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.

Yeah I’ve done the same in one case. Librarian green lit me plugging into the rj45 but it turned out to be a dead port. I might have been able to get permission to hijack an occupied port to an unoccupied machine but just opted to bounce instead.

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.

Their terms require a phone so yes, on their terms.

I keep a copy of everything I sign. The ToS I signed on one library do not require a mobile phone. It’s an ad hoc implementation that was certainly not thought out to the extent of mirroring the demand for a mobile phone number into the agreement. And since it’s not in the agreement, this unwritten policy likely evaded the lawyer’s eyes (who likely drafted or reviewed the ToS).

Why would they make an exception for anyone?

Because their charter is not: “to provide internet service exclusively for residents who have mobile phones”.

And why would they want to deal with paper agreements for WiFi?

Paper agreements:

• do not discriminate (you cannot be a party to a captive portal agreement that you cannot reach)
• are more likely to actually be read (almost no one reads a tickbox agreement)
• inherently (or at least easily) give the non-drafting party a copy of the agreement for their records. A large volume of text on a tiny screen is unlikely to even be opened and even less likely to save it. Not having a personal copy reduces the chance of adherence to the terms.
• provide a higher standard of evidence whenever the agreement is litigated over

You don’t have to be a member to use WiFi, someone else could have given you the password if there even is one

That’s not how it works. The captive portal demands a phone number. After supplying it, an SMS verification code is sent. It’s bizarre that you would suggest asking a stranger in a library for their login info. In the case at hand, someone would have to share their mobile number, and then worry that something naughty would be done under their phone number, and possibly also put that other person at risk for helping someone circumvent the authentication (which also could be easily detected when the same phone number is used for two parallel sessions).

If someone is doing something illegal it’s gonna involve the library if you get caught (that’s why the phone number but maybe they are just being shitty with it). Not worth the risk.

Exactly what makes it awkward to ask someone else to use their phone.

You have, throughout your comments, repeatedly spoken down toward librarians and libraries.

Again, you’re not quoting. You’ve already been told it’s not the case. You need to quote. You replied to the wrong message.

but you’re certainly not painting them as “trying their best”

There are many librarians with varying degrees of motivation. I spoke to one yesterday that genuinely made an effort to the best of their ability. I cannot say the same for all librarians. When I describe a problem of being unable to connect, some librarians cannot be bothered to reach out to tech support, or even so much as report upstream that someone was unable to connect.

“worth having an adult conversation with instead of misrepresenting my situation intentionally”

This is a matter of being able to read people. I don’t just bluntly blurt out a request. I start the conversation with baby steps (borderline small talk) describing the issue to assess from their words, mood, and body language the degree to which they are likely to be accommodating whatever request I am building up to. Different people get a different conversation depending on the vibe I get from them. Even the day of week is a factor. People tend to be in their best mood on Fridays and far from that on Mondays.

You’ll have to quote me on that because I do not recall calling them baddies. I have spotlighted an irresponsible policy and flawed implementation. It’s more likely a competency issue and unlikely a case of malice (as it’s unclear whether the administration is even aware that they are excluding people).

If they are knowingly and willfully discriminating against people without mobile phones, then it could be malice. But we don’t know that so they of course have the benefit of any doubt. They likely operate on the erroneous assumption that every single patron has a mobile phone and functional wifi.