Normally I am not all that paranoid of a person, but this city-wide wireless internet “business” (hah. libertarian humor.) is really getting to me.

You all have heard about cities providing wireless internet access recently I’m sure; many major ones have announced such plans.Do a search for “city wireless” on google news. It’s massive.. all over the place. So what’s the conspiracy?

Government has had a really hard time controlling the internet in this country. It’s currently sales tax-free, there’s little they can do to censor it because it’s so massive and world-wide, so many things on and related to the internet are unregulated (standards, programming, webdesign, browsers, software.. hell we don’t really think about it as ever being provided by the government, but it’s likely they would like to try), they have an incredibly difficult time tracking people and invading their privacy because of their lack of understanding of technology and ability to keep up with it and all the new encryption stuff that comes along all the time.. and it’s just generally out of their control.

Now.. it seems absurd since it’s supposedly a bunch of municipalities wanting to offer wireless.. but isn’t it strange that it all happens at once? Isn’t it strange that it’s not just big cities doing it, but medium sized ones as well? Isn’t it interesting how many of the big cities are so inundated with hotspots that it’s meaningless for the city to offer wireless in many of the places that it does?

They can’t control the internet itself.. so why not control access to it? They have easy access to just about every other form of communication.. why not add an even bigger one to their list?