Write about ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘ on your blog and aspoke.com will give you a free laptop skin. Would normally cost EUR 19.95, so it’s a pretty good deal.
DRI brings legal action over mass surveillance
Digital Rights Ireland ยป DRI brings legal action over mass surveillance
Why does Data Retention (or mass surveillance or whatever you like to call it) matter so much?
One word:
Dignity.
Upmarket Dublin survives postcode shake-up – Sunday Times – Times Online
There is an article in today’s Sunday Times about postcodes. It states that the government is going to retain the Dublin postal zones and use a combination of letters and numbers.
If this is the case, the government has been very badly advised or is not acting on its advice.
A fonera is born
Martin Varsavsky has pictures of the FON production line. The first fonera routers should be available on the European market within weeks.
Tell 5 people about data retention and the Digital Rights Ireland challenge
Read Bernard Tyers’ challenge. Tell five people about our challenge against data retention. If you can afford to, please make a donation.
Remember, this isn’t just an Irish issue. This directly affects everyone in Europe and there will be knock-on consequences for the rest of the world too if mass surveillance is allowed to stand.
This is an expensive campaign for us to run. Please help. Every cent will be well-used.
aspoke.com relaunch
aspoke.com has relaunched its laptop skins website. We have some new skins and we are always open to suggestions. You can get a custom skin too.
Special thanks to my web design team!
Barr Tribunal on-line
The Barr Tribunal report into the shooting a man by Irish police in Co. Longford was issued in PDF format yesterday. It’s a sad story about a mentally ill man who was shot soon after he emerged from his besieged house carrying a shotgun. Obviously, no one should ever walk towards a police cordon carrying a loaded shotgun, but there was no need for this man to die. According to the report, the man had bad relations with police after he was falsely accused of burning a mascot goat without any evidence, but the negotiator who dealt with him during the siege was not aware of these issues. There were many other simple mistakes made, and altogether they contributed to the incident’s unfortunate end.
I’ve made a copy of the 700-page report available (28 Mbyte PDF), as it is obviously of major public interest (if only because it cost EUR 18m to write) and doesn’t seem to be available anywhere else on the Internet.
Wi-fi for Dublin – 3 euros a day or for Free
Young Simon McGarr asks about our proposal for Wi-fi for Dublin. He wants to know how much it would cost a non-fonero to access the network. The answer is easy. It would cost 3 euros for 24 hours, a lot cheaper than using a mobile, but expensive enough to encourage you to get broadband and become a Linus yourself, in which case you would get access for free.
Guerilla wi-fi with FON
Having a coffee? Laptop in the bag? Want to check your email? Then you realise there’s wi-fi in the hotel, but it’s going to cost you 6 euros to check your messages. If you go to the Morrison Hotel in Dublin (on the North Quays, at the Millennium Bridge, you won’t have that problem, because there’s a convenient FON point, set up by Bernard Tyers.
If you have an office or live beside a cafe, hotel train station or bus stop, drop me an email and we’ll set you up with a FON social router. You can make money (50 percent royalty) from every day pass that is sold through your access point.
Wi-fi for Dublin
UPI and the Sunday Business Post report on plans for a municipal wi-fi network in Dublin.
I think this is a brilliant idea. We should blanket Dublin with cheap wi-fi, the same as has been done in Tallinn in Estonia. The only problem is that the project as proposed is totally unrealistic. There is no way that the whole of Dublin, a city of at least 100 square kilometres, can be covered with low-pwer radio service for 10 million euros, the figure proposed. All that could be realistically covered would be some of the major streets in the very centre. There would also be a lot of maintenance costs.
I would suggest a different way of doing this: use FON hotspots. Start by installing FON hotspots (which FON would supply for 5 euros, maybe cheaper. Begin by installing these hotspots inside and around the windows of all the major municipal and school buildings. This would give the system the critical mass it needs. By partnering with business owners, the rest of the system would be quickly covered. The city could also make some revenue off the system by selling day passes.
A system like this could be put in place with an investment by the city council of as low as 100,000 euros, and with relatively low running costs. That wouldn’t cover the whole city of course. But the private sector would provide for the rest.
Read what Martin Varsavsky has said on the subject.