X10 wireless cameras leave a window into your home wide open: the New York Times reports on a new kind of war driving (joy riding?), in which equipped with an X10 wireless camera receiver souped up with a slightly more powerful antenna, you peep into people's homes and places of work that are using the widely advertised device. The X10 camera doesn't have even a minimal layer of security, and broadcasts widely. (A colleague, Paul Boutin, was talking about the potential of this a year ago when I was researching an article on data interception for him when he edited the Infoporn section at Wired magazine.)
X10 is bursty across the 2.4 GHz spectrum, causing problems with Wi-Fi networks, but it doesn't employ Wi-Fi technology.
Other News for Tax Day, 4/15/02
ComputerWorld on British Telecomm's commitment to Wi-Fi: note the mention in the article about Britain's spectrum regulatory agency making a decision soon to allow commercial use of the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band.