Interesting perspective, but I’d tend to argue that the technologies such as WiFi have massively increased inclusiveness and accessibility for magnitudes more people than it has raised issues for.
Not in the slightest¹. It has reduced inclusiveness. The groups being excluded were previously given full and equal access. To argue that nighttime access is possible is to inherently advocate for exclusive access to those who would sit on the sidewalk with their device while people who need access by other means are denied. What a bizarre and obscure corner case. It’d be somewhat elitist to be selective like that. Human rights calls for equal access to public services (UDHR Art.21¶2). That means if a service cannot be offered to all demographics it should be offered to no one.
It’s really hair-splitting esoterics to be concerned about what library access there is at night time on the sidewalk. Maybe it’s fair enough to say outside of hours there is no sense of equal access. I don’t want to die on the nighttime access hill either way. My post concerns equality during the day when the library doors are open. If there really is a notable need for nighttime access from the sidewalk, that can also be deployed in an egalitarian way by mounting exterior ethernet ports and removing the captive portals.
(edit)¹ well, Wi-Fi in the 2000s was inclusive because it did not generally come with a captive portal and it was offered in parallel to ethernet. Having Wi-Fi is an essential part of being inclusive now that wi-fi-only devices exist. But the way they are doing it in 2024 is exclusive, depending on the library. Some libraries still today do not have captive portals but that’s becoming more rare as libraries prioritize a paperless agreement above equal access.
I am also concerned with outsourcing. But worried about cloudflare are pretty far down the list. Adobe controlled DRM on most ebooks, and even third party cloud based catalogues, are way more concerning.
You’re thinking about the barriers and inconveniences to you personally. But when I speak about exclusivity, I’m talking about different demographics of people getting different treatment and different service. It’s unacceptible for a public service to say “sorry, some people just do not make the cut for the profile of those we are including.. our public service is only for people who subscribe to private GSM service” (precisely the demographic less in need of public service). It’s better to pull the plug to ensure equality than to create unequal access.
The DRM problem is not a problem of exclusivity w.r.t the public library, AFAICT, because the library secures whatever DRM rights are needed equally for all patrons. DRM does not cause someone who cannot afford a mobile phone to be refused service. Unless a DRM mechanism were to require an SMS verfication -- then I would be with you on that because that would be discriminatory and exclusive. Although I’ve heard that some forms of DRM prevent reading a page more than once. I can imagine that someone with an impairment of some kind might need to read a page more times than someone else to absorb the same book. In that case, DRM would indeed be adding to the exclusivity problem and would need a remedy in that regard. If a library could not negotiate an egalitarian deal in that case, then the egalitarian remedy is to drop that book from the library’s catalog completely, as that would ensure equal access.
Lets face it, the half dozen people per million (if that) who care about the FLOSS status of thier WiFi hardware’s firmware, probably are technically capable enough to find a way to access library resources securely more than most people!
It’s not a technical problem. It’s an ethical problem. When a public funded service is forces people to run proprietary non-free software on their own devices, it’s an abuse of public funding to needlessly force people into the private sector. In the US, the American Library Association has a bill of rights that states people are not to be excluded from the library based on their views or beliefs. Designing a library to only cater for people who are ethically okay with running non-free proprietary software would undermine that principle. It would be comparable to a public service denying service to vegans because of their ethical viewpoints.
Wouldn’t direct access to a library’s network via Ethernet in an uncontrolled manner pose a security risk though?
You would have to detail why. Ethernet offers /more/ security by not exposing users’ traffic and by avoiding MitM to a reasonable extent. It’s far easier to spoof a Wi-Fi AP from next door or even a block away than it would be to to plant an ethernet attached MitM box, which means getting behind the drywall or breaking into a utility room. Not to mention the mass surveillance of all iOS devices collecting data, timestamps, location of every other WiFi device in range and feeding that to Apple. Ethernet is trivially immune to that collection, whereas Wi-Fi users are exposed without a countermeaure. They can dynamically change their MAC daily or whatever but that’s not the only data being collected by Apple.
(edit) It’s worth noting as well that the NSA actually advises people not to use Wi-Fi.
Also, while propriety Wi-Fi and other technology-related solutions are sometimes frustrating, many libraries are ultimately budget constrained, making the use of standardized solutions far more economical than custom ones.
Economics does not justify excluding some demographics of people¹. If a public funded service cannot offer service in an equitable way, it’s better to not offer the service at all. When a public library offers a service, assumptions are then made in other contexts that the whole public has that access. Governments operate on the assumption that people they serve have access, and they use that assumption to remove analog means of contact and service. Some government offices have already closed their over-the-counter service. How was it that they could afford it previously but not anymore? Those budgets are themselves set by assumptions, like assumptions that everyone carries a mobile phone.
¹ exceptionally, public funding cannot for example cover every heart transplant everyone needs. But the library does not face those kinds of extremes. Ethernet cable is cheap enough. Getting people to agree to terms of service the old fashioned way (paper) is cheap enough. Priorities have to be really screwed up to be willing to exclude someone from service to save money on paper agreements.
Peak inclusivity at public libraries was in 1995—2005. Exclusion is on the rise as libraries outsource tech
1913 - library established in Houston by a black community. Years later, the city disbanded the all 8 black board members and shut the library down
1939 - 5 black people thrown out of a Virginia library for “disturbing the peace” (they were quietly reading).
1961 - Geraldine Edwards Hollis and eight other students from historically-black Tougaloo College — a group known as the Tougaloo Nine — held a sit-in at a “whites-only” public library in Jackson, Mississippi, as an act of civil disobedience.
1970 - the first meeting of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association formed to address the fact that the ALA wasn’t meeting the needs of Black library professionals.
The late 1990s started to become the sweet spot for library inclusion and governance. Everyone was welcome to access books and media without restriction.
In the 2000s, technology emerged in public libraries in a quite inclusive way. There some libraries had PCs and some had ethernet and/or Wi-Fi (free of captive portals). Anyone could use any of those technologies.
