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I've mentioned this on HN before, but I find condemnation of the NSA situation followed by calls for municipal broadband similarly baffling.
by ultrarunner 6y ago
I've mentioned this on HN before, but I find condemnation of the NSA situation followed by calls for municipal broadband similarly baffling.
- dboreham 6y agoNo municipality has the competence to tap your connection.
- mindslight 6y agoI'd be more pragmatically worried about XfiniWarner than a municipal broadband provider. The former operates at scale and can escape accountability by fallaciously invoking private property, whereas the latter has at least some democratic oversight at the town level. Although really all communications companies are effectively organs of the state, regardless of their governing charter.
- lmm 6y agoMunicipal agencies are subject to a lot of safeguards e.g. FOIA that private companies are not - market competition is supposed to hold them accountable instead, but for natural monopolies like internet service the competition doesn't actually exist.
- smolder 6y agoIf we were talking about some federal, nationalized internet infrastructure, I'd agree. Municipal broadband isn't that. The NSA operates at a much different scale than a municipal broadband provider, which is small and basically transparent. Local broadband providers have no capability to undermine cryptographic standards, use libraries of 0days to take over your PC, or anything like that. NSA et al aren't going to grant them that capability either. I'd at least like the option of an ISP that is under indirect voter control, to complement the usual 900lb gorillas that line their pockets at everyone's expense and are basically unaccountable.