Australian university used Wi-Fi location data to identify student protestors Australia’s University of Melbourne last year used Wi-Fi location data to identify student protestors. The University used Wi-Fi to identify students who participated in July 2024 sit-in protest. As described in a report [PDF] into the matter by the state of Victoria’s Office of the Information Commissioner, the University …
“Facism, Nazism, Transphobisim.“
Everything that you don't agree with is always an ISM to some people.
One day they will realise that that very attitude is what is making their lifes disagreeable.
When they stop wearing the utopia coloured glasses and paving the way to hell with good intentions then maybe, just maybe they will start to become usefull to themselves and to society.
In the meantime it's as if the playground has doubled in numbers, but the children refuse to learn. They have only learned to call people names and that's about as usefull to society as a chocolate bridge.
That's a rather roundabout way of stating you don't understand the issue you're complaining about, or do you think it'll never affect you?
"I didn't think the leopard would eat MY face" is increasingly becoming a thing in the USA, for example.
I'm sorry to disagree with your cookie-cutter argument.
Warning students that they can be expelled if they protest is already a blatant disregard for democracy.
One would think that a University, of all places, would want to demonstrate intellectual enlightenment and enter into discussions to find out what the problem was and what was needed to solve it.
Instead, they used Stasi-like tools to find the troublemakers.
Whatever happened afterwards, I call that facism.
"protest is already a blatant disregard for democracy"
Protest and democracy are two vastly different things. You can have one without the other. Also a university is NOT in any way shape or form democratic. You don't have to go to a specific university. If you don't like it you can go somewhere else. But these people like to throw tantrums and behave like spoilt toddlers.
"One would think that a University, of all places, would want to demonstrate intellectual enlightenment and enter into discussions to find out what the problem was and what was needed to solve it."
So students demonstrating "From the River to the sea - ie The elimination of Israelis " is perfectly acceptable ?
At what point does their form if hatred differ from everyone else's ?
And I still don't see the relation between this kind of protest and what is taught in Universités. Unless of course that something else is going on.
It’s not just the fascists, it’s all of those who believe ever more surveillance and invasion of privacy will somehow make us all safer.
I wonder how many who are outraged at this also actively use apps like Life360 to track their young adults (yes, I have sat with adults who actively monitor their young adults university life to the point they are phoning them to tell them to get out of bed as they are late to a lecture…).
While I disagree with what UoM did the students aren't exactly displaying the best reasoning either. Given that they're announcing to the target of the protest that they're occupying a building owned by said target and that they'll be staying there for the forseeable future, I cannot really see how they reasonably expected to escape identification. Perhaps they had some sort of super-secret escape plan but the fact they'd then connect personal devices to a wifi network owned by the target (at least mobile networks require law enforcement intervention to collect data from) and expected to still maintain anonymity boggles my mind.
It could be that they simply believed reality would oblige if they got sufficiently angry at it.
Protest has a useful function in a democratic society. Students have always protested. It's part of the culture of uni life and part of societal change. They are still kids - hormones and optimism. They haven't yet had all the hope ground out of them by the shitty day to day existence most adults are faced with. If you place the bar so low as to treat students as potential terrorists for a sit in and kick them out for doing it, there is no real margin for peaceful protest. At that point, the only way to protest is to go the full insurgent and burn things down at night,
Allowing people to protest is cheaper in the long run, with less destruction and fewer dead bodies.
If politicians don't realise from protests that a government should not be allowed, without criticism or action, to murder endless thousands of women and children, bomb hospitals and journalists and behave like Nazis towards ordinary people, just because they are a political 'ally', then that government is simply too stupid to hang on to power. Governments can ignore protests, but they will be out on their arses at the next election if they ignore the public sentiment those protests are part of.
Students have always protested. It's part of the culture of uni life and part of societal change
At my University, they said that protesting was an important life lesson for students as it taught them that some people will vigourously challenge their ideas.
Just to say, I agree with the right of students (along with everyone else) to protest, my comment was on their expectation to avoid consequences for their actions (while the wifi harvesting, which I disagree with, was not well advertised, the consequences for not vacating the building were). At the same time, they were preventing classes from taking place:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/17/university-campus-pro-palestine-protests-encampments-activists-uom-melbourne-police-action
Given that the primary role of a university is to educate and the students (who may not agree with their classmates) are paying tens of thousands of Australian dollars a year to do so, I think it is reasonable to deny protesters a heckler's veto over education taking place.
"Protest has a useful function in a democratic society."
However it is largely irrelevant to university life. Also bending the knee to a very small mob of students is not 'a democracy'. It is mob rule. Democracy is generally a majority rule and these people are seemingly not in the majority.
"and part of societal change"
"They are still kids"
They are very much still kids. Throwing tantrums.
"If politicians don't realise from protests that a government should not be allowed"
1) a bunch of entitled middle class numpties wearing tea towels and having a tantrum at a uni is not really something politicians need to pay much attention to
2) in what way can the Australian government do anything to stop the government of a far off land from doing things? I have no doubt that the very same tea towel wearing students would be utterly apoplectic if the US govt told the Aussie govt that it must bend the knee to the will of the US govt.
