Warchalking Illegal in Ireland

theking

According to a discussion at last night's Wireless Wednesday in Dublin, "warchalking" -- or identifying with (usually) chalked symbols where wireless networks are in operation to allow people to connect in to them -- is illegal in Ireland, due to some element of a regulation passed by the then-Dept of Public Enterprise a year ago. Will see if I can find out more.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103966/2002/09/26.html#a270

-- That's from Karlin Lillington's blog. There's a good set of responses in the comments section, and a link to what appears to be a map of all the Wireless Acess Points in Dublin--

spongebob

it was the Litter Act being enforced as it happens.

Litter Wardens in Dublin have been issued with PDA's recently with 802.11 cards. An interesting side effect of that is that they get these ESSID's coming up on their PDA's and therefore, accidentally discovered 802.11 Hubs and Repeaters on their beat. They spent half their time whingin to techies about the weird noises that the PDA's made when they picked up a MAC address across the Ether.

Even more amazing was the way that what looked like young Dublin skangers (they may have anoraks when it gets wetter but in this dry spell they look like skangers, pale thin, unhealthy etc) came rushing up in their DROVES to these spots and started to deposit rubbish (chalk dust) on the pavement right in front of the Litter Wardens eyes. Like the PDA went whUUyoyoyoing and the skanger deposited rubbish ???!!

It didn't take long for the Litter Wardens to realise that they can bust all around them in these HotSpots coz the muppets who show up there dump rubbish live on video if you just place a video anywhere around.

The rumour about Warchalking Being Illegal has emanated form the district court clerks office coz they are gonna deal with a HUMUNGOUS number of Littering Cases between now and christmas at €600 euros fine a pop and and confessions from half the skangers ....the gobsh1tes ....... "maaaan I was only warchalking" live on video for chrissakes!

For a Litter Warden it sure beats the hell outta trying to get drunks to pick up McDonalds and Supermac cartons on a Saturday morning at 3AM ....much more profitable too.

The performance related pay (for convictions) will make it into the Christmas paychecks down at the Corpo.

M

El_MUERkO

Even more amazing was the way that what looked like young Dublin skangers (they may have anoraks when it gets wetter but in this dry spell they look like skangers, pale thin, unhealthy etc) came rushing up in their DROVES to these spots and started to deposit rubbish (chalk dust) on the pavement right in front of the Litter Wardens eyes. Like the PDA went whUUyoyoyoing and the skanger deposited rubbish ???!!

It didn't take long for the Litter Wardens to realise that they can bust all around them in these HotSpots coz the muppets who show up there dump rubbish live on video if you just place a video anywhere around.

The rumour about Warchalking Being Illegal has emanated form the district court clerks office coz they are gonna deal with a HUMUNGOUS number of Littering Cases between now and christmas at €600 euros fine a pop and and confessions from half the skangers ....the gobsh1tes ....... "maaaan I was only warchalking" live on video for chrissakes!

For a Litter Warden it sure beats the hell outta trying to get drunks to pick up McDonalds and Supermac cartons on a Saturday morning at 3AM ....much more profitable too.

The performance related pay (for convictions) will make it into the Christmas paychecks down at the Corpo.

???

rardagh

I was at the talk last night, which was quite good, and this did come up in the discussion during and after the seminar. Now, I am no lawyer, so beware of the reality of what I try and recall below:

1. Criminal Damages Act, 1991 - This makes 'Unauthorised Access of Data' an offense - and section 4 which talks to 'A person (in this section referred to as the possessor) who has any thing in his custody or under his control intending without lawful excuse to use it or cause or permit another to use it...' this may imply that the warchalker, is covered by this, as his war chalking is under his control, and could be used to damage data belonging to another person.

2. S.I. No. 357 of 2000, implementing Directive No. 98/84/EC of 20 November 1998 of the European Parliament of the Council, may cover accessing somebodies network (which may be an information service covered by Article 1(2) of Directive 98/34/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 June 1998 and make gathering the warchalking information, and usage of it a civil offense. (Even for those altruistic hackers out there!)