2024:
-
Ethernet becomes nearly non-existent, thus excluding:
- people running FOSS systems (which often lack FOSS Wi-Fi firmware)
- people with old hardware
- people who oppose the energy waste of Wi-Fi
- people who do not accept the security compromise of Wi-Fi (AP spoofing/mitm, traffic evesdropping, arbitrary tracking by all iOS and Android devices in range)
-
Wi-Fi service itself has become more exclusive at public libraries:
- captive portals -- not all devices can even handle a captive portal, full stop. Some captive portals are already imposing TLS 1.3 so people with slightly older hardware cannot even reach the ToS page. Some devices cannot handle a captive portal due to DNS resolution being dysfunctional before the captive portal is passed and the captive portal itself is designed to need DNS resolution.
- GSM requirement -- some public library captive portals now require patrons to complete an SMS verification. This of course excludes these demographics of people:
- People who do not own a mobile phone
- People who do not carry a mobile phone around with them
- People who do not subscribe to mobile phone service (due to poverty, or for countless privacy reasons)
- People who object to disclosing their mobile phone number and who intend to exercise their right to data minimisation (under the GDPR or their country’s version thereof)
-
Web access restrictions intensified:
- e-books outsourced to Cloudflared services, thus excluding all demographics of people who Cloudflare excludes.
- Invidious blocked. This means people who do not have internet at home have lost the ability to download videos to watch in their home.
- Egress Tor connections recently blocked by some libraries, which effectively excludes people whose systems are designed to use Tor to function. So if someone’s email account is on an onion service, those people are excluded from email.
There’s a bit of irony in recent developments that exclude privacy seekers who, for example, deliberately choose not to have a GSM phone out of protest against compulsory GSM registration with national IDs, because the library traditionally respects people’s privacy. Now they’re evolving to actually deny service to people for exercising their privacy rights.
There needs to be pushback to get public libraries back on track to becoming as inclusive as they were in the 1990s. A big part of the problem is outsourcing. The libraries are no longer administrating technology themselves. They have started outsourcing to tech giants like Oracle who have a commercial motivation to save money, which means marginalising demographics of people who don’t fit in their simplified canned workflow. When a patron gets excluded by arbitrary tech restrictions, the library is unable to remedy the problem. Librarians have lost control as a consequence of outsourcing.
One factor has improved: some libraries are starting to nix their annual membership fee. It tends to be quite small anyway (e.g. $/€ 5/year), so doesn’t even begin to offset those excluded by technology.
Some of them do, while some libraries proactively take steps to /block/ people who make egress Tor connections from the library’s network, which is a revolting contrast to the librarians who care. The same libraries who block Tor also impose SMS verification on Wi-Fi users. Note that article is US based and only the US has a “Library Bill of Rights”. Outside the US it’s quite a different story.
I wonder if it’s because privacy is in such a poor state of affairs in the US to start with that the US libraries are motivated to give some refuge.
Hate to be a party pooper but the author is a bit off. From the article:
It’s a place I can get free wifi and where I don’t have to explain myself to anyone in any way.
This is precisely where libraries demonstrate poor governance.
First of all by offering Wi-Fi and not ethernet the library discriminates against people with old hardware, people who oppose the non-FOSS firmware that Wi-Fi cards depend on as well as those who don’t want to expose their traffic to all eavesdroppers in range and those who prefer to avoid spoofed APs and those who would rather be less wasteful with energy. I do not think I’ve encountered any library in the past decade that intentionally offer ethernet. The very few I’ve encountered with open ethernet ports apparently offer it by accident (ports that were likely meant for the libraries own assets but unused and left inadvertently connected).
Even if you are in the included group who are happy to see ethernet users marginalised, among Wi-Fi users are those who are discrimated against because they do not have a mobile phone, thus cannot get past the Wi-Fi captive portal that demands SMS verification. Which also inherently discriminates against people whose devices cannot handle captive portals as well. So libraries are less of a refuge from corporate bullshit than they were in the past.
And that we can do it without a profit motive, simply because we think that’s the way it ought to be.
It’s great that the library itself is non-profit. But that only mitigates part of the problem brought by corporate commercial greed. The library needs to evolve to:
- help people find refuge from tech giants, which means not imposing mobile phones on the public and ideally go as far as offering access to FOSS PCs. It should be mostly FOSS PCs, and perhaps 1 or 2 Windows and MACs for those who have various special needs. Most libraries are 100% MS Windows with Chromium (possibly Firefox as an alternative) and the search engine default is Google. So library visitors are still being immersed in the same exploitive commercial environment that dominates homes and workplaces.
- the library blocks Youtube front-ends like Invidious but not Youtube, which ensures delivering an a profitable audience to Google. I realise the library has to avoid copyright violations, but Invidious is not a clear offender. It’s murky gray area but the library should be fighting for the people considering Invidious nodes are not being shut down which highlights the weakness of Google’s position.
- mention of lending out Rokus is a double-edged sword. Yes it’s keeping pace with the times to get people access to streams but Roku is a smart TV which doubles as spyware designed to enrich corporations. I’m not sure if there is a FOSS alternative. I’m tempted to say Kodi but it would then have to be installed on portable hardware that the library could lend.
- cut ties with all e-book suppliers who lock their books up into Cloudflare’s exclusive walled garden. Cloudflare should not be a gatekeeper for who gets access to e-books.
Our governmental structures and agencies should not be in the service of business,
Indeed. But when a library excludes those without mobile phones, they are serving the telephony industry and undermining the human right to equal access to public services.
The author himself, J.Hill, deployed this blog from a website that is inside an exclusive walled garden that discriminates against some demographis of people. I agree with his push to defend libraries from right-wing assholes and in that sense we are united. But a fight is also needed within the library systems to stop libraries from discriminating against some classes of people. They are outsourcing their technology to tech giants who have made library access exclusive.
In that sense, it implies that we were encroaching on his space, when in fact he entered this thread (like his handle: a bulldozer) to demand that people recognize an approach to sysadministration that does not respect equal rights, privacy, or the environment, and ultimately undermines human rights and promotes consumerism to ease his job at his competency level, as if the public is expected to serve him. It’s not his lawn in either sense of the meaning.
He made it quite he expects everyone to go through hoops to make his job convenient when he said:
“That doesn’t change the fact that Networks and Systems are not configured for your convenience”
I can imagine that the guy wants to secure his network and is maybe paranoid about people breaking in which seems fair to me,
It would be a malpractice of security. Security is about confidentiality, integrity, and availability. To reduce availability needlessly is to work against security. If availability were not essential to security, then you would just unplug the all machines, making the internet unusuable to everyone, and call it “secure”. A competent admin can securely offer internet service to people without phones, and people without a wifi card.
