The Roger Ebert Overlooked Film Festival showcased some of the most vivid movies I’d seen. They challenged not only cinema, but also the way we consider our lives. To the greatest extent, the film Primer, thrust the concept that when it comes to technology, no matter how careful we plan, or to what great extents we truly believe we can control and trust ourselves, we ultimately will have consequences when we deal with technology larger than ourselves.

A month ago, the City of Chicago made an announcement that they were looking into developing a free citywide wireless network – well, obviously, taxes would pay for it. This is an exciting piece of news for wi-fi fans and was initially something that I supported.

Already, other cities have free wi-fi networks available and Chicago is long overdue. The helpfulness of a free wi-fi network cannot be ignored. You could look up public transportation routes and schedules, find a restaurant, check e-mail, etc. if you have your laptop or PDA with you. Chicagoans wouldn’t have to worry about paying for Internet access anymore as long as they lived within range of an access point.

But after Primer, I began to think about the implications of a government operated wi-fi network. While it seems to make sense that the government should make available the Internet, our greatest communication tool, to all citizens, perhaps this idea needs to be reconsidered and even trashed.

First, the city would have to contract out the project to a private enterprise to install and maintain the network. But I have to wonder just how secure the network would be. Potentially thousands, if not millions, of users would be typing usernames and passwords for e-mail, eBay and e-commerce Web sites. Can the city guarantee the safety of the users’ data over their network on such a massive network that’s designed to be easy to access?

It isn’t difficult to imagine an attacker to compromise another user on the wi-fi network. Using simple – and free – tools, anyone with a wireless card could watch traffic across the network without actually connecting to the network. An attacker could trace the user’s access and movement from access point to access point and know a general area of where he was, what Web sites he went to and at what time he went to them. Identity theft isn’t a stretch of the imagination, and is a potential many will want to exploit.

Assuming that the contractor could potentially secure every user’s data, then there’s the potential still for the user’s data to be further exploited. All the traffic on the network is very useful to those interested in statistics. The statistics of who went to what Web site at what time during the day from what access point is valuable information to lots of people. And considering that it could even be maintained on an individual level, per user, is a scary thought. While the contractor could keep attackers from exploiting the data, what measures will be put into place to prevent them from selling these statistics?

Further, what is to keep the government from monitoring user data for “illegal” usage? To find illegal use, the government, on their own network, would have to watch all the data usage. And if there’s free Internet, private enterprises will have to start charging less for their service and could be potentially run out of business. And that would make government Internet the only game in town.

Maybe I’m the paranoid humanoid, but the idea of a government-controlled Internet access frightens me. It’d be the beginning of the fall from free and unrestricted flow of information to an era of state controlled communications. A wi-fi wonderland this isn’t.