EarthLink is it in San Francisco.
EarthLink Municipal Networks, one of the finalists to provide citywide wireless Internet in Houston, has reached an agreement with the city of San Francisco to build a network there and offer free access to residents, businesses and visitors.
The contract includes a partnership with Google, which will subsidize the free access by selling advertisements on the network. The companies were chosen last year for the project but did not conclude a contract until late Friday, the city said in a news release.
Houston officials are negotiating with Atlanta-based EarthLink and another finalist, a local consortium headed by former Reliant Energy CEO Don Jordan, to determine which company will build a network to blanket the city’s 600 square miles.
Mayor Bill White said months ago he hoped to select a vendor by the end of last year. White’s spokesman Frank Michel said Monday that he wasn’t sure when negotiations would be completed.
Hopefully soon. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to see this move to the next step. And if it is EarthLink here, or even if it isn’t, let’s hope that Houston is paying attention to how San Francisco designed its WiFi plan, because its experience provides some lessons in what not to do.
via Ann Bartow at Siva
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/003885.html#comments
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/04pogue-email/
January 4, 2007
How Secure Is Your Wi-Fi Connection?
Snip
I’ve accepted that we all live in thousands of databases. The state of New York knows where and when I drive, thanks to my E-ZPass (electronic toll-booth badge). Stop & Shop knows what I eat, thanks to my grocery discount card. Blockbuster knows what kinds of movies I watch. Verizon knows whom I call, MasterCard knows what I buy-it’s just hopeless.
Snip
It came about like this: I recently filmed six episodes of a new TV series (“It’s All Geek to Me,” which airs in February on The Science Channel, Discovery HD and Discovery Europe). In one of them, I wanted to get to the bottom of this Wi-Fi snooping business. I wanted to see exactly what is, and is not, possible for the bad guys to intercept when you’re sitting there in Starbucks or the hotel lobby.
Snip
That’s all it took. He turned his laptop around to reveal all of this:
* Every copy of every e-mail message I sent *and* received.
* A list of the Web sites I visited.
* Even, incredibly, the graphics that had appeared on the Web sites I had visited.
None of this took any particular effort, hacker skill or fancy software. Anyone could do it. You could do it.
more with suggestions on some remedies
Oh, I forgot, make sure the companies that win these contracts write in their contracts that they will not database all our information for themselves nor others, no databasing, no datamining of emails, etcetera. Bottomline.
And on the subject of e-mails in case missed:
New Federal Rules Compel Companies to Keep Track of All E-Mails, IMs and Electronic Documents
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/print?id=2692400
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON – U.S. companies will need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees thanks to new federal rules that go into effect Friday, legal experts say.
..
(Does this have anything to do with all the investigations that are rightfully on deck?)
On second thought, about all the employees’ e-mails, IMs and documents now needing by law to be stored and accessible, sounds like databasing, datamining and profiling for easy access to all of us.
All the investigations rightfully going on have the ability to get subpoenas to access those same materials.
What was I thinking?