[TriLUG] On the subject of Google WiFi

[Matt Flyer via TriLUG]

On Thu, 2016-08-25 at 15:17 -0400, Brian via TriLUG wrote:
>   Sensationalism.  Nothing to do with 802.11a/b/g/n and everything to
> do 
> with high-frequency radio waves.  Wi-fi is but one source of radio
> waves 
> in the unregulated 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.  I strongly doubt that
> any 
> off-the-shelf wi-fi equipment can be used to do RF imaging.  (Though 
> with the advance of things like SDR, I'm prepared to be wrong)

Still, it makes you wonder what the equipment they put up will be
capable of.  I would expect that a wide area wifi will operate on a
different spectrum than 802.11a/b/g/n.  We also know that certain govt
agencies, who have worked in collusion with networking companies would
LOVE to have this capability in place, 4th amendment be damned.  Some
dark money being funneled into the project would certainly be
attractive to a company in terms of investment risk offset.

I am currently studying to get my HAM radio license and one of the
statements I read is that simply putting up an antenna is often times
enough to cause a neighbor to believe that they are receiving
interference from your operation.  (The evil side of me thinks it would
be funny to place a bunch of antennas, even dummy ones, pointed at the
neighbor's house) just to see what sort of reaction you get.  Imagine
the psychological effect of having Google antennas up all over the
place.        

WRT John's comment about M$, I have to wonder what the Xbox one is
constantly doing with the massive amount of network traffic it
generates.....