Wi-Fi
Doc Searls is having quite an adventure in London. I was unimpressed when people started blogging from conferences, but this is cool. Doc just wanders the streets until he finds a wireless hotspot, then sits on the sidewalk and does some work. It’s a great way to meet people, although I wouldn’t recommend it in a place like Detroit. I am also postulating that the best way for a busy traveller to get current information about active WiFi hotspotsin places like Seattle, SoCal, and London, will be to ask the local panhandlers. People who snarf free WiFi are likely to be bothfinancially secure and have a social consience, so these places will be a lucrative territory for panhandlers.
On the other hand, I have to think that the forces aligned against the “Axis of Evil” will find this trend disturbing once they discover it. Al Qaeda have used Internet cafes extensively to communicate with one another, and the recent captures in Morocco and the Daniel Pearl case both were helped by the fact that we were intercepting e-mail from these places. Instead of using cybercafes, the terrorists will now have to walk around until they find a good citizen who has opened up his cable modem to anyone with WiFi. And why not? Any terrorists entering the U.S. through the southern deserts can now keep an eye open for refreshment stations put there by private citizens and concealed from police, so they no longer have to go through heavily-guarded check-points. These days, it is a virtual certainty that cybercafes are as heavily monitored as the border crossings.
In fact, just yesterday, a cybercafe in Beijing caught fire, killing 24 college students. It’s the worst fire-related toll in Beijing since PRC inception. The interesting thing, though, is that the cybercafe was operating without a license, as the bulk of such places in Beijing are. But instead of going on a campaign to shut down the illegal cybercafes, the local government has announced that all cybercafes in Beijing will be shut down for a month or so, so that the government can inspect for compliance with fire codes, and then they will be permitted to continue operating. From the sound of it, they will just wink at the illegal places. I am sure there are many reasons for this strategy, but if I were in the government there, it would seem like a smart move to me. I would rather know about an illegal cybercafe and have it wiretapped than encourage cybercafes to go deeper underground where I couldn’t monitor them. Inspection under the auspices of “fire safety” is a perfect opportunity to install bugs (and maybe even collect some bribes).