The City of Vancouver intends to cover the whole city with a free/low cost Wi-Fi network by 2010, in time for the next Winter Olympics. All well and good providing users install adequate privacy measures, but the municipality currently intends ‘going for gold’ by also putting the control of most of its infrastructure - gas meters, bus services, traffic signals, etc. - on the network.
For computer crime investigator Detective Mark Fenton, this is a step too far. Amongst growing fears that the Games might be a terrorist target, he said that, “with an open wireless system across the city, (if I was) a bad guy I could sit on a bus with a laptop and do global crime ... Putting those vital links on the same network, you are opening yourself up to terrorist attack ... it has happened (elsewhere).” Mark works for the computer investigative support unit of Vancouver’s financial crimes section.