Has anyone else been following the saga of Seattle trying to set up a mesh network? It started with this story, with the deck line "A New Apparatus Capable of Spying on You Has Been Installed Throughout Downtown Seattle. Very Few Citizens Know What It Is, and Officials Don’t Want to Talk About It."
It goes on to suggest that the city plans to track people's phones using a mesh network. Reading the story it just seems like the city doesn't really know what it's doing. It wanted a mesh network for emergency communications, but didn't anticipate all the questions.
Then headlines like this "What Are The Off-White Boxes That Are Going Up On Utility Poles All Over Seattle?" started and people seem to be freaking out about it. Now the city says it's turning off the network until the city can discuss it more and draft some policies.
Do you think the public has legitimate concerns about this or is this a basic misunderstanding of the technology that could have been avoided with an information campaign by the city?