Marking, locating, and designing for public and private wireless Internet spaces

This paper discusses ways of understanding wireless internet signals as either public or private. Considering the Service Set Identifier (SSID) tags that mark wireless networks as potential indicators of either public or private space, the paper reports on empirical findings in two Canadian cities that illuminate the ways that these identifiers are used in practice. These findings are used to propose alternate designs and policies that, instead of defining wireless signals by default as private property, create simple and understandable means by which signals might be shared or communities of use created.