Public Wi-Fi is a major trend, but it seems like today there is a confluence of news about big honking Wi-Fi efforts. First, the Wireless Silicon Valley project, dubbed the biggest Wi-Fi project in America, issued its RFP for bidders last week. The project has been spearheaded by the San Mateo County Telecommunications Authority since 2004 and will cover 1,500-square miles of the nation’s tech epicenter.
Over on the East Coast, Suffolk County New York is kicking off its process to deliver Wi-Fi to its 1.5 million residents over 900 square miles. Somehow the folks in Suffolk think that their project is also the biggest public Wi-Fi initiative in the nation.
However, Suffolk’s proposed system covers only a single county. The State of Rhode Island has a program underway to deliver Wi-Fi state-wide. The state is developing what it calls The Rhode Island Wireless Innovation Networks (RI-WINs), which should cover a land mases of 1,045 square miles and is expected to be fully in place next year.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:23 AM | Print | Comments (0)
News.com’s Declan McCullough has done a fine job over the past year in bringing to light efforts by the federal government to require Internet-related companies to maintain data for law enforcement purposes. Now McCullough reports that Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) has prepared an amendment, most likely to be raised as an amendment next week to the telecom reform bill up for a floor vote, that would require any “Internet service” that “enables users access to content” to maintain records of user activity permanently to permit police identification.
Although the bill is designed to sniff out child p*rn providers, it doesn’t sound like there’s much to prevent law enforcement authorities from digging around in the data for other purposes.
Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute, said: “This is an unrestricted grant of authority to the FCC to require surveillance.” “The FCC would be able to tell Internet service providers to monitor our e-mails, monitor our Web surfing, monitor what we post on blogs or chat rooms, and everything else under the sun,” said Harper, a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. “We’re seeing a kind of hysteria reminiscent of the McMartin case. The result will be privacy that goes away and doesn’t come back when the foolishness is exposed.”
Even more vague is the scope of the “Internet services” covered by the law. As McCullough notes, while the bill seems aimed at ISPs, “an expansive reading of DeGette’s measure would require every Web site to retain those records.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:52 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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