It’s a good point about the irrational Tor hostility. But note the more perverse absurdity with his comment: that a public library is “his lawn”. If his inability and unwillingness to equally serve the whole public would be just in the private sector, there would be no issue because everyone he disservices can refuse to do business with him.
What’s sickening here is he said “I’m someone in IT for a Public Library”. So he is operating a public service in an exclusive manner telling people /get off his lawn/, which was financed with public money. And ~7+ of 8 people are okay with that.
I had a faraday phone case at one point. They also make jackets with faraday inside pockets. I quit using the faraday pouch because if you use that as a convenient off switch, the phone works harder to find a tower, draining batteries. So to save juice you need airplane mode. There’s probably still reason to use a faraday bag along with airplane mode, but since I’ve parted with a GSM chip as well, it’s just not worth it unless you’re someone like edward snowden.
That’s insufficient. Mobile providers are not even getting your location through that Google mechanism that feeds Google. Their towers track your location even if you have GPS off.
I always tap “disagree” to location svcs when turning GPS on and take a hit on slow positioning. But that only cuts Google off. To cut the mobile carriers off, I keep my phone in airplane mode and also keep the GSM chip slot empty. In fact I don’t even carry a gsm chip. I believe in this state I can make emergency calls (IIRC, airplane mode automatically gets disabled when an emergency number is dialed).
Yet a vast majority of people have no problem when people are forced to subscribe to mobile phone service:
https://infosec.pub/post/11658371
This kind of information should be startling enough to at least see the merit in not having a mobile phone subscription. But no, people will just say “that sucks” and continue to being the sucker while also expecting others to be equally naive or cavalier too.
from the article:
AT&T told The Register said it should not be blamed for the failure of those buying its data to obtain proper consent, and said it will fight the fine.
Private investigators are treated as legitimate consumers of that location data. An angry ex-boyfriend or ex-husband hired a PI to find out where his ex was, who then simply bought the location data from a mobile carrier. The guy used the info to find her and shoot her dead on the spot (headshot while she was driving a car). The data sharing was “legit” in that case, in the US where privacy laws are generally non-existent.
It’s strange how that murder case gets omitted in these articles about mobile carriers selling location data.
I see a lot of downvotes on your comments on this thread and I wonder if it’s due to differences in nationality/geography/jurisdiction.
Guess I should answer this. The enormous class of people with mobile phones (likely 100% of those in this channel) are happy to be in the included group and amid any chatter about expanding the included group to include those without a phone (a segment they do not care about), they think: “that extra degree of egalitarian policy to support a more diverse group will cost more and yield nothing extra to me; yet that extra cost will be passed on to me.”
Which is true. And very few people among them care about boycott power because it’s rarely used by willful consumerist consumers of tech and telecom svc. But the ignorance is widespread failure to realise that as mobile phones become effectively a basic requirement for everyone, the suppliers will have even less incentive to win your business. The duopolies and triopolies can (and will) increase prices and reduce service quality as a consequence of that stranglehold. Most people are too naïve to realise the hold-out non-mobile phone customers are benefiting them even from the selfish standpoint of the mobile phone customers. And the fact that they are paying an invisible price with their data doesn’t occur to most people either, or how that loss of privacy disempowers them.
They will pay more in the end than if they had supported diversity and egalitarian inclusion.
I see that the relevant websites (FCC and lifelinesupport.org) both block Tor so you can’t be poor in need of the Lifeline and simultaneously care about privacy. Many parts of the US have extremely expensive telecom costs. I think I heard an avg figure of like $300/month (for all info svcs [internet,phone,TV]), which I struggle to believe but I know it’s quite costly nonetheless. One source says $300/month is the high end figure, not an avg. Anyway, a national avg of $144/month just for a mobile phone plan is absurdly extortionate.
About Lifeline:
Lifeline provides subscribers a discount on qualifying monthly telephone service, broadband Internet service, or bundled voice-broadband packages purchased from participating wireline or wireless providers. The discount helps ensure that low-income consumers can afford 21st century connectivity services and the access they provide to jobs, healthcare, and educational resources.
So they get a discount. But you say free? Does the discount become free if income is below a threshold? Do they get a free/discounted hardware upgrade every 2-3 years as well, since everyone is okay with the chronic forced obsolescence in the duopoly of platforms to choose from? In any case, I’m sure the program gets more phones into more needy hands, which would shrink the population of marginalized people. That’s a double edged sword. Shrinking the size of a marginalized group without completely eliminating it means fewer people are harmed. But those in that group are further disempowered by their smaller numbers, easier to oppress, and less able to correct the core of the problem: not having a right to be analog and be unplugged (which is an important component of the right to boycott).
This topic could be a whole Lemmy community, not just a thread. In the US, you have only three carriers: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. I’ve seen enough wrongdoing by all 3 to boycott all 3. I would not finance any them no matter how much money I have. T-Mobile is the lesser of evils but it’s wrong to be forced to feed any of the three as an arbitrary needless precondition to using the library’s public wifi. It’s absolutely foolish that most people support that kind of bundling between public and private services.
US govs do not (AFAIK) yet impose tech on people. I think every gov service in the US has an analog option, including cash payment options. That’s not the case in many regions outside the US. There are already govs that now absolutely force you to complete some government transactions online, along with electronic payments which imposes bank patronisation, even if you boycott the banks for investing in fossil fuels and private prisons. And if you don’t like being forced to use their Google CAPTCHA (which supports Google, the surveillance advertiser who participates in fossil fuel extraction), that’s tough. Poor people are forced to use a PC (thus the library) to do public sector transactions with the gov, as are a segment of elderly people who struggle to use the technology. There is also a segment of tech people who rightfully object, precisely because they know enough about how info traverses information systems to see how privacy is undermined largely due to loss of control (control being in the wrong hands). It’s baffling how few people are in that tech segment.
