Everything is insecure
According to an article (link will break on Monday) by Peter J. Howe in the Boston Globe, Logan Airport argues for its monopolistic control of wifi by citing “security concerns”:
Massport spokeswoman Danny Levy said Massport’s security concerns ”are indeed accurate.” A profusion of airline-operated WiFi signals, Levy said, could jam radio frequencies used by the State Police and Transportation Security Administration.
Yikes! On busy street corners in Cambridge, there can be dozens of open wifi hotspots. It’s a miracle police cars aren’t crashing into fire engines all over the place.
Alternatively, if it just takes a terrorist with a wifi box to bring down our emergency services, maybe our emergency services should find more secure communications methods.
Logan is engaging in Terrorism Profiteering.
(That said, I’m not entirely comfortable supporting T-Mobile’s efforts to offer ridiculously over-priced wifi connectivity at Logan. But two is better than one.)
Even if there is some possibility of wifi interfering with emergency services, we shouldn’t let “security concerns” swamp all others. For example, I sat on a plane for an hour on Wednesday because the First Class toilet was broken. This was, we were told, a “security issue.”
On Monday, when I was going through US Immigration, I asked one of the officials why we’re no longer allowed to use cell phones there. “Terrorists use cell phones to set off bombs,” she said. Because I didn’t particularly want to go through a rectal exam, I did not reply, “Um, they use cell phones to set off bombs where they’re not.”
Of course there are real security concerns. I don’t want my kids to die in a terrorist attack. But we can’t let “Would you be willing to have another 9/11 in order to preserve X?” win every argument, because how many freedoms outweigh our own kid’s lives? We have to be willing to say, “There are real risks to maintaining an open society. Absolutely. We will pay a price for maintaining our freedoms. So, yes I am willing to take the risk of another 9/11 in order to preserve American freedom.” And then we can have a reasonable argument about the trade-offs.
The “Would you be willing to have another 9/11” argument plus the “The innocent have nothing to fear” argument together take us straight into a police state. Worse, we go willingly.
Resist them. [Tags: security terrorism wifi 9/11]
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Many more willingly than others. As my wife is fond of saying, “don’t give up any part of your freedom without a fight.”
Since the T-mobile service costs about what a lobster sandwich at the Logan (il)Legal Seafood rip-off counter costs, I can’t get too exercised about paying. In the United terminals at O’Hare there is no wireless at all (although there are a couple of monopolist’s kiosks that charge plenty if they work but always seem to be broken and disabled.
I agree with you that the whole “war on this and that” nonsense is used to camouflage a lot of ineptitude and profiteering. If Logan was straight-forward enough to say that they have granted T-mobile a site license because they expect to profit from it, perhaps applying the profits to clean restrooms and comfortable seating, who could argue? Logan is indeed engaged in terrorism profiteering because of their perceived need to cover the truth that they’d like to make a buck on the wifi service. I wonder why they think they need to lie about that?
I meant to say the cost of the wifi is about HALF the cost of the lahbstah…
The … 9/11 argument plus the …nothing to fear argument together take us straight into a police state.
I’ve got news for you: You’re soaking in it.
Not yet, Mark, though I agree it looks like only a matter of time the way some things are going. When the military police burst through your door and haul you away for posting that link …
i grew up in a police state – brasil of the 70s and 80s. i still have a problem when near folks in military or police uniforms.
my father lived in nazi berlin until 1939, and, as an adult, studied the era quite closely. he has been saying that he can see parallels between g-dubya’s gov’t and hitler’s gov’t and propaganda.
i was just back in the states a few weeks ago and am appalled at the responses i get when i complain about the excessive ‘security’ measures perpetrated by all levels of goverment. i can list them, but you probably already know them all.
sigh. it’ll be a generation before we recover. i don’t know if i want to come back to the u.s.
as a parting thought, i have a little quote for you guys:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller