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In the age of wifi the man in the middle included someone sitting in the same coffee shop as you. ISPs turning into jerks came on the heels of that. Depending on where you got your news, it might have seemed like you heard about ISPs and hackers around the same time, but from my perspective the ISPs learned how to be bad from security experts explaining how much mischief a person could get up to and deciding that sounded like a swell idea.

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> ISPs turning into jerks came on the heels of that.

> ISPs learned how to be bad from security experts explaining how much mischief a person could get up to and deciding that sounded like a swell idea

Telecommunications companies have played a central role in government surveillance schemes for at least 50 years, well before the advent of WiFi. ECHELON was fairly extensively reported on in the late 90's.

> it might have seemed like you heard about ISPs and hackers around the same time

I connected to the Internet around 1993, but my interest in computer security didn't start until around 1996. I'm not sure if that qualifies.

Yeah I wasn't talking about surveillance, I was talking about adulterating internet traffic.

From the surveillance standpoint, we now have devices we take with us and leave unattended. We are all waiting for a proverbial woodpecker to destroy civilization.

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