I want to setup a wi-fi hotspot within our Church.

The pastor is full of angst over the local population surfing for free for unwholesome content and then telling the local press that they got it courtesy of the local church. You can just see the headlines now ….

Local Church Provides Free Porn

or

Illegal Content Obtained Through Church

Ok, so I’m not a copywriter who’s any good with headlines, but I’m certain the local press would have a field day if this was ever the case. The point is I do share his concerns to a degree over not wanting all and sundry to gain access, though we also don’t want to make it too hard so as to make accessing it unpopular.

What reason do I want a wi-fi hotspot for? Quite simply to erase the phone calls I get asking me to help get a visiting speaker on to the web to check his / her emails. OK, so they could get an iPhone, Blackberry or similar web capable phone and pick them up that way – but then why not offer this service and if they’re from abroad (as most of our speakers tend to be) the likelihood that they are paying high usage charges makes a free option more viable? The other way to do it would be to have a single physical network point that they patch in to! But that would mean having a proper cabling setup and a switch that is capable of segmenting off these users onto their own vlan.

If we go with wi-fi as I want, then there are of course still several hurdles beyond this that need resolving aside from the practical aspect of what kit we actually use.

Do we make the hotspot open or closed?

A closed hotspot is certainly more “controllable” but how do we control? Do we create throw away user ids / passwords that last for a day / week or is there a better method?

Do we filter or not?

Unequivocally yes. I’m an advocate of filtering but not because I’m a control freak but because prevention is very definitely better than cure when it comes to malware, spyware, etc. I also believe in trying to educate the users.

Do we offer support on it?

Well as this would come down to me then I’d have to say yes and no. Yes in that I ensure the AP is up and running and accessible but no if you can’t connect your hardware to it.

What, if any, are the legal ramifications?

I have some idea, but I’m not convinced that even the lawyers know! I’d guess that at present the UK law would let us get away with having others unknowingly access our hotspot even if our intention was to deny them. Equally, UK ISP’s currently enjoy the same status as the post office in that they are carriers (meaning they are not responsible for the content) though there are plans afoot to change that and make ISPs keep logs, etc for the authorities. Would that also apply to a Church?

What are our moral obligations?

I’d have to say this is probably much clearer than the potential legal issues. We’d want to offer a service that doesn’t contradict our stance as followers of Christ and consequently this brings us back to the filter question.

The final hurdle our church would face is that the building we occupy is old and has lots of thick walls, metal roofs, steel girders, etc … in other words lots of items to cause problems with signal propagation. Or do we literally only offer wi-fi in certain areas such as by the offices, etc?

It’s an intriguing thought and the prospect is certainly a challenging one – but first steps first as we definitely need a different switch.