"Consider for a moment the possibilities of Wi-Fi-fitted lampposts, each with its own IP address, monitoring the numbers of Facebook posts, tweets, or credit ca

"Consider for a moment the possibilities of Wi-Fi-fitted lampposts, each with its own IP address, monitoring the numbers of Facebook posts, tweets, or credit card swipes as you stroll by with your smartphone (which identifies where you are from) and withdraw cash, buy shoes, drink a soda, and visit a museum." Can the journalist explain us how a lamppost can do that? Even assuming that the tourist is connected to the free municipal WiFi -most of them don't-, how can the council track https traffic with Facebook, or Youtube? It is not only technically "challenging" but also illegal under Spanish Law. In my opinion, this is a long and sensationalist article to explain that Barcelona signed a big contract to build municipal network that covers all the city using Wifi and FO and that, thanks to this network, now it is really cheap and easy to deploy sensors around the city that allow Big Data applications. Buy the way, Catalonia has the biggest Open Wifi network in the world, with more than 30.000 nodes: http://guifi.net/node/17714/view/map http://guifi.net/node/17714/view/map Many users of this network where pushing the councils of their towns to collaborate in the project installing public nodes in order to expand the network. Also, a lot of research has been done about protocols to manage big open networks. The municipal network in Barcelona is not connected to Guifi.net, but I wonder if Guifi.net had somehow influenced the council of Barcelona to take this decision. I think it is also interesting to note the hate that they thrown at the newly elected Mayor at the end of the article. But in any case, I guess that it is always good news for the citizens of a city if Fortune.com don't like their Mayor.