3. Various Communications Acts and Wireless Telegraphy Acts which may make unauthorised interception of wireless frequency transmissions illegal.

I think the Caveat, that the lawyers said was that they had had no clients yet, or real Irish case law on this yet..but that they would be happy to take fees from anyone to advise on it...

Dustaz

Maybe its because im hungover, but i have no idea what your talking about. Care to explain it further?

BuffyBot

"warchalking," refers to people who go around cities with special software designed to sniff out open wireless nodes and use them for their own access.

spongebob

..thats wardriving.

warchalking is the marking of locations found while wardriving .....with chalk as it happens.

chalk dust, deliberately applied to the public highways by a 'warchalker' is Litter within the meaning of the Litter Acts.

Its just that the Corpo Litter Wardens now have technology to lead them to where the offence will take place........or else they can park outside any Supermacs in Ireland.

M

Gunn4r

Warchalking is alive and well in .ie btw. there is a website out there with Dublin and Cork lists derived from wardriving.

Dublin people should keep their eyes peeled on certain Dart platforms as there are "chalk" marks on at least two (that I have seen). I say "chalk" as they are not chalk marks but painted on.

The chalk element is apparently an old hobo trick where you would chalk somewhere where you could get food. People should really use chalk and not paint as open nodes will not stay like that forever.

sceptre

Really interesting thread (warchalking's interested me since I first heard about it - and I don't even have a wireless network card)

More of a Wireless thing though (obviously!) so I'm moving it there.

BuffyBot

Originally posted by Muck
..thats wardriving.

:rolleyes: Much of a muchness, I just left out the chalk

Krusty_Clown

Damn.. Can't find the list of Wireless access points..

My company has a large wireless setup, so, I'd be interested to see if it's listed..

Anyone have a link to this?

Magic Monkey

Originally posted by Krusty_Clown
Damn.. Can't find the list of Wireless access points..

Anyone have a link to this?

List of Nodes
802.11b Dublin Survey

<pedant> BTW Buffybot, "Wardriving" just means looking for nodes, not to gain access to them. </pedant>


Actually, if you have a Laptop/PDA with a Wi-Fi card, you could wear a WarChalking T-shirt...

Ba$tard

Correct Gunner,

Warchalking is an old hobo language used during the depression in America.

Recognised signs varied from the likes of large circles, triangles encompassed in the circles, etc in different orientations which could mean to the hobo "Danger, dont loiter here, cops around", "Food is around" "Work can be found" "Safe place to sleep", etc etc...

As far as 802.11 Warchalking goes, the US is littered(from walking around Boston today!) There is some get-out clause which the warchalkers use that chalk is bio-degradable and is washed off by rain.

They argue that public works people (O/S) mark areas temporarily with chalk and so they should also be blasted with litter charges i like it...

P.s. talking to a few guys here who live in Heuston, Tx....they have developed 802.11 communities all over the place down there...2 younger dudes mentioned a donated server which runs a CounterStriker server with 64 players....ba$tards!

Cheers,
J.

SouperComputer

took the iBook for a spin around chicago on tuesday.

Drove from 45N to michegan avenue (2n?) and back out. Passed by over 1000 networks. Mostly with some sort of encryption or mac filtering

Drove through dublin tonight, from phibsboro, through town, up by the IFSC and then clontarf. found about 60 AP's, mostly unencrypted. Some had funny names like "weshootwardrivers".

amazing the difference in density of APs!

tck

there's just way too many to map accurately and most don't have WEP - it's a joke

ballooba

SouperComputer wrote:

took the iBook for a spin around chicago on tuesday.

Drove from 45N to michegan avenue (2n?) and back out. Passed by over 1000 networks. Mostly with some sort of encryption or mac filtering

Drove through dublin tonight, from phibsboro, through town, up by the IFSC and then clontarf. found about 60 AP's, mostly unencrypted. Some had funny names like "weshootwardrivers".

amazing the difference in density of APs!

Do you commute to Chicago or something?

SouperComputer

no, used to live there and was flying back from a trip to MN thru Ohare. Had the car and a few hours to kill so decided to drive around my favourite city.