4A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2005
Liberty and cheap Internet for all
Group seeks wireless access throughout city
BY TRAVIS ROBINETT
trobinett@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
Joshua Bicket/KANSAN Lawrence Freenet, a non-profit organization, wants to install wireless "access points" throughout the city, which users can purchase for a one-time fee of $150. The service has been available around the 28th Street and Kasold Drive area since Aug. 1.
The Lawrence City Commission gave Lawrence Freenet permission last week to mount wireless internet transmission equipment on city property, without paying the normally required fee of $1,000 to $1,500 a month.
Joshua Bickel/KANSAN
Joshua Montgomery, president of Lawrence Freenet, said the goal of the project was to provide broadband Internet to all of Lawrence by January 2006 regardless of location or income and was started to bridge the digital divide.
Lawrence Freenet, a nonprofit organization, has already provided limited service immediately around the area of 28th Street and Kasold Drive since Aug.1.
Montgomery said the service has been very straight forward, there has been positive feedback from Lawrence Freenet users and it will continue to expand the service.
"Lawrence freenet is very interested in working with KU," Montgomery said. "We would love to have access to roof tone
on campus, but haven't been able to penetrate the bureaucracy."
According to www.lawrence freenet.org, bandwidth is purchased by Lawrence Freenet while each user purchases an access point. The access point is a one-time fee of $150. Along with internet access, Lawrence Freenet plans to provide donated computers to citizens who cannot afford them.
Montgomery said students would benefit the most from the service.
service.
"If they get rid of their cable or DSL bill, they would have more money to spend on books, pizza or beer," he said.
Mayor Boog Highberger said he thought the project would be good for the city in general.
good for the city in which we live.
"I think some of our kids will get a better education, other people will notice that we are a technological progressive community and our attraction efforts will improve," he said.
Patrick Knorr, general manager of Sunflower Broadband, said he was not concerned with Lawrence Freenet's service affecting Sunflower Broadband's sales because Lawrence Freenet has a different business focus.
"Wireline service is less prone to interference and technical problems than wireless service," Knorr said. "It isn't concerning as long as we stay focused."
Highberger said that he did
not think for-profit providers would be affected by Lawrence Freenet.
"They can't offer the same kind of technical support and they are not offering their service to businesses," he said.
Montgomery said Lawrence Freenet wouldn't provide its service to businesses because it wouldn't have the infrastructure to support them and there would
be no billing system in place.
Knorr said he was worried about the City Commission's decision to waive the fee to mount on city property.
"As long as they are providing free access, it's one thing," he said. "If their focus changes to paid access, it results in competition, and that is concerning."
eas involving everything from technical service to business needs. Along with volunteers, the service also needs donations, including 400 square feet of office space around town.
Montgomery said Lawrence Freenet would like to raise an additional $5,000 to $10,000 to speed up the roll out.
Montgomery said Lawrence Freenet needs volunteers in ar-
Edited by Ty Beaver
Transit
CONTINUED ON PAGE 4A
"We probably could, but if we did, it'd be stupid," Mulinazzi said. "It looks good to me."
"We probably could, but if we did, it'd be stupid." Tom Mulinazzi Parking commission chairman
Anton Bengston, Salina junior and student member of the task force, said he had worked with the group to ensure that students wouldn't lose authority over their bus sys-
Wheels, and said he thought the task force had done a good job.
KU on Wheels is managed by the Student Senate Transportation Board and also has a student coordinator who manages day-to-day operations of KU on Wheels.
day operates. Lindy Eakin, vice provost of administration and finance, said the University should work to solve problems of campus transit before dealing with the possibility of merging with the city's bus system.
bus system.
With the future addition of parking on West Campus, Eakin said transit between there and main campus would become a larger issue. Eakin said it would make sense to use city buses for routes that haven't attracted many students to make the system more efficient.
— Edited by Theresa Montaño
BUSINESS
Union continues negotiations with Boeing
BY TIM KLASS
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEATTLE — Days before a contract between Boeing Co. and the Machinists union is to expire, labor leaders said the two sides remain far apart and warned of a possible strike.
warned of a position Seattle-based Machinists Lodge 751 on Monday countered the aerospace company's latest contract offer with their own proposal, but the union declined to provide details.
The latest Boeing proposal, submitted late Sunday, would boost cash bonuses by at least $1,500, but Machinists union leaders representing 18,400 production workers say it missed the point — pensions.
"The important thing is that we're still negotiating. We're still discussing the issues." Boeing spokesman Charles Bickers said.
Bickers had characterized those changes, which carry an immediate price tag of at least $27.2 million, as "an important improvement, a substantial improvement."
Machinists spokeswoman Connie Kelliher said the two sides remained "far apart" and dismissed the company's three-year offer as a "minimal" advance.
"The company's latest offer showed no substantial improvements on our top three issues, which are pensions, health care and job security." Kellier said.
She said Boeing's latest offer made no changes in job security or pension provisions. Boeing has offered to boost pension contributions by less than the amount they were raised in the last contract. That agreement was reached in the year following the 2001 terrorist attacks, when the company was reeling from the worldwide economic and airline slump.
