On the October 10/13 episode of Spark, Nora took a ride on David McCallum’s Warbike, a bicycle modified to turn WiFi signals into musical-sounding noise.
Personal wireless networks are plentiful in many parts of our country, as are commercial hotspots from the likes of Bell, Rogers, Telus, and other wireless providers.
But municipal wireless plans have been struggling recently. They’ve been shelved or are in limbo in a number of American cities — Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.
One alternative to muni WiFi that’s enjoying a bit of a vogue is community or neighbourhood wireless. That’s where a volunteer community gets together to provide wireless in a small area.
Tod Maffin has a nice technology column this week about one community wireless project: the Vancouver-based Free The Net initiative.
You can listen to Tod’s column on CBC Radio Thursday, or online anytime at his site.
I would love to believe that the ideas of freeing the net are at our fingertips, but i have some doubts. Today, on a day off, I wanted to go and find a place where I could sit down, have a coffee, and enjoy my daily web-browsing. It turned out to be more of a struggle than I first thought. without a vehicle I had to travel much further from the downtown core of Calgary (my home city at the moment) to find one that was not only available but also free to use. Most coffee store, including the big ones, starbucks for example, have a lock on theirs requiring you PAY for the web usage in their establishments.
I guess, all I want is somewhere that I can finally just go and sit and enjoy something that I believe has become our 21st century birthright to the internet, not to sound to egoistic about the topic.
Interesting, Mike. I do wonder whether wireless is something that we should consider the 21st century version of basic infrastructure, like building roads.
The idea to provide free wireless service started in San Francisco, the usual hippie center of the universe that Vancouver has always copied.
Free anything is always great, and for a while I enjoyed free internet by telephone line in Vancouver thanks to a local group. If they want to spring for wireless service too, that’s great.
But this talk of free internet service as a birthright is an idea more likely to be the result of the other stuff that hippies are famous for.
Roads are paid for by tax dollars. They aren’t built by volunteers using free materials donated by Conrad Black.
In Toronto today, you can go into the Reference library downtown with your laptop and get free access.
But someone is paying for it from city taxes.
I have to admit, the increasing availability of hotspots and open wireless networks is making the security geek in me nervous. There’s so much private information flying through the air, and so few people have any idea how to protect themselves from the Bad People(tm) who might be watching to see what goes by. We need to make a serious effort to educate people in how to defend themselves out there. The internet can be a bad, bad place.
Interesting, Gavin. From what I recall, one of David McCallum’s points in making the Warbike was to have it make different sounds based on level of security, partly as a way of pointing out that many people who use wifi aren’t really aware of security considerations.
One thing I have noticed is that IP over Power lines is generally in wider use in Canada and Europe than it the US. I find this surprisingly odd because it is a solid technology that works really well. Hopefully your article will shed more light on the subject for people to seek it out.
Burlington Vermont is trying to institute an semi-open grass roots effort for Wi-Fi. The idea is similar to San Francisco using Meraki repeaters but people need to help in supporting the network in order to get access. If you help the network by providing connection, hosting a repeaters, or giving some bandwidth, you get free access. Otherwise you are charged for it. It’s an interesting grass roots model that is just trying to get off the ground before WiMAX takes hold.
There’s a story (possibly an urban legend) about a couple of guys who did a war drive across Ottawa, along the Queensway. They drove from east to west, apparently without losing connection, and finding something like 500 unsecured networks within range of the highway. The whole idea just gives me the heebie-jeebies.
We talked about street-proofing our kids twenty years ago…now we need to wireless-proof ourselves.
I like your the way you handle comments on your blog, Nora.
Your decency is showing.
This wireless security issue is so timely, relevant and IMPORTANT to all users, I think you should consider a special piece covering it, and send it out for national use.
It would be most interesting if you could find a really educated hacker who knows exactly what the risks and vulnerabilities are – can someone see my information or not?
A suggestion.
@ Allan: I like that idea. It would be great to have some text-based support for that on the blog, too, because it’s sometimes hard to absorb detailed info on the radio. Maybe the radio component could have a “top five things you should do” teaser, with follow-up info online. I’ll raise it at our next story meeting.
the ilesansfil.org people in montreal are great on this stuff…one issue that’s pretty important about free community wifi is that it’s the backbone of a community of hackers/developers/independent contractors etc … in montreal there are a number of cafes (with free wifi) that are defacto offices for this community, and this has allowed us all to interact as colleagues, rather than being stuck all the time at home near a connection.
Please do it. I spend a depressing amount of my time explaining it to people, or to trying to clean up the results of an intrusion of some sort. The more people who know about this sort of thing, the better.
Interesting. We were just talking this morning about security and thinking it might be a good idea to have a recurring ‘practice safe computing’. There are so many issues, like phishing or wifi, where I think people would really appreciate practical hard info on what to do and what not to.
Anyone have any ideas for a guest? It would be great to have the same columnist, but that might be hard to find. Maybe a white hat hacker for one, an IT person for another….
I married a white hat
The problem with talking about it with pros is that they can get mind-numbingly technical, very quickly.
Security is one of these issues that makes people’s eyes glaze over, unless approached exactly the right way. Safe surfing is something that is far too rarely preached, let alone practice. But I’m a fine one to talk…
Agreed, on all counts, including the preaching not practicing one. I think it could work as a column that exists partly online, partly on the radio. Some really straightforward, not overly technical tips for the radio, and more detailed info online.
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Did anybody see the ctv or cbc special on wireless security this week or last? I really wanted to check that out but I didn't catch it and now I'm not able to find it. It was on a monday.
I am also sketched about wireless security, after hearing from a friend of a friend who lives in a cul-de-sac full of "protected" wireless networks. He told me he was able to hack every single one of them and would be able to use their computers remotely if he wanted to.