So the pro-privacy tech activists are united with the low-tech elderly and the poor together fighting this oppression (called “digital transformation”) which effectively takes away our boycott power and right to choose who we do business with in the private sector. A divide and conquer approach is being used because we don’t have a well-organised coalition. Giving the poor cheaper tech and giving assistance to the elderly is a good thing but the side effect is enabling the oppression to go unchallenged. When really the right answer in the end is to not impose shitty options in the first place. It’s like the corp swindle of forced bundling (you can only get X if you also take Y). You should be able to get public wifi without a mobile phone subscription.
The UDHR prohibits discrimination on the basis of what property you have. The intent is to protect the poor, but the protection is actually rightfully bigger in scope because people who willfully opt not to have property are also in the protected class.
It’s all quite parallel to Snowden’s take. The masses don’t care about privacy due to not really understanding it.
“Ultimately, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” ― Edward Snowden
The idea that activists need both free speech and privacy in order to fight for everyone’s rights is lost on people making the /selfish/ choice to disregard privacy. All those mobile phone users who don’t give a shit about mobile phones being imposed on everyone are missing this concept. The choice to have a mobile phone is dying. It’s gradually and quietly becoming an unwritten mandate.
Banking is also becoming bound to having a mobile phone. There are already banks who will not open account for those without a mobile phone. So we are losing the option to have a bank account but not a mobile phone.
You edited in the “wait five or ten minutes” after I had already replied.
I know five min was in the original version. Not sure if I added the ten but certainly it was not after you posted this. You are seriously paranoid and should get help for that.
Why are you even in the library to begin with if you’re so opposed to how they manage their network?
How does one know how they manage their network before entering the library? The libraries that have ethernet /never/ advertise it. Only wi-fi is ever advertised. I have never seen a library elaborate on their wifi preconditions (which periodically change). This info is also not in OSMand, so if you are on the move and look for the closest library on the map, the map won’t be much help apart from a possible boolean for wifi. Some libraries have a captive portal and some do not. Among those with captive portals, some require a mobile phone with SMS verification and some do not. But for all of them, the brochure only shows the wifi symbol. You might say “call and ask”, but there are two problems with that: you need a phone with credit loaded. But even if you have that, it’s useful to know whether ethernet is available and the receptionist is unlikely to reliably have that info. Much easier to walk in and see the situation. Then when you ask what will be blocked after you get connected, that’s another futile effort that wastes time on the phone. It really is easier and faster to pop in and scope out the situation. Your device will give more reliable answers than the staff. But I have to wonder, what is your objection to entering a library to reliably discover how it’s managed in person?
Stop lying.
I said “wait five or ten minutes”. I’m seeing a 9m1s span. I don’t really feel compelled to be more accommodating than that. Maybe you can write to Jerry and ask to configure it so edits are blocked after 1 minute if it really bothers you. Otherwise if you don’t like the policy of the node, you are free to leave.
My client says it was created at 21:24:02 GMT and modified at 21:25:12. Instead of using a stopwatch which you somehow screwed up, just mouse over the time. The popup will show you a span of 1 minute and 10 seconds.
(edit) strange; after I refresh the screen the /create/ timestamp changed. Surely that’s a bug in Lemmy. The creation timestamp should never change. nvm.. just realized I was looking at the wrong msg.
Calm down. It’s a new comment that just came in so of course I’m going to edit it a few times in the span of the first minute or two as I compose my answer. If you wait five or ten minutes you’ll get a more finished answer.
The proof is in the money trail. If the library’s funding traces to a tax-funded government, it is a public service that encompasses all services offered by that institution. It’s also in state or national law that legislates for libraries to exist, which differs from one state to another.
If you want to find a clause that says “only people with wifi hardware may access the internet, and only if they have a mobile phone”, I suspect you’ll have a hard time finding that. At best, I could imagine you might find a sloppily written law that says “libraries shall offer wifi” without specifying the exclusion of others. But if you could hypothetically find that, it would merely be an indication of a national or state law that contradicts that country’s signature on the UDHR. So it’s really a pointless exercise.
The wifi is for public use. The Ethernet isn’t. How is that so hard to understand?
How is it hard to understand that those two undisputed facts are actually a crucial part of my thesis? Of course I understand it because it’s the cause for the problems I described and my premise. It’s why this thread exists.
If that weren’t the case, the only notable problem would be with the mobile phone precondition on captive portals.
Time to wake up to reality. Everyone has access, the method of access isn’t discriminating, nor do you have any say in it.
That’s not reality. The reality is everyone has partial access (Firefox on a shared Windows PC only), while some people have full access via both public resources.
If you want to gain anything from this conversation, try to at least come to terms with the idea that Firefox is not the internet. The internet is so much more than that. Your experience and information is being limited by your perception that everything that happens in a browser encompasses the internet.
In other words, it’s public, free for all, and the way they set it up.
It’s not free. We paid tax to finance this. The moment you call it free you accept maladministration that you actually paid for.
If you don’t like the free service, don’t use it. It not being how you like it isn’t wrong in any way, that’s your problem.
You’re confusing the private sector with the public sector. In the private sector, indeed you simply don’t use the service and that’s a fair enough remedy. Financing public service is not optional. You still seem to not grasp how human rights works, who it protects, despite the simplicity of the language of Article 21.
Could I be in the wrong? No, it must be literally everyone else in this entire thread / national library network.
Is your position so weak that you need to resort to a bandwagon fallacy?
Grow up.
and an ad hominem?
You demonstrate being a grown up by avoiding ad hominems in favor of logically sound reasoning.
Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet
I plugged into ethernet (as wifi w/captive portal does not work for me). I think clearnet worked but I have no interest in that. Egress Tor traffic was blocked and so was VPN. I’m not interested in editing all my scripts and configs to use clearnet, so the library’s internet is useless to me (unless I bother to try a tor bridge).
I was packing my laptop and a librarian spotted me unplugging my ethernet cable and approached me with big wide open eyes and pannicked angry voice (as if to be addressing a child that did something naughty), and said “you can’t do that!”
I have a lot of reasons for favoring ethernet, like not carrying a mobile phone that can facilitate the SMS verify that the library’s captive portal imposes, not to mention I’m not eager to share my mobile number willy nilly. The reason I actually gave her was that that I run a free software based system and the wifi drivers or firmware are proprietary so my wifi card doesn’t work¹. She was also worried that I was stealing an ethernet cable and I had to explain that I carry an ethernet cable with me, which she struggled to believe for a moment. When I said it didn’t work, she was like “good, I’m not surprised”, or something like that.
