Chester strays from advocating privacy to suggest that cities might develop their own community networks and that "the cost of building such networks can be very low." He points to the small town of St. Cloud, Florida, which offers free Wi-Fi for residents. But St. Cloud's costs were relatively high for a city of 30,000: "City revenue from the development is funding the $2.6 million in start-up costs, which include the first year of operation. The annual cost afterward is estimated at $400,000."

I can't see how any large city could justify the $10 to $20 million to set up and run a free Wi-Fi network even if there are ultimately cost savings involved. It's not politically popular, and offsetting the financial risk to a private company is a great alternative for towns that can't appropriately fund education and public transportation.

Where this comes to a crux, of course, is that free networks require money to support them. Advertising is one means in Google's and MetroFi's view. In both cases, however, you can still pay for advertising-free service. Whether tracking is disabled when you're paying isn't known. Opting out of using the network removes any privacy risk, but it also removes the utility of a network that has an ostensible civic purpose.

If free Wi-Fi becomes a citizen's right--at a slow speeds or for limited hours each day--it seems inappropriate to hand over control of users' privacy to a private enterprise when a municipality is, in effect, providing authorization and often some or all the city's telecom budget to provide quasi-exclusivity to the winning bidder.