The initial idea behind LinkNYC sounded like a great deal for the city of new york. We'd get high speed wi-fi on every corner and it would be financed by video ads on the LinkNYC kiosks. The Kiosks would also charge USB devices and provide emergency calls.

The advertising is expected to make between $500 million and a billion dollars over the next 12 years. But, advertising isn't the only way that LinkNYC can generate revenue. The surveillance data from cameras and from the browsing habits of anyone using the public wifi, may be worth much more than the advertising.

But it isn't just advertisers that want that kind of information. Questions about how linkNYC may co-operate with the police and other forms of state surveillance have not be given clear answers.

I think it's obvious that the NYPD should need a warrant to request footage and that any footage handed over to the police should be a mater of public recored.

That said I think linkNYC can provide important public services. Think of the utility of having another way to get information out to all new yorkers during an emergency. Imagine of the terminals functioned more like community bulletin boards with information about musicals at your local high school and activities at your local community gardens.

It should't be the case that the price of free wifi is having our movements tracked by and organization with no oversight.

Issues of surveillance mater to people of all political backgrounds. This is because even conservatives have to recognize the tremendous power that concentrations of data create. Recently, the far right extrememest conservatives at pragerU attacked Google for putting a up a banner on election day in the US reminding people to vote. Well aware that encouraging people to vote hurts the chances of conservative candidates they correctly identified googles choice to put up such a banner on their search page as a political one. The went as far as to suggest that google's database be made into a public utility! Hardly a conservative position at all. But, they are very scared by the concentration of power among tech companies.

And perhaps now is a good time to mention that LinkNYC is under the umbrella of the holding company Alphabet... which is also a holding company for google.

There have been some perfunctory promises about google's databases staying separated from LinkNYC, but ultimately it's a part of the same trend of concentration --again with no oversight.

Extreme conservatives think that encouraging people to vote is exerting improper political influence. Personally I suspect it has more to do with public relations. when large companies spend money on political campaigns and action groups their primary concern is to remain free of regulation and oversight while maintaining control over the data they collect and never ever sharing that control in any meaningful way with anyone else especially the public. It doesn't matter which party.

And in NYC we have a physical manifestation of that future. But it's not just new york. When I was in Ontario I saw similar projects in development. When something catches on in nyc it has a habit of spreading to other major cities so it could be coming to your home town in the near future.

The city that never sleeps is now the city that never blinks. But it doesn't have to be this way. We need a new operating system for LinkNYC one that centers public input. And lets forget about monetizing all of that data about new yorkers. The advertisements are more than enough.



Oversight, Subveilece, Transparency.