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Jonah Brucker-Cohen's "WiFi Liberator"

From "WiFi Liberator Toolkit - 2007" by Jonah Brucker-Cohen (design and concept):

Description

"Wifi Liberator is an open-source toolkit for a laptop computer that enables its user to 'liberate' pay-per-use wireless networks and create a free, open node that anyone can connect to for Internet access.

"The project is presented as a challenge to existing corporate or 'locked' private wireless nodes to encourage the proliferation of free networks and connectivity across the planet.

"The project was inspired by the ongoing 'battle' between providers broadcasting wireless signals in public spaces, in particular: corporate entities, wireless community groups, individual users, and proponents of open networks. Like my Wifi-Hog project, the Wifi-Liberator critically examines the tensions between providers trying to profit from the increasingly minimal costs associated with setting up a public network and casual users who simply want to see the Internet transform into another 'public utility' and become as ubiquitous and free as the air we breath...

Goals

"The ultimate goal with the Wifi Liberator project is through Open Source distribution, to eventually reach a high enough usage and penetration rate that all pay-per-use wireless networks will begin to free their access to everyone...

Background

"Despite the advent of free and open wireless networks made available by community groups in parks and other urban centers, there is still a monetary restriction on many networks that exist in community buildings and facilities such as airports, train stations, chain restaurants, and other public areas. Most of these 'closed' networks are deployed in 'waiting' areas with the promise of 'convenience' to allow pedestrians or commuters access to the Internet, however they nevertheless impose a monetary and time-based restriction on who can connect as well as for how long, often with 'hourly' or 'daily' rates for connectivity. Wifi-Liberator is a reaction against these limits to access by lifting the constrictions associated with paid networks and turning them into 'free' networks.

"The project finds inspiration from the Open Source movement's ability to turn once 'commercial' software into freely available and distributable entities. This is evident in examples such as Netscape's eventual movement into the freely available, and open source distribution model with Mozilla and its successor, Firefox... [It] is the hope of 'Wifi-Liberator', that once the restrictions are lifted on wireless access points that it will stimulate creativity and social action amongst the general public...

System

"The project includes a hardware and software component. The hardware component is an off the shelf, USB wireless card and any laptop with built in wireless hardware. Therefore the 'Liberator's' machine must have 2 wireless interfaces. The software component is a downloadable application called 'Liberator' that runs natively on Mac OSX (Windows version coming soon) that needs to be run when connecting to a paid network. The software is based on 'Ping Tunnel', free software written by Daniel Stodle and licensed under the BSD license.

"The following equipment list is to get WiFi Liberator running on an Apple laptop running OSX 10.3 or later. (Windows version coming soon)...

Apple Mac OSX laptop with integrated Airport card.
Apple Mac OSX machine connected to the Internet with a public IP address.
USB wireless network adaptor (I've successfully tested using the Addlogix Wireless-G Network Adaptor, but any OSX compatible Wifi/USB stick will work).
Wifi Liberator software (one copy of the software for each machine) - available here for Download: download link: (Wifi_Liberator.dmg) (v.1.0,.DMG, OSX 10.3 or later).

"The Wifi-Liberator Software can run in 2 modes - Proxy and Client..."
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See the project website for detailed set-up instructions.

[WiFi - 11 February 2007]