¹ In reality, I have whatever proprietary garbage my wifi NIC needs, but have a principled objection to a service financed by public money forcing people to install and execute proprietary non-free software on their own hardware. But there’s little hope for getting through to a librarian in the situation at hand, whereby I might as well have been caught disassembling their PCs.
Transit service forces TLS ver 1.3 to simply agree to ToS in their captive portal, denying access to people with older phones
IMO this is a #netneutrality issue due to lack of access equality. People with old phones are discriminated against.
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/11021006
> …
> TLS-encumbered captive portal (transit service)
> ---
> A transit service offered wi-fi but the network forcibly redirected me to a
> captive portal that triggers this error:
> > net::ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH >
> I tried a couple browsers and tried rewriting the https:// scheme as http:// but SSL redirect was forced consistently. The error apparently implies my phone’s browser can’t do TLS 1.3.
>
> It seems like a shitty move for a transit service to require passengers to use TLS 1.3 just to tick a fucking box that says “I agree” (to the terms no one reads anyway). Couple questions:
>
> * I’m generally in the /protect everything by default/ school of thought. But I cannot get my head around why a captive portal where people just tap “I agree” would warrant disclosure protection that could hinder availability. In reality, I don’t really know what the captive portal at hand requests.. maybe it demands people’s phone# or email, in which case it might make sense (though I would object to them collecting that info in a GDPR region in the 1st place).
>
> * Is there a good reason for a captive portal to require TLS 1.3? It seems either the network provider does not trust their own network, or they’re simply incompetent (assumes everyone runs the latest phones). But if I’m missing something I would like to understand it.
>
> I still have to investigate what limitation my browser has and whether I can update this whilst being trapped on an unrooted Android 5.
>
> Bypass methods
> ---
> I guess I need to study:
> * ICMP tunnel (slow, but IIUC it’s the least commonly blocked)
> * SSH tunnel
> * others?
>
> Are there any decent FOSS tools that implement the client side of tunnels without needing root? I have openvpn but have not tested to see if that can circumvent captive portals. I’ve only found:
>
> * MultiVNC - VNC over SSH
> * AVNC - VNC over SSH
> * ConnectBot - Can all traffic be routed over this SSH tunnel, or just a shell session?
> * VX ConnectBot - same as connectBot but expanded
>
> I’m curious if the VNC clients would work but at the same time I’m not keen to bring in the complexity of then having to find a VNC server. Running my own server at home is not an option.
>
> My to-do list of things to tinker with so far:
> * Captive Portal Controller
> * CaptivePortalLogin (AOS 6+, and no Izzy archives on this)
> * Hotspot Login
>
> Legal options
> ---
> If a supplier advertises Wi-Fi but then they render it dysfunctional by imposing arbitrary tech requirements after consumers have already bought the product/service it was included with (coffee, train/bus/plane fare, etc), then they neglect to support it, doesn’t that constitute false advertising? Guess this is out of scope for the community but I might be ½ tempted to file false advertising claims with consumer protection agencies in some cases.
>
> And when a captive portal demands email or phone number, it would seem to be a GDPR violation. Some public libraries make wi-fi access conditional on sharing a mobile phone number which then entails an SMS verification loop.
Google kicks Snikket app out of the Playstore for arbitrary reasons
Google have removed the app, citing lack of a privacy policy. This post provides details and a workaround.
(Lemmy bug) cannot cross-post to [email protected] b/c the pull-down list is clusterfucked with Cloudflare sites
This is likely a Lemmy bug but infosec.pub is related because there are so many Android communities that are federated from bad places so I thought I would mention it here as well.
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/11060800
> The cross-post mechanism has a limitation whereby you cannot simply enter a precise community to post to. Users are forced to search and select. When searching for “android” on infosec.pub within the cross-post page, the list of possible communities is totally clusterfucked with shitty centralized Cloudflare instances (lemmy world, sh itjust works, lemm ee, programming dev, etc). The list of these junk instances is so long [email protected] does not make it to the list.
>
> The workaround is of course to just create a new post with the same contents. And that is what I will do.
>
> There are multiple bugs here:
> ① First of all, when a list of communities is given in this context, the centralized instances should be listed last (at best) because they are antithetical to fedi philosophy.
> ② Subscribed communities should be listed first, at the top
> ③ Users should always be able to name a community in its full form, e.g.:
> * [email protected]
> * hilariouschaos.com/android
>
> ④ Users should be able to name just the instance (e.g. hilariouschaos.com) and the search should populate with subscribed communities therein.
(Lemmy) cannot cross-post to [email protected] b/c the pull-down list is clusterfucked with Cloudflare sites
The cross-post mechanism has a limitation whereby you cannot simply enter a precise community to post to. Users are forced to search and select. When searching for “android” on infosec.pub within the cross-post page, the list of possible communities is totally clusterfucked with shitty centralized Cloudflare instances (lemmy world, sh itjust works, lemm ee, programming dev, etc). The list of these junk instances is so long [email protected] does not make it to the list.
The workaround is of course to just create a new post with the same contents. And that is what I will do.
There are multiple bugs here: ① First of all, when a list of communities is given in this context, the centralized instances should be listed last (at best) because they are antithetical to fedi philosophy. ② Subscribed communities should be listed first, at the top ③ Users should always be able to name a community in its full form, e.g.:
[email protected]hilariouschaos.com/android
④ Users should be able to name just the instance (e.g. hilariouschaos.com) and the search should populate with subscribed communities therein.
App to show notifications in-full (not just what fits on 1-line of screen width) because WireApp shit the bed (again)
Wire has once again shit the bed and all of the sudden there are people I cannot communicate with.
The last time #Wire shit the bed, it was their phone app which Wire forced into obsolescence. But they were reckless in the sense that notifications still arrive. But I can only view messages in the Android notification bar, which is shit because messages are not printed entirely -- just whatever fits on the width of the screen.
So I need an Android app that will simply show notifications in a different view.
