Cory Doctorow rips the Washington Post a new Ethernet port or two in eviscerating an article full of FUD: Listen, folks, how many people steal children away for any purpose? It's a small and horrible number. How much effort and money do we spend in our lives, those of us with and without children, ensuring that children are safe from this unlikely event that has dire outcomes? Individually, not so much; collectively, quite a bit.
Cory Doctorow makes a good case as he tears apart a poorly researched Washington Post article on Wi-Fi security that all of the fear, uncertainty, and dread (FUD) that wireless security consultants are pushing isn't illegitimate, but it's misplaced. Just because someone can hop on your wireless network doesn't make them malevolent, any more than someone listening to your public conversation at a restaurant doesn't mean they're writing down what you say and selling it to the highest bidder.
Yes, Wi-Fi makes need to make security better and simpler. And, you know what? They have. The article concludes with vague ideas about future security and mentions WEP, but ignores WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) which is appearing in shipping products and will be mandatory in all Wi-Fi branded gear by the end of the year. WPA fixes WEP's security holes and simplifies the use for home users: WPA can use a simple password instead of hexadecimal digits.
The ultimately irony for all this article's overstatements and misdirections: guess which is the only company that ships a wireless gateway that tries to force the user to secure the network and even creates a floppy disk that can be used to configure other machines on the same network?
Microsoft. Ah, the rich irony. Microsoft is using Wi-Fi internally more than practically any other company in the world, and they learned to make their dog food taste better and better.