TirithRR wrote:
I always wondered if people used hotel, or other wifi areas, for illegal activity, how would they trace it back to the person?
Digital signatures involved in any of a number of processes. Most obvious is MAC address off your network card, but that's only the most basic. The process of connecting to a network involves a number of handshaking mechanisms, during which any number of identification type signals are sent back and forth. These form a kind of digital fingerprint which law enforcement can use to track someone.
I'll also point out that the ignorance of the technical implications lies on both sides of this sort of debate. The records they're talking about are pretty basic. It's not like they're requiring internet cafe's to run scanning software that'll hack into people's machines and store all their super secret information. What they're asking for is that these sorts of services be treated identically to the phone companies in this regard. They are required to keep phone records for a period of time for the exact same reasons.
The current problem is that since there isn't any regulation, most open wireless access providers (like hotels and internet cafes) don't keep any connection records at all. Which means that even when police trace someone, and get a subpoena for the records, there aren't any to collect. Leaving them to wait until they see online activity again, often only to repeat the process over and over.
