March 7th, 2008
Over WiFi at DIA, free speech is DOA
SI model Jessica Gomes, 
if you must know.
Our own Maggie Reardon expands on a Denver Post story that notes the Denver International Airport has chosen to block Wi-Fi access to such sites as boingboing.net, the website of Vanity Fair magazine, and even the web link to Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue.
Maggie notes that the airport’s spokesman Chuck Cannon told the Associated Press on Wednesday that he would rather “weather infrequent complaints about access than handle angry parents whose children might see pornography.”
Well, excuse me. Aren’t magazines with far more “pornographic” sold at DIA newsstands? And how many children would be Web surfing via WiFi at any airport?
Well, I suppose that if you and a couple of your kids are at the gate, waiting on a plane, and a guy sits next to your brood and directs his Wi-Fi enabled notebook to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue landing page, well, would your kid is on the road to ruin.
One more note of hypocrisy. Some of the same parents who presumably would complain about access to the SI swimsuit issue over airport WiFi might be proud of their son, nephew, sister, husband, etc., for fighting for “our freedoms” in Iraq.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
