[CentOS] RADIUS

[hw]

Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On 2 March 2018 at 12:07, hw <hw at gc-24.de> wrote:
> 
>>>
>>> Oh yeah. Who ever gave you those marching orders needs to talk with
>>> all kinds of lawyers... even researching for it might be problematic
>>> in some countries due to a multitude of laws. You are walking out of
>>> setting up a wireless environment into full-scale surveillance.
>>
>>
>> That´s not my problem to solve, but think about it:  You can get a lot more
>> information using CCTV cameras, and those are everywhere.  Unfortunately,
>> nobody cares, and it´s not like you have a choice.  So why would there
>> be any legal issues?
>>
> 
> 1) Devices which omit radio frequency wavelength radiation are covered
> by different laws and agencies than those which emit light based
> radiation. This means that the agency that says you can put in a cctv
> may not be the same as the one that allows you to put in a RF sensor.
> 2) There are laws using where monitoring of the public can happen and
> where the monitoring devices can be placed and what information can be
> kept on them. These are covered from everything from local to EU laws.
> The laws can also be conflicting and need careful consideration.

Ok, those are considerations for the lawyers.  If they can´t figure out
that it can be much worse filming someone who doesn´t even have a choice
about being filmed than it can be to use wireless access points to
determine the whereabouts of someone who has a choice to either use the
access points or not, someone needs to do something about those lawyers.

> 3) Depending on the location this occurs, it is your problem to bring
> up if you are aware that it could be a problem. The "I was only
> following orders" defense has been thrown out for people and the
> engineers/custodians who put the stuff in were found liable for
> damages as much as the boss who said to do it.

Prove that I was aware of something and aware that I should bring it up
and that I then didn´t bring it up.

If someone made a law saying that nobody can say anymore that they were
only doing what they were supposed to do, I´d like to know where to find
this law.  I would also like to know how that law is enforced.

"Following orders" has apparently been a problem with the Nazis a long
time ago, and when the law suits after WW2 were performed, claiming that
one of the intentions was to show how following orders may not always
be the right thing to do and that people might be punished for doing so,
the outcome was a total failure because nothing has changed.  There are
still people making decisions without being held responsible for what
they are doing, and other people who carry them out, also without being
held responsible for what they are doing, and since they control all the
powers that are, what they are doing crushes anything and anyone that or
who might get into their way, and these people don´t care and don´t even
blink when they harm millions.  This is called democracy, and noone is
responsible because it isn´t called "following orders" anymore.  The same
principles that did a great deal to make it possible to murder so many
people a long time ago are entirely unbroken and still in effect, and
thanks to advances in technology, nowadays the means at their disposal are
ridiculously more powerful than they were.

Unfortunately, we aren´t told this, and I´m afraid almost noone
understands this.  You can imagine why we aren´t told.  What I don´t
understand is why they didn´t change anything back then.  Perhaps they
didn´t understand what the real danger is and where it comes from.

Now tell me: Who am I to question the orders and what power could I
possibly have to refuse them without it being to my disadvantage?

 > [...]
>>
>> I´m surprised that wireless access point controllers, by default, do not
>> use the strength of the signal received from a device by three or more
>> access
>> points to simply triangulate the position of the device.  Of course, you
>> only get the positions of devices relative to access points, but once you
>> have that, you only need to use a map of the place that shows all the access
>> points and the positions of devices relative to them to figure out where
>> everyone is.
>>
>> That´s a rather simple thing to do, isn´t it?  Some documentation of HPs
>> MSRs
>> stated that the controller can distribute the wireless devices between
>> access
>> points to even out the bandwidth, and if it can do that, it could as well
>> distribute them for triangulation.
>>
> 
> It isn't. Wireless is much noisier and uses longer wavelengths than
> light. It is like walking through a hall of mirrors with sunglasses
> on. You are only able to see certain things, lots of things reflect,
> everything within sensor range which is broadcasting is showing up
> even if it is a different SSID, and a ton of other items. This means
> that where you might only need 2 sensors for light, you need dozens to
> hundreds for radio waves. However the more sensors you have, they also
> may reflect, rebroadcast, dampen, ghost echo signals. Then you have
> the fact that RF is absorbed by water and people are giant bags of
> water. You need to put sensors at different heights, etc etc.
> 
> This is where the 3rd parts hardware and software comes in. You need
> to map the empty room, map the room with noise, map the room with
> people in it without sensors and then map the room with how you want
> it to work. The software then does a huge data dump and lots of
> Fourier transforms and trig to figure out where a 'live' feed may look
> like. You still have to go in and massage it at times because all it
> takes is some metal object being walked through the room and it is all
> off for N minutes.

You mean the signal strength is way too unrelated to the distance between
an access point and a device to give meaningful results when used for
triangulations?

That makes perfect sense to me.

> In any case, this is a different problem and completely tangential to
> either CentOS or RADIUS.
>