Now that FON has accepted a large pile of money from Google and wants to seriously expand their membership, the current privacy policy should start addressing the questions I asked a couple of months ago. To repeat some of those:
Can I join under a random name and address as long as no money is involved?
Who exactly gets to see the FON databases? Under what circumstances will FON give access to third parties, and what third parties? The CIA? Spanish police or judicial authorities? Private companies interested in the database?
Who is logging Internet access? Individual Foneros at their access point or the mothership in Spain? Is FON complying with the still existing requirement in the telecommunications privacy directive to erase or anonymize all traffic data upon end of connection (the Surveillance Directive is not yet law)? If the Surveillance Directive is implemented in Spain, who keeps the traffic data, and how?
Glenn Fleishman notes that there is nothing new from a technical point of view in FONs concept:
Lest Fon be seen as entirely new and unique exclusive of the three firms mentioned before that tried this model using cheap computers and software instead of commodity gateways and firmware—Joltage, SOHONetworks, and Sputnik—remember that LessNetworks and Radiuz have been offering community authentication for a while.
I agree. Sharing Wifi hotspot access seems to be a rather obvious idea. So the success or failure of FON will depend largely on its marketing, and the public perception of the FON brand.
FON has a great chance to convince European users that their particular implementation of this idea should be accepted, if they take a clear position against Internet surveillance. Branding FON as the technological answer to the Surveillance Directive would give a strong boost to the campaign.
If on the other hand Mr. Varsafsky wants to build surveillance chips into the "condoms" he is talking about on his blog, he will not only fail to take advantage of the situation, but on top of that meet with strong resistance from everybody active in the fight to preserve the human right to private telecommunications.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at February 7, 2006 01:38 PM