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After Bodycam Footage Undoes Its Narrative, NYPD Agrees To Pay $13 Million To
Anti-Police Violence Protesters
Witcher Producer: Show’s Shit Viewership Is Because Of Dumb Americans And Social
Media



ACLU SAYS NYC’S HALF-BAKED WIFI KIOSKS STILL A PRIVACY MESS

Privacy


FROM THE MORE-OF-THE-SAME DEPT

Mon, Aug 7th 2023 03:43pm - Karl Bode

In 2014, NYC officials decided to replace the city’s dated pay phones with
“information kiosks” providing free public Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging,
and a tablet for access to city services, maps and directions. The kiosks were
to be funded by “context-aware” ads based on a variety of data collected from
kiosk users and NYC residents just passing by.

It… didn’t go well.

Within a few years, reports emerged that the company hired to deploy the kiosks
(CityBridge) had only deployed 1,900 of an originally promised 7,000 kiosks. And
the kiosks they had deployed were being used to watch porn. The program has also
been long criticized for over-collecting user data and being completely
non-transparent about what data was being collected or who access was sold to.

By 2020 CityBridge still owed the city $75 million. In 2021, an audit by New
York State’s Comptroller found LinkNYC failed completely to meet its deployment
goals, failed to adequately maintain existing kiosks, failed to turn on many
already deployed kiosks, and had fallen well short of projected ad revenues.

It’s now 2023, and the ACLU of New York says that the lion’s share of the dodgy,
privacy-violating tracking undertaken by the kiosk system still hasn’t been
meaningfully addressed. And the city and its partners still refuse to provide
full transparency on what’s being collected from passing city residents, whether
they use the kiosks or not:

> Beyond issues with the privacy policy, there is still a lot we don’t know
> about what information LinkNYC kiosks are sucking up. We also don’t know who
> has access to that information, how CityBridge is utilizing other third-party
> data to target people, and what’s being done with that treasure trove of
> personal data.

I wrote about this for Vice’s Motherboard last fall and absolutely nothing has
really changed. The ACLU suggests that one alternative to this privacy-invading
stopgap effort is for the city to actually deliver affordable fiber broadband to
all city residents so they don’t need to huddle in the street in the first
place:

> “We need a publicly funded and controlled municipal broadband program that
> ensures every New Yorker, regardless of who they are or how much money they
> have, can enjoy high-speed, reliable Internet access. This program must put
> our privacy rights front-and-center so they aren’t traded away to the highest
> bidder.”

If you recall, NYC Mayor Eric Adams dismantled the city’s already underway plan
to build a city-wide open access fiber network. That network would have boosted
city broadband competition and driven down broadband access costs for all city
residents, but it was unceremoniously dismantled, much to the surprise of folks
that had been working on it for years.

The Adams administration insisted that the privacy-invasive undercooked kiosk
system was good enough, likely because a city-owned municipal network would
understandably upset regional mono/duopolies Verizon and regional cable giant
Charter Communications (Spectrum).

As a substitute, the Adams administration also embraced a program dubbed Big
Apple Connect. Under Big Apple Connect, the city decided to pay Charter $30
million a year for three years to give free broadband to around 400,000 folks
living in public housing around the city.

Here’s the thing: this program will cost the city $90 million to temporarily fix
a problem caused by the company it’s partnering with. That money will be thrown
at a local monopoly directly responsible for high prices through its attacks on
competition to temporarily lower costs. And the program only runs three years,
after which those limited participants are out of luck and prices revert to
their normal high.

In contrast, New York City’s original master plan called for spending $156
million to build an open access fiber network that all local ISPs could compete
for business over. The resulting competition would have lowered broadband access
costs for everyone in range. That $90 million being thrown at Charter could have
gone a long way toward getting that network off the ground and inspiring other
cities.

There’s a reason cities everywhere are building their own broadband networks,
whether they’re municipal, cooperatives, or via the city-owned utility. It’s
because data routinely show that treating broadband as an essential utility not
only results in better, faster, and cheaper broadband, but also locally-owned
networks are more easily to hold accountable for privacy and other competitive
shenanigans.

This data-backed argument that broadband should probably be a publicly-owned
utility understandably doesn’t make regional predatory telecom monopolies (or
the endless federal, state, or local politicians that coddle them) particularly
happy.

Filed Under: broadband, eric adams, high speed internet, kiosks, linknyc, new
york city, nyc, telecom, wifi, wireless
Companies: aclu, citybridge

4 CommentsLeave a Comment

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COMMENTS ON “ACLU SAYS NYC’S HALF-BAKED WIFI KIOSKS STILL A PRIVACY MESS”

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4 Comments

This comment is new since your last visit.

Samuel Abram (profile) says:
August 9, 2023 at 6:49 am




I live in NYC. And I can tell you that the LinkNYC kiosks’ internet is barely
functional at all. I can hardly get internet access from them. It’s better to
get public internet from a nearby Starbucks or even the TransitWirelessWiFi from
the Subway (both of which are much more reliable).

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Andrew Manshel (user link) says:
August 10, 2023 at 4:56 am


LINKNYC

Not close to the story.

https://www.theplacemaster.com/2022/09/01/the-best-laid-plans-for-free-wi-fi-part-1-of-3/

The privacy protections are best in class. The program has other issues.

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payphone project (user link) says:
August 12, 2023 at 4:38 pm


PRIVACY IS NOT THE PROBLEM WITH LINKNYC

Nobody at CityBridge or OTI cares about your MAC address or you in particular.
This article is a needless punt. LinkNYC’s real issue is that it was unasked
for. Its ancestry to New York Telephone illegally slapping ads on its phone
booths in the 1980s is telling. Whoever wrote this: Do some research next time.

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Shoaib Raza (profile) says:
September 15, 2023 at 3:44 am


YOU WON'T BELIEVE

The article explores the history and challenges of New York City’s LinkNYC
program, initially envisioned to create the best WiFi network for residents.
However, it has faced numerous issues, including privacy concerns, financial
troubles, and questions about its effectiveness, making it a topic of discussion
in the context of funny WiFi situations and the broader debate over public WiFi
networks.

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