FCC Cracks Down on Marriott for Blocking WIFI

[MalfunctionProne]

I am also reminded of laser diffusers on license plates vs active radar jammers (*lasers cannot be jammed IIRC.) Diffusers are legal, as they shift the laser beam so unit cannot get a "lock" and indicate speed.

Radar jammers go into active signal warfare, and are therefore illegal.

Laser diffusers also do not set off the VG2 radar detector detector. A real thing.

You can still get POPPED by "instant on," though. Gotta have the best ears and detector in the WORLD to predict a trooper with that setting, instant-on scanning traffic..

 

[Win]

Without doing more research, on the face of it, that looks like a strained interpretation of section 333.

A cell phone is a "station licensed or authorized by or under this act"? A cell tower would be a "station", but a cell phone wi fi transceiver or laptop computer? It's an authorized device if it was type accepted, but a station?

Note that they didn't include the definition of "station" within the consent decree. I call baloney on this - more heavy handed government in the private operation of a business.

This would likely be a violation of my state law, however, as a hot spot would arguably constitute a computer network that is being hacked.

Whether this is a good, or bad, business practice is certainly open to debate.

 

[NHHEMI]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Interesting.

I see this as a good thing, but... For the sake of discussion...

Lets say you were having a wedding there. And you wanted catered food and an open bar. Would anyone gripe if the hotel said that you had to use Marriott food services and buy the alcohol through them, not bring in your own from the outside? Some may choose to not have the event there, but if the business made such their rule, who should be able to impede their own rules of doing business.

So goes wifi, if they had a business notice that conferences had to buy connectivity packages through the hotel (which many times is the case,many is why many times conference attendees don't have wifi access, btdt lots of times), why should big brother step in and impede the private businesses' operations on private property?

I'm usually griping about people being overly pro business given so many profit monger img schemes, but I'm not seeing the move as being that bad, perhaps cyber security aside...


If you were having a wedding there and had to use their services you would know about it upfront and could decide to do so or not. In this case they are doing it without telling people plus it is illegal anyway.

 

[Nate1979]

I am a frequent traveler and have stopped staying at Marriott because of this. Illegal or not this just stinks especially in an industry built on hospitality. Public perception is a very important aspect to businesses like this. Did they think they wouldnt get caught?

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: dishdude
I travel a lot, and I have Elite status with Marriott. I can look past the Book of Mormon in the nightstand. I carry my own hotspot with me so I don't have to rely on hotel wi-fi...blocking that is a deal breaker for me.

Yes you're on their property...but the FCC for decades held the position that the people own the airwaves.

Where does this stop? Every private business and property you're on can scramble and block your cell signal forcing you onto their own private network? For free to track what you do or to charge you for access?


Re-read the actual complaint. This was not the hotel, it was the conference facilities. So it was the conference company skirting buying the data package from the Marriott, by setting up a wifi hotspot.

Keep in mind, no hotel,stayer pays more than $10.99 or so for wifi, certainly not the $600 or $1000 mentioned. Conference bookings include a lot of costs, and lots of contractual details on things like catering, outside food, data packages, etc. It's different then joe blow bringing a tethered cellphone or personal wifi. That's why I made the differentiation before. I've been involved in setting up large conferences, and I stay in hotels routinely (Hilton Platinum here) where I too use my personal connectivity for certain secure things. No blockages. Its all different when a conference is buying a package of gods and services and submitting to it in return for the use of the facility.

I don't see language that states that anything was jammed, maybe I missed it. I saw that a blocking feature of the wifi monitoring software prevented consistent connections. Yes I get it that this is effectively jamming, even if it's not doing it through data packets vs raw signal. I get it that this may be illegal (the determination may be in what and how that signal/interfecence complies with other FCC regulations). But in the end all,I'm think that the conference company putting in the conference is in agreement to use the set of goods and services sold by the hotel, and data is just another good and service like food or technicians or liquor or the union shop bringing things in and setting up, all of which too is often mandated in the contractual agreement between the conference company and the venue.

 

[dishdude]

Marriott and the American Hotel and Lodging Association petitioned the FCC to allow them to jam guest's hotspots.

http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60000986872

 

[DoubleWasp]

Interfering with the normal operation of a device: Jamming

Send some bad packets to an airport control tower, and then try explaining to Homeland Security that you weren't actually jamming.

 

[dishdude]

Go FCC! THey are going to aggressively crackdown on any business jamming personal hotspots.

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0127/DA-15-113A1.pdf

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
An agency of the government doing something useful for the general public.....interesting.

Yea really...that unfortunately doesn't make up for the 99% of the rest of the time when we get [censored]

 

[Shannow]

Guess everyone in the thread was on the wrong track.

It was all about cyber security, not buying booze from the proprietor with the venue.

Quote:
We have withdrawn our petition to the FCC on cybersecurity – an initiative we thought was the right thing to do. However, in the face of disagreement from both regulators and our customers, we see that the effort was doomed.

This issue has been a complex one, and one that has opened Marriott to much criticism – the most painful of which has been the misunderstanding of our intentions. We wanted to protect the security of Wi-Fi use for conferences at our hotels – it had nothing to do with individual guest use of Wi-Fi or personal Wi-Fi hotspots.

In fact, we have led the industry in offering millions of customers free Internet access. In October, we announced that Marriott Rewards Members – a membership that is free and open to anyone – would have free Internet when they book direct. That message has been drowned out by the noise with the FCC.

Cybersecurity is a major concern across the business world and, certainly, in our industry, where guests and conference-goers rightly expect that any hotel-provided connection be secure. We are in a pitched battle against hackers who are at work daily trying to fool consumers – sometimes by setting up a Wi-Fi network that seeks to lure conference-goers into a site intended to steal passwords or other valuable data.