"without criticism or action, to murder endless thousands of women and children,"
This sorta thing is going on in many places all around the world and no-one bats an eyelid. The civil war in Yemen, Sudan, famine in the DRC. The only reason this particular issue gets any attention is one of the parties involved.
In my day, balaclavas etc were normal, as was avoiding distinctive clothing - when occupying university buildings for anything longer than a few hours protest; to prevent accidental identification from on-lookers.
But then we had books to read and loudhailers to communicate with on lookers and fixed line telephones (if you occupy the building with the PABX, couldn’t be eavesdropped) for protest management.
Did you read the report? AFAICS, the investigation wasn't commenced because of any student complaints.
The WiFi tracking was reported in a newspaper, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner investigated because the information reported indicated a potential breach of the relevant legislation.
I doubt that many of the students connected their phones to the school’s Wi-Fi manually while they were inside protesting.
If they had ever connected to it in the past their cellphones will send out a ping and connect to the Wi-Fi automatically without their intervention.
This is also true of other electronic devices.
I once set my Wi-Fi dongle to “monitor mode” and used Wireshark to collect the packets and I could see all the coffee shops that my next-door neighbor had connected their laptop to because it was calling out their Wi-Fi names.
You can also spoof a hotspot using a Wi-Fi router with a customized kernel that will cause the victims device to automatically connect.
Follow the link to the report. The university required an individual login to access the WiFi. This was not some open WiFi with the password posted on signs everywhere.
The crux of the matter is there was a period of time when the "Terms of Use" document was not available on the student's first login. Therefore they could not 'Accept' the terms which they were unable to read, although they had to hit the 'Accept' button for access. Because, of course, every one of us always reads the terms before hitting the accept button. Especially university students.
Oh, and the reason for stopping the protest...
Over occupancy of the facility & personal belongings blocking emergency exits. Had there been an emergency (fire), the safety of the protesters would be at risk. They didn't stop it because they wanted to squash democracy, they stopped it to protect the students.
Imagine the alternative - the place is packed, lots of emotional energy for the cause, some numb-nuts lights a pryotechnic, chaos ensues, exits blocked, students injured, and the university blamed. The university didn't have any good options, so they took the one with the safest outcome for all involved.
so
please sort this out https://internet.nl/site/www.fastly.com/3399751/
you use google for your DNS get it and others secured no risk to you...
at the very least sort DNSSEC its a bit like saying TLS is hassle yes get on with it sign your domain and all others
Specify what you want to anonymize. Because if the school's WiFi uses enterprise security where you need to log in to use it, then they can identify who is using each connection. If it's an open network where anyone can connect, then you have more things you can do to hide who you are. Anonymizing something depends a lot on how hard the thing you're using is trying to not let you.
If you don’t want to be tracked disable the wifi on your device, turn it off and if possible remove the battery.
Yes I know this means no internet access but phones have to be tracked all the time (how else would the provider route calls to you), corporate WiFi even if it is anonymous access it can still be tracked - I can easily see which AP you are connected to and locate you to an area (if fully authenticated) that improves to a far higher accuracy.
Now have I the slightest interest in doing that - well 99.99% of the time no but I can locate and log what you are accessing if need be. Would I be in trouble if I did - yes.
The only reason I look at that data is when we have congestion or performance problems and I can work out what has gone wrong or do we need to install additional wireless access points.
Without internet access how can they live stream their protest??
It seems the tea towel wearers have scored another win for democracy! The Ottawa Capital Pride parade got cancelled as a minority group threw a tantrum and blocked the route. I'm sure that everyone else at the parade was very pleased with this outcome.
That doesn't really answer their question, does it? In fact, it doesn't really answer any question. No device or no working device are great ways to not be tracked from the device, but people asking about this usually want a solution where they can use their device with less tracking. Hence the discussion of exactly what level they'd be happy with, what environment they're working in, and whose tracking they're trying to avoid, which generates different answers.
Let's see what happens to the gambling ban a year from now
Watered down and ineffective me thinks or circumvented easily
Gambling is awash with huge profit margins and walls of "free" money buy power and influence
Plus muggins luv gambling and politicos know it, and prob partake themselves
I remember an idiotic judge in Greece banned ALL computer games back in the 2000's because of "gambling". It didn't last long but it goes to show you what non-technical judges with a lot of power can do. Even India's ban of "online money games" will do more harm than good. Online gambling will just go underground with digital currency instead of credit cards, and there will be NO protection against fraud. Gambling is like a drug addiction to some people and they will find ways.
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They never said that. For one thing, they don't seem too happy about gambling in general, so they're probably not fine with it. However, there may be things I'm not fine with that don't deserve a total ban or where a total ban, while deserved, would not work. Those will generate different outcomes.
But you added something completely unrelated and pointless. A child using their parents' money without permission is not at all related to this. That is criminal theft by the child, and while most parents aren't going to enforce that, that's a very different problem which requires that the parents do something about their child spending money they don't have. That's the case no matter what the child does with that money. The original post did not speak about children at all and for a good reason: it has nothing to do with the problem India's law or Greece's law was dealing with. If you have that problem, that is your problem which you should deal with, and if that's the best argument you can make against gambling, then in the absence of better arguments, of which there are at least ten, I'd side with the gamblers. There are a lot of harms created directly by gambling. Theft from parents is not among them.
