Last week, my company had one of those big corporate meetings where everyone gets together and the CEO and senior executives tell us how exciting everything is, all the great stuff we’ve been doing lately, and all the even more amazing things that are coming soon.
They’re fun meetings. I assume most big companies do them, although I’d never been to anything like them when I worked in the non-profit sector. If you aren’t familiar with them, think of a big pep rally, with some sort of corporate logo shwag as a gift at the end.
Ours lasted 2 hours, with the last 15 minutes reserved for questions.
The biggest thing that we heard about in the first hour or so was how we’re building our very cool future by providing Municipal Wireless Broadband access.
There’s a misperception that I shared with most of the Internet world, I think, which was that "Muni Wi-Fi" was going to provide free wireless Internet access in public areas of the cities that create it. Instead, Muni Wi-Fi is going to be more like a giant wireless hotspot covering the whole city, with options to pay for access on a short term basis or by subscription like regular Internet access at home.
I had a few conflicting thoughts about this, particularly when I thought we were providing it in public spaces for free. On the one hand, it’s very cool, and awesome that wireless broadband will be available everywhere in major urban areas, and even if it isn’t free, it’ll be a helluva lot cheaper than cable, which is my only option where I live. On the other hand, especially if it were free, do we really want to be offering unfiltered access in places like playgrounds in parks?
(Aside: I oppose mandatory filtering in libraries. People go to libraries looking for a wide range of information and reading material. The best, most accurate filters, the ones I would use in my own home, will overblock. That’s a problem for libraries. Any inappropriate behavior relating to Internet use in the library should be dealt with as a behavior problem.)
I’ve been trying to find appropriate people to ask about this for awhile. Unfortunately, the Muni Wi-Fi team is only partly in my city, and they’re totally swamped, and I hadn’t gotten an answer.
So I stood up during the question and answer period and said, into a microphone, in front of over 1000 people:
Our company has had a great reputation as being First Amendment friendly and privacy protecting for a long time. But I have to admit, I have a concern about Muni Wi-Fi. I’m afraid that I’m going to see the headline, "E*rthLink Provided Free P*rn in the Park."
Cue the gasps of roughly 1200 people, including the CEO.
First he teased and joked about what kind of web sites I might be going to at work, and then he kicked the question over to the VP for the Muni Wi-Fi business. He indicated that he thought if anyone was doing anything they shouldn’t be doing in the park, local law enforcement ought to arrest them. And he added that Muni Wi-Fi access is Internet access like any other kind of Internet access, and should be held to the same standards — which are free and open access, unless people choose to use web filters or parental controls.
Then the CEO jumped back in and added that we have not given and will not be giving out our customers’ email or web surfing information.
Every single day since then, someone — or multiple people — have approached me at work, in the elevator, getting coffee, etc. I am now known as "P*rn in the Park Woman."
Oh yeah, and I used the asterisk because I already get enough weird google hits. I certainly don’t want to start getting them related to my imaginary scary headline, especially with my workplace in the search.
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