Transit service forces TLS ver 1.3 to simply agree to ToS in their captive portal, denying Wi-Fi service to passengers with older phones
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/11021006
> …
> TLS-encumbered captive portal (transit service)
> ---
> A transit service offered wi-fi but the network forcibly redirected me to a
> captive portal that triggers this error:
> > net::ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH >
> I tried a couple browsers and tried rewriting the https:// scheme as http:// but SSL redirect was forced consistently. The error apparently implies my phone’s browser can’t do TLS 1.3.
>
> It seems like a shitty move for a transit service to require passengers to use TLS 1.3 just to tick a fucking box that says “I agree” (to the terms no one reads anyway). Couple questions:
>
> * I’m generally in the /protect everything by default/ school of thought. But I cannot get my head around why a captive portal where people just tap “I agree” would warrant disclosure protection that could hinder availability. In reality, I don’t really know what the captive portal at hand requests.. maybe it demands people’s phone# or email, in which case it might make sense (though I would object to them collecting that info in a GDPR region in the 1st place).
>
> * Is there a good reason for a captive portal to require TLS 1.3? It seems either the network provider does not trust their own network, or they’re simply incompetent (assumes everyone runs the latest phones). But if I’m missing something I would like to understand it.
>
> I still have to investigate what limitation my browser has and whether I can update this whilst being trapped on an unrooted Android 5.
>
> Bypass methods
> ---
> I guess I need to study:
> * ICMP tunnel (slow, but IIUC it’s the least commonly blocked)
> * SSH tunnel
> * others?
>
> Are there any decent FOSS tools that implement the client side of tunnels without needing root? I have openvpn but have not tested to see if that can circumvent captive portals. I’ve only found:
>
> * MultiVNC - VNC over SSH
> * AVNC - VNC over SSH
> * ConnectBot - Can all traffic be routed over this SSH tunnel, or just a shell session?
> * VX ConnectBot - same as connectBot but expanded
>
> I’m curious if the VNC clients would work but at the same time I’m not keen to bring in the complexity of then having to find a VNC server. Running my own server at home is not an option.
>
> My to-do list of things to tinker with so far:
> * Captive Portal Controller
> * CaptivePortalLogin (AOS 6+, and no Izzy archives on this)
> * Hotspot Login
>
> Legal options
> ---
> If a supplier advertises Wi-Fi but then they render it dysfunctional by imposing arbitrary tech requirements after consumers have already bought the product/service it was included with (coffee, train/bus/plane fare, etc), then they neglect to support it, doesn’t that constitute false advertising? Guess this is out of scope for the community but I might be ½ tempted to file false advertising claims with consumer protection agencies in some cases.
>
> And when a captive portal demands email or phone number, it would seem to be a GDPR violation. Some public libraries make wi-fi access conditional on sharing a mobile phone number which then entails an SMS verification loop.
Captive portals have become an agent of forced obsolescence
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/11021006
> The red padlock (at a cafe)
> ---
> The captive portal of a cafe simply rendered a red padlock on with a line through it. Essentially, it was apparently telling me I am being denied access arbitrarily without using any words. There was no other screen before that. Immediately after wifi handshaking Android’s built-in captive portal detection app just went straight to a padlock. I have never been in that cafe in my life and never use my device maliciously.
>
> Showed the screen to the staff who said “works for me on my phone”, who then noticed the airplane on my status bar and said “oh, you got the little airplane, that’s the problem”. Shit; so then I had to explain that wi-fi works in airplane mode. It was just a distraction for them. I couldn’t really convince them that the problem isn’t anything I’m doing wrong. There is no tech support for this situation -- like pretty much all captive portal scenarios. Being the customer of the customer is a very weak position to be in when the direct customer doesn’t really give a shit if it works or not.
>
> So, has anyone seen this kind of behavior? I run into shitty broken captive portals often enough that I guess I really need to get a better understanding of them, and ways to bypass them.
>
> TLS-encumbered captive portal (transit service)
> ---
> A transit service offered wi-fi but the network forcibly redirected me to a
> captive portal that triggers this error:
> > net::ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH >
> I tried a couple browsers and tried rewriting the https:// scheme as http:// but SSL redirect was forced consistently. The error apparently implies my phone’s browser can’t do TLS 1.3.
>
> It seems like a shitty move for a transit service to require passengers to use TLS 1.3 just to tick a fucking box that says “I agree” (to the terms no one reads anyway). Couple questions:
>
> * I’m generally in the /protect everything by default/ school of thought. But I cannot get my head around why a captive portal where people just tap “I agree” would warrant disclosure protection that could hinder availability. In reality, I don’t really know what the captive portal at hand requests.. maybe it demands people’s phone# or email, in which case it might make sense (though I would object to them collecting that info in a GDPR region in the 1st place).
>
> * Is there a good reason for a captive portal to require TLS 1.3? It seems either the network provider does not trust their own network, or they’re simply incompetent (assumes everyone runs the latest phones). But if I’m missing something I would like to understand it.
>
> I still have to investigate what limitation my browser has and whether I can update this whilst being trapped on an unrooted Android 5.
>
> Bypass methods
> ---
> I guess I need to study:
> * ICMP tunnel (slow, but IIUC it’s the least commonly blocked)
> * SSH tunnel
> * others?
>
> Are there any decent FOSS tools that implement the client side of tunnels without needing root? I have openvpn but have not tested to see if that can circumvent captive portals. I’ve only found:
>
> * MultiVNC - VNC over SSH
> * AVNC - VNC over SSH
> * ConnectBot - Can all traffic be routed over this SSH tunnel, or just a shell session?
> * VX ConnectBot - same as connectBot but expanded
>
> I’m curious if the VNC clients would work but at the same time I’m not keen to bring in the complexity of then having to find a VNC server. Running my own server at home is not an option.
>
> My to-do list of things to tinker with so far:
> * Captive Portal Controller
> * CaptivePortalLogin (AOS 6+, and no Izzy archives on this)
> * Hotspot Login
>
> Legal options
> ---
> If a supplier advertises Wi-Fi but then they render it dysfunctional by imposing arbitrary tech requirements after consumers have already bought the product/service it was included with (coffee, train/bus/plane fare, etc), then they neglect to support it, doesn’t that constitute false advertising? Guess this is out of scope for the community but I might be ½ tempted to file false advertising claims with consumer protection agencies in some cases.
