WiFi security bill
New York’s Westchester County has begun considering a law that would mandate that a network gateway server with a firewall be installed on every Wi-Fi network connected to a computer that stores or collects personal information – from cyber cafes to free hot spots to small businesses that use Wi-Fi.
If enacted, it is believed that the law would be the first of its type in the world.
Violators – who, given the ease of finding and cracking unprotected Wi-Fi networks, would have a hard time hiding from the long antenna of the law – would first be given a warning. They then would be fined $250 for a second violation and $500 for any offense after that. In contrast, Westchester city fathers estimate it would cost about $70 for the requisite hardware to comply with the proposed regulation.
The goal of the proposed Westchester law isn’t to protect the networks per se, but rather to protect information that a hacker might be able to steal if he can access a network. “If a network is unsecured, you don’t have to be a great hacker,” Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano said at a press conference late last week at the county office building in White Plains. “You can get in – and possibly get into personal data, passwords, credit-card numbers and privacy issues that you put on your computer…so we wanted to do something about it.”