NY Post Craps On NYC's Plan To Offer Free Wi-Fi -- Because The Homeless Might Watch Porn

from the worry-wart dept

As you might have heard, New York City recently launched one of the biggest free Wi-Fi initiatives ever conceived. Under the program, some 7,500 Wi-Fi kiosks will provide gigabit Wi-Fi, free phone calls to anywhere in the country (via Vonage), as well as access to a device recharging station, 311, 911, 411 and city services (via an integrated Android tablet). The city is installing ten a day -- most at old payphone locations -- and hopes to have 500 of the kiosks in place by July. It's a pretty impressive effort, and by most measures providing fast, free connectivity to the city's five boroughs has been something to celebrate.

Unless you're the New York Post, which decided to spend precious calories this week worrying about how the system potentially lets the city's homeless population watch porn:

"...The plan badly backfired when scores of homeless men — and some schoolchildren — soon realized they could surf porn sites all day on the city’s dime using the communal Android-run tablets and gratis Wi-Fi."

Of course the Post kind of floats over the amazing fact that the kiosks let everybody in the city access any information they want at any time, but the Post also fails to really offer any evidence that there's waves upon waves of masturbating homeless brigands terrifying city residents. In fact the story proceeds to note that the company behind the initiative, LinkNYC, has already ramped up filtering of pornographic websites to at least make it a little more difficult. In fact there's really not much of any meat to the clams the city's plan "backfired" at all, outside of a quote from an indignant out of towner:

"I used to come here in the ’70s, and I remember thinking Times Square was as skeezy as you could get, but I was wrong,” said former New Yorker Richard Herzberg, 61, who now lives in Dallas, Texas. "This is as skeezy as Times Square could get. I mean, in the old days there was plenty of porn, but you could only see it behind closed doors. So at least there was that level of modesty."

While the Post would apparently prefer it if we dismantled a useful, citywide Wi-Fi network to fix a nonexistent or relatively minor problem, it's worth remembering that masturbating in public remains a criminal offense, making the fact that it's happening at a free Wi-Fi pylon somewhat irrelevant. And while there's an argument to be made for loss of city character as New York evolved from punk rock minefield to glorified shopping mall, city residents that remember the apocalyptic nature of 70s and 80s NYC likely see sporadic homeless porn consumption as the very least of the city's worries.

Filed Under: free wifi, homeless, new york, nyc, porn, times square, wifi

Canadian Spy Agency Tracking Users Of Free WiFi At Airports, Hotels, Coffee Shops & Libraries

from the free-wifi dept

A few years ago, we wrote about why, for many years, whenever you were in a public place like an airport or a hotel, you'd often see an available WiFi option called Free Public WiFi -- though if you looked carefully, it was an ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network, rather than to a WiFi access point. It turns out that it was because of a stupid bug in Windows XP, which also explains why it's a lot less common these days. Of course, some people always would joke that it was really spy agencies trying to get you to connect to their WiFi. Except, that might not be that much of a joke. The latest reporting on Snowden documents from Glenn Greenwald, in association with some reporters from the CBC, reveals that the Canadian equivalent of the NSA, the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) has been tracking people as they connect to WiFi networks in a variety of public places including airports, hotels, coffee shops and libraries. The main focus appears to be on airports, but then they use that data to create a map of information about where someone goes.

Just two months ago, the head of the CSEC, John Foster, insisted that the CSEC does not spy on anyone in Canada:

“I can’t comment in detail on the intelligence operations or capabilities of ourselves or our allies. What I can tell you is that CSEC, under its legislation, cannot target Canadians anywhere in the world or anyone in Canada, including visitors to Canada.”

And yet, as this report shows, they absolutely are collecting tons of data on Canadians and visitors to Canada. And not just a few. The document shows that in a test that "swept a modest size city," they collected information on over 300,000 people. Also, they can then use that information to track where a person goes, creating profiles over time. The document reveals that they're just testing this capability (which was created in coordination with the NSA), but it indicates the plan is for all of the "Five Eyes" countries to use a similar system -- though the reporters say they've been told the system is now fully operational, and not just in test mode.

It's not clear from the document exactly how the CSEC is able to get this data. The CBC report questions a few potential sources, such as key airports and Boingo (the company that supplies WiFi to many public hotspots) and both deny providing the information. The Boingo denial seems reasonable, since in the presentation it actually indicates that they have trouble getting information on users on Boingo's network.

The reporters spoke to multiple experts who all say that there's no possible way that this effort is legal under Canadian law. After all, as Foster himself stated above, the CSEC cannot target anyone on Canadian soil, but they clearly do. The article even quotes Ontario's privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian who seems horrified by this revelation:

Ontario's privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian says she is "blown away" by the revelations.

"It is really unbelievable that CSEC would engage in that kind of surveillance of Canadians. Of us.

"I mean that could have been me at the airport walking around… This resembles the activities of a totalitarian state, not a free and open society."

For all the wonders of free WiFi, there's one more downside to keep in mind. If you're using it, you're almost certainly being tracked by a spy agency.

Filed Under: airports, canada, csec, free wifi, john foster, library, privacy, tracking, wifi