>
> And when a captive portal demands email or phone number, it would seem to be a GDPR violation. Some public libraries make wi-fi access conditional on sharing a mobile phone number which then entails an SMS verification loop.
Bypassing problematic captive portals. Cafe gives a red padlock; transit svc has broken TLS captive portal, etc…
The red padlock (at a cafe) --- The captive portal of a cafe simply rendered a red padlock on with a line through it. Essentially, it was apparently telling me I am being denied access arbitrarily without using any words. There was no other screen before that. Immediately after wifi handshaking Android’s built-in captive portal detection app just went straight to a padlock. I have never been in that cafe in my life and never use my device maliciously.
Showed the screen to the staff who said “works for me on my phone”, who then noticed the airplane on my status bar and said “oh, you got the little airplane, that’s the problem”. Shit; so then I had to explain that wi-fi works in airplane mode. It was just a distraction for them. I couldn’t really convince them that the problem isn’t anything I’m doing wrong. There is no tech support for this situation -- like pretty much all captive portal scenarios. Being the customer of the customer is a very weak position to be in when the direct customer doesn’t really give a shit if it works or not.
So, has anyone seen this kind of behavior? I run into shitty broken captive portals often enough that I guess I really need to get a better understanding of them, and ways to bypass them.
TLS-encumbered captive portal (transit service)
---
A transit service offered wi-fi but the network forcibly redirected me to a
captive portal that triggers this error:
net::ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
I tried a couple browsers and tried rewriting the https:// scheme as http:// but SSL redirect was forced consistently. The error apparently implies my phone’s browser can’t do TLS 1.3.
It seems like a shitty move for a transit service to require passengers to use TLS 1.3 just to tick a fucking box that says “I agree” (to the terms no one reads anyway). Couple questions:
-
I’m generally in the /protect everything by default/ school of thought. But I cannot get my head around why a captive portal where people just tap “I agree” would warrant disclosure protection that could hinder availability. In reality, I don’t really know what the captive portal at hand requests.. maybe it demands people’s phone# or email, in which case it might make sense (though I would object to them collecting that info in a GDPR region in the 1st place).
-
Is there a good reason for a captive portal to require TLS 1.3? It seems either the network provider does not trust their own network, or they’re simply incompetent (assumes everyone runs the latest phones). But if I’m missing something I would like to understand it.
I still have to investigate what limitation my browser has and whether I can update this whilst being trapped on an unrooted Android 5.
Bypass methods --- I guess I need to study:
- ICMP tunnel (slow, but IIUC it’s the least commonly blocked)
- SSH tunnel
- others?
Are there any decent FOSS tools that implement the client side of tunnels without needing root? I have openvpn but have not tested to see if that can circumvent captive portals. I’ve only found:
- MultiVNC - VNC over SSH
- AVNC - VNC over SSH
- ConnectBot - Can all traffic be routed over this SSH tunnel, or just a shell session?
- VX ConnectBot - same as connectBot but expanded
I’m curious if the VNC clients would work but at the same time I’m not keen to bring in the complexity of then having to find a VNC server. Running my own server at home is not an option.
My to-do list of things to tinker with so far:
- Captive Portal Controller
CaptivePortalLogin(AOS 6+, and no Izzy archives on this)- Hotspot Login
Legal options --- If a supplier advertises Wi-Fi but then they render it dysfunctional by imposing arbitrary tech requirements after consumers have already bought the product/service it was included with (coffee, train/bus/plane fare, etc), then they neglect to support it, doesn’t that constitute false advertising? Guess this is out of scope for the community but I might be ½ tempted to file false advertising claims with consumer protection agencies in some cases.
And when a captive portal demands email or phone number, it would seem to be a GDPR violation. Some public libraries make wi-fi access conditional on sharing a mobile phone number which then entails an SMS verification loop.
update (phones bought last year already obsolete) --- TLS 1.3 was not introduced until Android OS 10 (sept.2019). That was the release date of AOS 10. Older devices like AOS 9 would still be sold at that time and continuing at least into 2023. Shops do not pull their stock from the shelves when the end of support arrives. This means people buying new COTS Android devices just last year or even this year are already too out of date for the TLS 1.3 captive portal to function.
It’s seriously disgusting how many people expect consumers to upgrade this chronically fast.
Reverse tethering Android over USB without root ←this option is fading
Share quickly the Internet connection of your Linux PC with your Unrooted Android smartphone via a common USB cable
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/10276158
> There are apparently only two documented ways to reverse tether an Android via USB to a linux host:
>
> * openVPN method
> * Gnirehtet
>
> OpenVPN dead
> I really wanted the #openVPN method to work because I’m a fan of reducing special-purpose installations and using Swiss army knives of sorts. In principle we might expect openVPN to be well maintained well into the future. But openVPN turns out to be a shit show in this niche context. Features have been dropped from the Android version.
>
> Gnirehtet dying
> Gnirehtet works but it’s falling out of maintenance. It’s also unclear if #Gnirehtet really works without root. There is mixed info:
>
> * Ade Malsasa Akbar from Ubuntubuzz claims root is not needed (and devs agree).
> * OSradar claims root is needed. (edit: they are mistaken)
>
> If anyone has managed to reverse tether an unrooted Android over USB to a linux host using free software, please chime in. Thanks!
>
> update on Gnirehtet
> ---
> Gnirehtet indeed works without root. But some apps (like VOIP apps) fail to detect an internet connection and refuse to communicate.
>
> #askFedi
Reverse tethering Android over USB without root ←this option is fading
Share quickly the Internet connection of your Linux PC with your Unrooted Android smartphone via a common USB cable
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/10276158
> There are apparently only two documented ways to reverse tether an Android via USB to a linux host:
>
> * openVPN method
> * Gnirehtet
>
> OpenVPN dead
> I really wanted the #openVPN method to work because I’m a fan of reducing special-purpose installations and using Swiss army knives of sorts. In principle we might expect openVPN to be well maintained well into the future. But openVPN turns out to be a shit show in this niche context. Features have been dropped from the Android version.
>
> Gnirehtet dying
> Gnirehtet works but it’s falling out of maintenance. It’s also unclear if #Gnirehtet really works without root. There is mixed info:
>
> * Ade Malsasa Akbar from Ubuntubuzz claims root is not needed (and devs agree).