Workers represented in the talks now receive an average of $59,000 a year. No general pay increase has been offered, but Boeing estimates that cost-of-living provisions would boost base wages by about 1 percent in each year of the contract.
The three-year contract with Boeing's biggest union, which represents mostly hourly workers who assemble passenger and cargo jets and build components for those aircraft in the Seattle area, Wichita and Gresham, Ore, expires Friday. Under
"The important thing is that we're still negotiating. We're still discussing the issues."
Charles Bickers Boeing spokesman
a negotiating timetable cited by both sides. Boeing's final offer is due Tuesday.
The statement said the second bonus amounted to a "jump start" on an earlier incentive pay offer that would provide five days of pay to Seattle-area and Gresham workers if the company meets financial targets and up to 15 days' worth if the targets are exceeded.
The release and discussion of proposed Boeing contract terms is a marked departure from the past, when details were withheld until the final proposal was submitted to a union membership vote. On Friday the company released details of a revised offer, complaining that its first offer had been leaked and misrepresented.
The biggest apparent change in the latest offer was in bonuses: $4,500 on ratification plus a new $1,000 payment in March "recognizing employees' contributions to Boeing's performance this year." That's $1,500 more than Boeing's previous offer of a $2,000 ratification bonus and $2,000 in cash the first year of the contract.
Workers also could put all or some of their ratification bonuses into their voluntary investment plans — a Boeing version of 401(k) plans — and the company would match 50 percent of the first $2,250 rather than a 50 percent match on a $2,000 rollover as proposed Friday night.
over its property.
Bickers said he did not have aggregate cost figures that would cover other changes in the latest offer, including a new health coverage option that would require no premiums for a worker and partner and a premium of $10 per paycheck to add coverage of other family members.
And the thunder rolls
The zero-premium plan in effect would be continued but Boeing's proposal would require workers to pay some premiums. Premiums would be increased for the majority of health plans.
Bicyclists stop at the light at 11th and Mass on Sunday evening as a thunderstorm blows into town. The late evening storm lasted about an hour and brought with it heavy rain and wing gusts- nothing compared to the vast damage done to New Orleans and other coastal cities the same evening by hurricane Katrina.
TERRORISM
Report illustrates immigration law failures
BY LARA JAKES JORDAN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Suspected or convicted foreign-born terrorists have routinely exploited federal immigration laws over the last decade to enter or remain in the United States illegally, according to a report set for release Tuesday.
The report provides newly compiled data on U.S. terror arrests to illustrate gaps in the nation's border security, visa approval and immigration systems. It was written by Janice Kephart, who served as counsel to the 9/11 Commission that investigated missteps leading to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Once in the country, some of them became naturalized citizens, says the report distributed by the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocate for stricter immigration policies.
"The attack of 9/11 was not an isolated instance of Al-Qaeda infiltration into the United States," the 46-page report found.
In fact, dozens of operatives both before and after 9/11 other than the 9/11 hijackers have managed to enter and
"The attack of 9/11 was not an isolated instance of Al-Qaeda infiltration into the United States."
Report Center for Immigration Studies
embed themselves in the United States, actively carrying out plans to commit terrorist acts against U.S. interests or support designated foreign terrorist organizations," the report concluded. "For each to do so, they needed the guise of legal immigration status to support them."
Overall, 59 of 94 foreignborn nationals who were either convicted or indicted on terror charges broke federal immigration laws to enter or remain in the country between 1993 and 2004, the report found. It also noted:
Twenty-two of the 94 either had student visas or other applications approving them to study
In at least 13 instances, suspected and convicted terrorists overstayed their temporary visas.
in the United States; another 17 used visitor visas to enter the country.
WVW
— Seven of the 94 were indicted for using false driver's licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards and immigration records.
— Twenty-one became naturalized citizens.
The report identified many of the immigrants as affiliated with at least one terror organization, including 40 with Al-Qaeda, 16 with Hamas, 16 with the Palestinian or Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and six with Hezbollah.
Tightening U.S. borders has become a top priority for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who last week called immigration enforcement an issue of utmost importance. The department has enacted a slew of programs — including stricter background checks, visa security systems and sharing intelligence with international allies
— to harden immigration laws against terrorists, said spokesman Russ Knocke.
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Since June 2003, the department has investigated 7,100 cases of immigrants suspected of violating temporary visas, resulting in 1,339 arrests, Knocke said.
Recent studies indicate immigration-related cases made up for nearly 33 percent of all federal prosecutions last year — more than any other crime.
"These programs and others would have placed a significantly greater amount of scrutiny on the 9/11 hijackers, vastly improving the odds of stopping them before they could have completed their attacks," Knocke said.
A spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, an immigration advocacy group, did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment Monday evening.
Center for Immigration Studies spokesman John Keeley said the report serves as a chilling reminder of vulnerabilities that still exist nearly four years after the 9/11 attacks.
"When you don't do anything about specific categories that have been exploited, you really are leaving the back door wide open," Keeley said.
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