A cheer goes up in the Grand Ballroom of the New Yorker Hotel, as the conference chair announces we think we have the Wi-Fi working.

As a matter of fact, a dozen people scattered around the room have figured that out already. They’re discreetly surfing the Internet, checking e-mail and using Instant Messenger from their seats as they pretend to listen to the speaker.

Welcome to the convention of the future, where being on the stage doesn’t guarantee you’ll have the hearts, minds or even attention of the audience.

This particular conference is about computers, freedom and privacy – so it is a bit of a New York City geek crowd. It was just a matter of time before we were all sneaking glances at our laptops and wireless PDAs during meetings. Public access hotspots, the new Intel Centrino chip and dirt-cheap home networking devices will just accelerate the trend.

Wireless networking is the best and the worst idea to hit the computer industry in years. On the plus side, it promises a ubiquitous high-speed Internet connection and the freedom to re-arrange your office furniture at will. It’s inexpensive and easy to set up.

But the dark underbelly of wireless technology features unreliable connections, laughably poor security and shady war drivers looking to give your system a rectal exam from outside the building.

Let’s think about the nice things first. The hotspots are coming! Vancouver-based FatPort Corporation has been a Canadian pioneer in bringing wireless access to coffee shops in the Vancouver area. They’re now operating four Calgary locations, two in the downtown core, (Timothys in Bankers Hall and Second Cup on 5th Street,) as well as the Holiday Inn downtown and the Adventure Zone entertainment complex on Macleod Trail.

You sign up and buy time, from $5/hour for the casual user up to $35/month for unlimited access. For $159.95 they’ll give you three months’ use, plus throw in a wireless card for your laptop.

Of course, the Big Telecom Guys wanna play too, so Bell is offering AccessZone connectivity, free until we hear otherwise, at places such as the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge in the Calgary Airport. There are even public-spirited individuals who open their home Wi-Fi networks to the world, and advertise the fact on www.airweb.ca. Please be nice to these people and don’t abuse their connections or try to hack into them. They’re doing us all a favour.

Which brings us to the unsavory side of wireless.

Wardriving is simply moving around looking for wireless networks and noting what level of security, if any, they are running.

Warchalking is rubbing it in by leaving marks on the sidewalk or building noting what you have discovered. This saves other wardrivers the two minutes of work needed to find the connection. There’s a freely available program called NetStumbler that would allow even a child to do this, assuming the child had a couple of bucks to buy a Pringles potato chip can for an antenna.

Much was made recently about the fact that two Albertans named Jason Kaczor and Brad Haines were apparently mentioned in a CSIS report that described war driving as a potential threat to national security. Of course, Mr. Kaczor habitually drives reporters around demonstrating how insecure networks are, so it’s no surprise that his name might be noted by the folks in Ottawa. He likens his hobby to bird-watching, and maybe it is.

I can assure you that it still gets the goat of companies to think that someone’s cruising around trying their electronic doorknobs even if they never intend to walk in. And, of course, an unethical person might parlay wireless access into theft of confidential information, or maybe just use your Internet connection to send out six trillion pieces of enlarge-your-organ spam that would all point back to you.

Wardrivers do make an excellent point, which is that the people who designed WEP, the so-called security system for 802.11b Wi-Fi systems, must have been smoking something very strange. It’s easy to knock over, and if you want the details of how and why, there’s a link below that explains all.

In fairness, there’s a new standard called WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) that will be better than what we have now. It uses a stronger key system and assigns a unique key to each authorized user. These can be changed periodically to provide even more security. It should become a standard in early 2004, probably as 802.11i.

In the meantime, if you’re running Windows XP you can download a security update from Microsoft (see Web watch, below) to start using WPA.

Alberta has been in the vanguard of both the development and deployment of wireless technologies. Companies such as NovAtel, Wi-LAN and the wireless division of Nortel helped to build a critical mass of talented wireless design engineers and other professionals. Mixed together with great ideas coming from researchers at the University of Calgary and TRLabs, Alberta’s claim to being the wireless capital of Canada starts to make some sense. Even after the dot-com meltdown, many of these companies are hanging in there because their technologies make good business sense.

So, wireless is great fun, but it’s risky business. If you’re sending something that you wouldn’t want your neighbours, or your competitors, or the government to see, you might use encryption such as the lovable, and free-for-non- commercial-use, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP.) Yes, this adds work, but you’ll sleep better at night.

And if you see a shady character parked in your parking lot with a laptop and a Pringles potato chip can, let the air out of his tires. If he’s really sucking data from your system, or using it to send out millions of pieces of spam, he probably won’t even notice.

Web watch:

* Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference:
www.cfp.org
*Listing of Canadian Wireless Hotspots:
www.airweb.ca
* Hotspot vendors active in Alberta:
www.fatport.com
www.wayport.com
www.bell.ca/accesszone
* How to break WEP:
www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/isaac/wep-faq.html
www.netstumbler.com
* PGP (free for non-commercial personal use):
www.pgp.com
* Microsoft download for WPA security:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=815485

(Tom Keenan is the dean of Continuing Education at the University of Calgary)