Who’s "stealing?" Security Firm Sophos Calls WiFi Piggybacking ‘Stealing’
In a story, Security Firm Sophos Calls WiFi Piggybacking ‘Stealing,’ Techdirt lampoons the security organization for attempting to skew its report to it’s own commercial means. The question is, does it go far enough?
In a perfectly transparent attempt to characterize a public behavior by adding a moral judgment to a whole class of Americans, not only does this company manage to put its interests above those of its clients, but manages to look entirely idiotic by suggesting that any type of moral responsibility completely belongs to the people accessing internet by using open wireless signals.
From the wireless security point of view, the almost exclusive focus on the people accessing the "open" signal detracts from the real point of open wireless, the security of PC’s behind those open routers. When this firm should have been focusing on suggesting that security might be better achieved by securing wireless networks with strong encription, it chooses to incinuate a whole lot of pointless, rubbish nonsense by marketing its name through a a ploy.
As all corporations’ primary mission seems to have become serving the needs of their pocketbooks rather than serving the genuine needs of their customers, this moral dictate does not come as a surprise. It, however, does bring the large question of dictating behavior in focus. By clearly dilliniating acceptable behavior, firms such as Sophos engage in subtle manipulation of their perceived authority–real or not–toward their commercial ends. Google’s entry into China and Yahoo’s betrayal of Chinese descidents should provide perfect examples of how such firms are incapable of making moral judgment calls. Yet, more and more, we give our whole lives and trust to these firms. Where religion and public "norms" dictated behavior, now corporations take their place in the hierarchy of the public sphere.
While never having been a large fan of the process by which a sense of normality is established, the invluence of commercial realm becomeing a large part of such a process somehow disturbs me more.
P.S. I have own stock in both Google and Yahoo. What does that really say about me?