WiFi for all San Franciscans

In a Reuters article Friday, the mayor of San Francisco was quoted as saying "We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service..." in his annual state of the city address, proposing city wide WiFi.

This is a growing trend and it is FREAKING ME OUT! Imagine being able to drive to San Francisco with your laptop to commit a crime through a government funded internet connection. Doing it through conventional wardriving from a residential private wireless connection in some random neighborhood is one thing, but at least it is fairly easy to spot that. If there is city wide WiFi, it would be perfectly normal for a person to be on their laptop on the side of the road. And when this sort of system is implemented, there is little doubt in my mind that they are going to put ease of use ahead of security. Do you make all residents download authentication software? Any security guy will tell you you're not going to find any solace in built-in security technologies. So how do you implement such a system easily and securely? I'm curious to find out, but I'm guessing: you don't.


25 Oct 04 | +Permalink+ | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)