to existing networks and resell it

Computer science researchers have demonstrated for the first time how a digital virus can go airborne and spread via WiFi networks in populated areas at the same pace as a human diseases. The “Chameleon” virus, designed by a University of Liverpool team, showed a remarkable amount of intelligence by avoiding detection and breaking into personal and business WiFi networks at their weakest points — spreading at an alarming rate. Network Security Professor Alan Marshall said the virus doesn’t try to damage or disrupt established networks — instead, the virus slips in unnoticed to collect the data and log-in information of...

Title Forget the Internet - soon there will be the OUTERNET: Company plans to beam free Wi-fi to every person on Earth from space An ambitious project known as Outernet is aiming to launch hundreds of miniature satellites into low Earth orbit by June 2015 Each satellite will broadcast the Internet to phones and computers giving billions of people across the globe free online access Citizens of countries like China and North Korea that have censored online activity could be given free and unrestricted cyberspace 'There's really nothing that is technically impossible to this' Known as Outernet, MDIF plans to...

As home networks have increased in popularity, so has the wireless router. The rise of Wi-Fi has also caused the downfall of wired networks (in homes, at least), and many consumers now see Ethernet cords as being rather old-fashioned – that is, if they see them at all. Some newer computer models, like Apple’s MacBook Air, don’t even have ports for Ethernet connections anymore. The blistering connection speeds offered by today’s Wi-Fi standards do make wired networks appear a bit of a relic, but appearances can sometimes be deceiving. Though Wi-Fi has improved significantly over the last five years, it...

This is in the "If the subject should ever come up" category... One of the biggest problems which comes up for people trying to get a look at one of the newer Linux distributions is what to do about WIFI. Particularly in the case of laptops and particularly in the case of laptops with Broadcom wifi radios, those radios act as if they'd gone dead. LINUX does not come with drivers for such (the drivers are Windows only and proprietary) ; information exists on websites for setting up wrappers to allow the Windows drivers to think they're running under Windows...

Using inexpensive materials configured and tuned to capture microwave signals, researchers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering have designed a power-harvesting device with efficiency similar to that of modern solar panels. The device wirelessly converts the microwave signal to direct current voltage capable of recharging a cell phone battery or other small electronic device, according to a report appearing in the journal Applied Physics Letters in December 2013. (It is now available online.) It operates on a similar principle to solar panels, which convert light energy into electrical current. But this versatile energy harvester could be tuned to harvest...

It may only take a minute or two to boil a kettle, but the agonizing wait for that reassuring click is now over, with the launch of the world’s first WiFi version. The ultimate in mod cons for the consumer too busy—or lazy—to enter the kitchen and do the job manually, the iKettle can be switched on from your smartphone from anywhere in the home. The technology promises to cater for any “urgent hot drink scenario”, enabling the user to remain on the sofa, or in bed in the morning, until the water is ready to pour. …

"John McCain can't see or won't acknowledge what's obvious to all of us here today -- that lobbyists aren't just part of the system in Washington, they're part of the problem."-- Then-Sen. Barack Obama campaigning in Montana, May 19, 2008.President Obama wants to place a new tax on your monthly cell phone bill to pay for his plan to put WiFi in more classrooms. And all he needs to do it is one more lobbyist in his administration. Getting American consumers to cough up the billions needed for Obama's "ConnectEd" initiative doesn't depend on Congress or anything so tedious as...