I plugged into ethernet (as wifi w/captive portal does not work for me). I think clearnet worked but I have no interest in that. Egress Tor traffic was blocked and so was VPN. I’m not interested in editing all my scripts and configs to use clearnet, so the library’s internet is useless to me (unless I bother to try a tor bridge).
I was packing my laptop and a librarian spotted me unplugging my ethernet cable and approached me with big wide open eyes and pannicked angry voice (as if to be addressing a child that did something naughty), and said “you can’t do that!”
I have a lot of reasons for favoring ethernet, like not carrying a mobile phone that can facilitate the SMS verify that the library’s captive portal imposes, not to mention I’m not eager to share my mobile number willy nilly. The reason I actually gave her was that that I run a free software based system and the wifi drivers or firmware are proprietary so my wifi card doesn’t work¹. She was also worried that I was stealing an ethernet cable and I had to explain that I carry an ethernet cable with me, which she struggled to believe for a moment. When I said it didn’t work, she was like “good, I’m not surprised”, or something like that.
¹ In reality, I have whatever proprietary garbage my wifi NIC needs, but have a principled objection to a service financed by public money forcing people to install and execute proprietary non-free software on their own hardware. But there’s little hope for getting through to a librarian in the situation at hand, whereby I might as well have been caught disassembling their PCs.
Do you trust every one-sided story to be entirely accurate of all details?
No, but for the sake of discussion in this thread, that is the scenario we’re all going by. We’re not rendering a legal judgement here, we’re discussing the situation as described.
In a public library, I would fully expect public-facing ethernet ports, especially in sitting / working areas, to be available for public use. I’m not sure why they would be there otherwise. And if they’re no longer meant for public use, it would be on the library IT staff to have disabled those ports.
what does trust have to do with it?
Because I don’t trust non-IT-savvy people to even properly understand the question. I’ve met way too many people with no technical clue who refuse to admit to any sort of lack of knowledge when it’s extremely obvious.
If the LIBRARIAN doesn’t understand this as a service the library offers - then they don’t offer it - or if you think they’re wrong you need to have an adult conversation that they do and that it should be ok. It’s weird to just assume you can go around sticking your cat5e into other peoples ethernet ports like that.
We could discuss all sorts of hypotheticals, including where there’s a secret supervillain base under the library and they’re about to assassinate OP for jacking into their network. It’s pointless because we’re not discussing an event we have any way of obtaining any other information about other than what OP has provided.
