On Monday morning NPR had a piece on Gavin Newsom’s bid to get city wide wireless for San Francisco. As part of this they interviewed some guy from the Berkeley Wireless Research Center. This was his comment:

“Wireless is convenient as well as secure. To snoop a wireless signal you need to be right next to the person, like within 100 feet. With a wired connection you can have your connection snooped from somewhere like Russia.”

Quoi? [1] What are they studying over there at this research center? I’m terrified of what kind of mental model this guy is working with. When I hear “experts” talk about topics I understand it always freaks me out because I realize how much I accept experts opinions on topics I don’t understand. Not to mention I’m terrified of those Russian hackers.

[1] That’s French for “What the @#$!@# are you talking about?”