City Hall: WiFi filtering to improve, continue

Published Apr 27 2007, 07:21 PM by Adam Reilly

Earlier this week, I talked with Boston CIO Bill Oates about filtering problems on the city's nascent WiFi network.

"I had some discussions with the folks at Galaxy Internet, who provide internet service for the free WiFi spot," Oates told me. "I think they've gone into the filter and done some fine-tuning. I think their view is, the filter's not perfect, but they hope it can improve a little bit."

Oates also noted that last weekend's complaints represented the first bit of negative feedback City Hall had received about the Faneuil Hall-area hotspot.

Of course, to my mind, the big question was/is why the city needs to use any kind of filter whatsoever. Here's Oates' explanation:

"Because it's free, because it's in a public area, because it's a touristy, family area, and because we don't ask people to register...there was a feeling that there should just be some kind of baseline filter to [bar] offensive matter. That a kind of school-library type standard of filter would be appropriate for a site like this. And that's what Galaxy decided to do."

Anyone out there used the hotspot recently? If so, I'd love to hear whether Galaxy's tweaks have been effective.

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2 Comments

don warner saklad said:

http://sethf.com/infothought/blog

April 28, 2007 8:51 AM
Brad Deltan said:

Wow. I guess we've got another Howie-Carr-Hack in charge of Boston's wifi...because clearly this guy didn't get his job by knowing what the internet is about. This isn't a public library, this is the first step in the City of Boston becoming the primary internet service provider for all the residents in the city. Oates should ask himself how he would respond if Verizon started censoring websites left and right on their wifi/EDGE cellphone network? Or if Comcast did it on their home cablemodem network? Exactly, the response would be righteous indignation and probably some lawsuits, too. Boston's WiFi is no different. REMOVE THE FILTERS ENTIRELY YOU DOPES!

April 30, 2007 3:26 PM