International Law

Fonera Logs

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

Martin Varsafsky announced the new Fonera router for the FON wireless Internet access network. It can do all kinds of useful things, like uploading or downloading files directly to a hard drive without needing a computer.

I have posted about FON as a potential workaround for Internet surveillance a couple of years ago here and here. The latest brief in the constitutional complaint against wholesale Internet surveillance at the German Constitutional Court also mentions FON. So I wanted to find out if the Foneras log users.

By looking at the list of all files in the FON Wiki I found this page,  which gives a screen shot of the log file administration software. Apparently, people operating a FON spot can see “nicknames” of paying users, and the times of their login and logout. That means an individual FON spot operator does not have the real name of any user. If FON spot operators have to follow the rules in the Surveillance Directive, that would not be enough. That Directive requires retaining the name and address of users, not only a nickname.

That in turn might mean that running a FON spot could be illegal in many EU member states, including Germany. The plaintiff’s brief mentioned above gives that as one reason to hold the legislation unconstitutional.

Probably FON should pay some attention to this legal risk.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on March 24, 2009 (boomark / email).