> * OSradar claims root is needed. (edit: they are mistaken)
>
> If anyone has managed to reverse tether an unrooted Android over USB to a linux host using free software, please chime in. Thanks!
>
> update on Gnirehtet
> ---
> Gnirehtet indeed works without root. But some apps (like VOIP apps) fail to detect an internet connection and refuse to communicate.
>
> #askFedi
knowing when to trust a login page on a Cloudflare site
cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/10262373
> Question for people willing to visit Cloudflare sites: > > How do you determine whether to trust a login page on a CF site? A sloppy or naïve admin would simply take the basic steps to putting their site on Cloudflare, in which case the authentication traffic traverses CF. Diligent admins setup a separate non-CF host for authentication. > > Doing a view-source on the login page and inspecting the code seems like a lot of effort. The source for the lemmy.world login page is not humanly readable. It looks as if they obfuscated the URLs to make them less readable. Is there a reasonably convenient way to check where the creds go? Do you supply bogus login info and then check the httpput headers?
Reverse tethering Android over USB without root ←this option is fading
Share quickly the Internet connection of your Linux PC with your Unrooted Android smartphone via a common USB cable
There are apparently only two documented ways to reverse tether an Android via USB to a linux host:
OpenVPN dead I really wanted the #openVPN method to work because I’m a fan of reducing special-purpose installations and using Swiss army knives of sorts. In principle we might expect openVPN to be well maintained well into the future. But openVPN turns out to be a shit show in this niche context. Features have been dropped from the Android version.
Gnirehtet dying
Gnirehtet works but it’s falling out of maintenance. It’s also unclear if #Gnirehtet really works without root. There is mixed info:
- Ade Malsasa Akbar from Ubuntubuzz claims root is not needed (and devs agree).
- OSradar claims root is needed. (edit: they are mistaken)
If anyone has managed to reverse tether an unrooted Android over USB to a linux host using free software, please chime in. Thanks!
update on Gnirehtet --- Gnirehtet indeed works without root. But some apps (like VOIP apps) fail to detect an internet connection and refuse to communicate.
#askFedi
knowing when to trust a login page on a Cloudflare site
Question for people willing to visit Cloudflare sites:
How do you determine whether to trust a login page on a CF site? A sloppy or naïve admin would simply take the basic steps to putting their site on Cloudflare, in which case the authentication traffic traverses CF. Diligent admins setup a separate non-CF host for authentication.
Doing a view-source on the login page and inspecting the code seems like a lot of effort. The source for the lemmy.world login page is not humanly readable. It looks as if they obfuscated the URLs to make them less readable. Is there a reasonably convenient way to check where the creds go? Do you supply bogus login info and then check the httpput headers?
Detecting a tracker pixel/image in email
An HTML-only email from a gov agency has a logo referencing an URL that looks like this:
https://1wy1y.mjt.lu/tplimg/1wy1y/f/l9hl7/g3q3v.png
It’s not exactly that (apart from the domain) but of course it’s rather unique looking. They send email routinely. The initial emails had an obviously non-suspicious basic logo, like “(their office domain)/files/logo.png”. But then later they switched and every message from them is the URL in the mjt.lu domain. It’s not unique per message but it could be unique to the user, perhaps to keep tabs on when each person reads their messages.
The output of torsocks curl -LI looks like this:
HTTP/2 200 date: (exactly now) content-type: image/png accept-ranges: bytes
That’s it. It’s the shortest HTTP header I’ve seen. There’s no content-length. I find that suspicious because if this is a service that facilitates tracker pixels, then they would want to withhold the length in order to dodge detection. Although from its usage in my case it wouldn’t just be a pixel -- it’s a logo.
The date is also suspect. Shouldn’t the date be the date of the object, not the current time this second?
Are there any other checks to investigate this?
motivation to deGoogle: Creditors can lock your Android remotely if you are delinquent.
I installed NetGuard about a month ago and blocked all internet to apps, unless they’re on a whitelist. No notifications from this particular system app (that can’t be disabled) until recently when it started making internet connection requests to google servers. Does anyone know when this became a ...
The technical mechanism:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.devicelock
update --- To be clear, I am not the OP who experienced this problem. I just linked them from here.
Mastodon threads no longer archivable on archive.org
It's official. After 3 months of back and forth, a major medical provider has elected to drop me as a patient for not having a Google or Apple device. It is unclear if this is legal, but it is very clearly discriminatory and unethical. Any tech journalists or lawyers interested in this? I would...
There used to be no problem archiving a Mastodon thread in the #internetArchive #waybackMachine. Now on recent threads it just shows a blank page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240318210031/https://mastodon.social/@lrvick/112079059323905912
Or is it my browser? Does that page have content for others?
Gov agency asking me for an “unaltered copy” of ~15 or so e-mails (HTML!)
I received several machine-generate e-mails which are all mostly the same: a notification. They are HTML emails with no plaintext MIME part. Yikes! And to complicate matters further, the messages traversed my anonaddy forwarding account which PGP encrypts every message to me before forwarding it to my normal email account.
The gov wants me to give them an “unaltered copy” of these e-mails. This gov office actually blocks my mail server so I am generally unwilling to send them email. This means I will be giving them the emails on paper hardcopy.
So wtf, this is tricky. They want an “unaltered copy”. If I were to print the MBOX files, it would be useless to them because it’s a base64 blob that only I can decrypt. My mail client is mutt so the HTML is detected and piped through w3m to give me a text version that is readable enough.
But in general, how do you give unaltered copies of an HTML email on paper form? This is not necessarily for a court but it could go down that path. Would a court want to see raw HTML tags? Or do courts prefer the HTML to be rendered for readability?
Normally I copy the w3m-rendered text of email into LaTeX and typeset it to look pretty and copy-paste the useful headers into a well-styled header in a monospaced font. And I omit the useless headers. But I get the impression my way of working would not pass for “unaltered”.
I could perhaps try to feed the HTML into wkhtmltopdf. In the end, HTML rendering always varies depending on the rendering tool. Normies use MS Outlook, and I have to figure that the gov is normally dealing with normies. So maybe I should install Evolution or Thunderbird. Any suggestions for a tool that is particularly good at making HTML email presentable on paper without looking too custom?
#askFedi