The new structures are operated as a public-private partnership by consortium CityBridge, and are a revamp of the old 10-foot kiosks the firm set up under former Mayor Bill de Blasio starting in 2015 with free Wi-Fi, USB charging ports, a tablet, a 911 button, and calling capabilities.
The new structures are operated as a public-private partnership by consortium CityBridge, and are a revamp of the old 10-foot kiosks the firm set up under former Mayor Bill de Blasio starting in 2015 with free Wi-Fi, USB charging ports, a tablet, a 911 button, and calling capabilities.
The old ones were supposed to be funded by digital ad displays on the side and the city originally hoped to build 10,000 of them, but the screens did not bring in the promised revenue, which brought the program to a halt with some 1,800 units built largely in Manhattan.
🚨Apprehended🚨for CRIMINAL MISCHIEF that occurred within the confines of Midtown South and Midtown North Precincts. #midtown #manhattan @NYPDMTS @NYPDMTN Has been Apprehended thanks to the hard work of our #nypd #nypddetective #media and concerned #newyorker like you! pic.twitter.com/hKVXFW25RF
— NYPD Crime Stoppers (@NYPDTips) April 24, 2019
Spotted outside of a LinkNYC in Water St. in Manhattan. Public infrastructure should not be surveillance based. 💯 #RethinkLink + @ZephyrTeachout. pic.twitter.com/x5WUfSRzdA
— Jeremy Rosenberg 🏳️🌈🦄 (@JeremyR1992) May 6, 2019
#rethinklink street campaign. I wrote about LinkNYC in #PixelsAndPlace. The kiosks are an almost-good idea, offering open WiFi and digital services, but the surveillance implications of the built-in cameras – and the lack of clarity about what happens to the data – are troubling. pic.twitter.com/YCT4tTeADh
— Kate O'Neill (@kateo) May 3, 2019
Here’s a still photo of the suspect responsible for damaging several @LinkNYC kiosks throughout #Manhattan —He’s #WANTED for #CriminalMischief. DM @NYPDTips with any information or ☎️ (212) 477-7447. pic.twitter.com/3eiRGkenhH
— NYPD 9th Precinct (@NYPD9Pct) April 24, 2019
Two years after the deployment of prototypical kiosks in Manhattan, Intersection ... is ready to declare them a success. The roughly 1,600 Links recently hit three milestones: 1 billion sessions, 5 million users, and 500,000 phone calls a month.
“We have an opportunity to communicate with people as they navigate their day,” Intersection senior consumer marketing manager Amanda Giddon told VentureBeat in a phone interview. “My mandate is to help make Link a part of the community through content and content strategy — really, anything that [makes] New Yorkers feel like tourists in their own city [or] even help tourists feel like New Yorkers through useful, actionable information.”
Since plans for LinkNYC were first unveiled, journalists, residents, and civil liberties experts have raised concerns that the internet kiosks might be storing sensitive data about its users and possibly tracking their movements. For the last two years, the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a small but vocal group of activists — including ReThink LinkNYC, a grassroots anti-surveillance group, and the anonymous Stop LinkNYC coalition — have highlighted the kiosk’s potential to track locations, collect personal information, and fuel mass surveillance.
Now an undergraduate researcher has discovered indications in LinkNYC code — accidentally made public on the internet — that LinkNYC may be actively planning to track users’ locations.
Link is poised to be far more than an advertising and Wi-Fi network, however. Intersection, the company that manages the Link projects in London and New York, is considering upgrading them to support everything from augmented reality to autonomous vehicles. “Phase One was about making sure we’re offering robust services to people,” says Intersection’s chief innovation officer, Colin O’Donnell. “Now we’re figuring out how we can leverage all the different data sets we have access to and make [this technology] as dynamic and responsive as it can be.”
Intersection’s ambitions bear attention because it is one of the few private firms that large cities have partnered with on high-profile public-information projects—and its digital technology is likely to spread to other major U.S. cities, such as Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle, where it holds multiyear municipal and transit advertising contracts.
