Network must protect privacy

August 22, 2006 by Lauren Gelman and Nicole Ozer, San Jose Mercury News

We strongly support the growth of wireless access and look forward to a time when all of Silicon Valley will be able to utilize the wealth of information available on the Internet. However, none of us should be forced to pay for it with our privacy and free-speech rights. Wireless Silicon Valley must ensure that any system it selects adequately protects these rights.

What do privacy and free speech have to do with municipal wireless? Many companies follow a business model that sells targeted advertising by tracking who you are, where you are and what you're looking at on the Internet -- a plan that ought to make anybody nervous.

That means if you're looking for private health or financial information, taking part in online political activism or searching for a new job, the municipal wireless provider will know. And there's no guarantee your private information will stay with them.

From the revelations that AT&T allegedly disclosed millions of Americans' call records to the NSA, to last week's news that AOL released the search histories of 658,000 customers onto the Internet, there is little reason to trust businesses to keep our information private. While there are times when collecting information is appropriate for legitimate law enforcement reasons, strong privacy and free-speech safeguards are necessary to ensure that any private information that is collected remains properly protected.

Business models that lack adequate protections for privacy and free speech also undermine the very goal of municipal wireless -- to provide equal access to technology and information. Intrusive wireless programs threaten to create a new digital divide: one in which wealthier people who can afford to choose among multiple Internet providers get to keep their privacy and free-speech rights, while those with can't afford it are forced to use the municipal service and pay for access by selling their fundamental rights.

Such inequity is unacceptable in California, a state whose constitution guarantees all people an inalienable right to privacy. It is a right that cannot be bought, sold or bargained away.

Municipal wireless is meant to benefit the public, not businesses' pockets. As Wireless Silicon Valley considers final proposals, protecting our privacy and free speech must be one of its highest priorities.

LAUREN GELMAN is associate director of the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society. NICOLE OZER is technology and civil liberties policy director at the ACLU of Northern California. They wrote this article for the Mercury News