Tag Archives: Mesh networking

San Fran wireless plans getting spooky

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Only the nodes will know your secrets. The red-hot mesh networking startup Meraki can now claim intel connections. “Free the Net” is a Meraki promotion.

Investors with ties to the CIA, Bechtel and the bin Laden family are restoring the hopes some San Franciscans once held for low-cost, citywide wireless internet access.

Meraki Networks, a company run by two college kids on a break from their MIT studies, recently announced it will receive $20 million in funding to support its plans for expansion in San Francisco.

Meraki will sell and distribute its radio relay devices to homeowners and apartment dwellers, who can stick the devices in their windows to form neighborhood wireless networks that automatically configure themselves.

As with muni Wi-Fi, Meraki’s mesh networks offer the promise of free, unfettered access to the internet for the poor.

But the startup’s new investors also have a taste for intrigue.

Some of Meraki’s new capital, for example, will come from DAG Ventures, a firm co-founded by former investment partners from Bechtel. Their division, formerly known as Bechtel Investments, is now partly owned by the bin Laden family. (The new investment firm, San Francisco-based Fremont Group, remains largely in the hands of the Bechtel family.)

As parallelnormal readers well know, San Francisco’s original muni Wi-Fi scheme had a whiff of corruption about it. The city’s plans eventually proved too expensive for its business partners, particularly Earthlink, which recently abandoned the project.

Google’s offer to tack surveillance cameras on light posts, while installing Wi-Fi routers around town, was also poorly received by West Coast privacy watchdogs.

Some will are likely to ask whether DAG’s support for wireless networks will come with strings attached.

DAG is also backing, along with the CIA, the San Francisco-based camera surveillance and intelligence gathering company, 3VR Security.

But DAG’s ties to the intel community run deeper than a handful of startups. Continue reading →

U.S. city preps wireless surveillance

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They’re everywhere: Wireless mesh networks were meant to serve the have-nots of the digital age. Instead, routers hanging from lampposts and streetlights (many of them with cameras) will aid in government surveillance.

by Mark Baard

Boston officials this week announced they are adjusting plans for internet access to the poor: officials now say they will use the city’s municipal Wi-Fi network to keep a closer eye on the people, too.

Boston joins Providence and San Francisco, and dozens of other U.S. cities constructing wireless networks, ostensibly to bridge the so-called rich-poor “internet divide.” Many are also using the networks to aid police and domestic intelligence efforts.

Boston Mayor Tom Menino this week said that muni Wi-Fi will give poor kids “access to a new world of information they wouldn’t have in the past,” according to the Boston Globe (link and excerpt, bel0w).

But Boston city officials, citing delays and in the muni Wi-Fi network, said they want the OpenAirBoston network to serve “parking enforcement workers or health inspectors, using tablet personal computers.”

“We’re trying to find some city services we can test,” said Bill Oates, the city’s chief information officer, according to the Globe.

The move will also help Boston qualify for Homeland Security funds.

Many U.S. city officials (even in Philadelphia, once considered a success story) now admit to missteps in their plans to make the government the people’s internet service provider.

Philadelphians will have to pay more than the were told for low-cost wireless internet access, for example. Many of the officials responsible for the bad planning have flown the coop–they now work for the Wi-Fi consulting firm they initially hired on behalf of taxpayers.

clipped from www.boston.com

Technology, funding gap slow Hub’s WiFi effort

Full coverage not likely in 2008
OpenAirBoston has enlisted and trained 15 “first families” in Grove Hall to help test the network and provide feedback to city officials. The low-income neighborhood has about 8,000 households, with a quarter estimated to have computers. It was chosen for the pilot as part of an effort to bridge the “digital divide” with affluent districts where computers and high-speed Internet access are more common.

Muni Wi-Fi sinking under mishandling and corruption

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Very proud: Former Philadelphia CIO Dianah Neff (pictured here in 2004) now works for the Wi-Fi consultancy she hired on behalf of the city.

As city officials from San Francisco and Philadelphia head to the consultancy they hired with taxpayer dollars, Earthlink is pulling its plans to provide free and cheap wireless internet access to some cities, saying they are asking too much.

This article (link, below) does an excellent job describing the cities’ poor planning. But it does not mention the company that may be responsible for much of this mess: Civitium.

Civitium is the consultancy now employing San Francisco’s former deputy CIO Denise Brady, and Philadelphia’s former CIO Dianah Neff. The cities paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Civitium’s advise, before each of these officials left their posts to join the company.

clipped from abcnews.go.com
Municipal Wi-Fi Faces Financial Hurdles
Huff informed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom that EarthLink was rescinding a proposal to cover the estimated $14 million to $17 million cost of building the city’s Wi-Fi network.
Had the San Francisco system been built, EarthLink planned to charge about $20 per month for Wi-Fi access that would have been three to four times faster than a free service subsidized by ads sold by Google Inc.

Urban wireless to serve intel and PSYOP forces

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The government needs more nodes: Various agencies want to seed cities with wireless networking devices (image from a DOD document).

Despite the high costs and unproven social benefits for municipal broadband, dozens of U.S. cities are ignoring laws banning anti-competitive practices and getting into the internet business.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Defense is planning to build robots that configure themselves into ad hoc wireless networks within urban areas.

City mayors claim they want to provide free and low-cost Wi-Fi access to the poor and attract business travelers. Defense planners say they need to have broadband capabilities in urban war zones.

But rather than closing the “digital divide” (which many academics admit is being exaggerated), or providing a redundant service to traveling salesmen, it appears that officials aim to seize control of internet communications and track individuals in urban areas.

Military and law enforcement agencies will also use the wireless networks to stage “hard PSYOP” attacks against a brain-chipped populace, according to historian and commentator Alan Watt, who specializes in secret societies and government intelligence operations.

Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, and Providence, R.I. are among the cities partnering with private companies and the federal government to set up public broadband internet access. Providence used Homeland Security funds to construct a network for police, which may be made available to the public at a later date.

None of the cities are expected to turn a profit anytime soon. Nor are the poor likely to benefit from the projects.

Subscribers to Philly’s “Wireless Philadelphia” service, for example, will pay up to 73 percent more than the rate promised to them two years ago.

“(Philadelphia) presented dangerously inaccurate estimates and figures for the costs and revenue” for its wireless network, according to a recent analysis by students at Harvard Law School. Continue reading →

Now videocasting: Tech Lab with Mark Baard

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The Boston Globe last week piloted “Tech Lab with Mark Baard,” a weekly video program at Boston.com featuring some of the technologies I cover in my column. We’re starting off in the Tech Graveyard, “where old technology goes to die,” in the Globe’s basement. In the coming weeks, we’ll move into the field, visiting university labs and tech firms.

Let me know what you all think of this thing!