Castro's Cone of Silence (3#) -

From The Dept of Wacky Complaints . . .

The Cuban regime is whining that residents there may be getting free internet access from CIA-supplied Wi-Fi and that they are smuggling satellite dishes into the country disguised as surf boards, according to Bill Ray at The Reg.

Could DARPA really do something like this?

Yes, they could; but why should they bother?

Castro is out of touch with contemporary reality in the rest of the world, where various kinds of Wi-Fi blanket much of our neighborhoods in a loose network of nodes. Most folks in the Free World consider this a good thing and an amenity they look for.

I first got interested in this issue when CentCom announced they were going to fly Commando Solo over Iraq and I've continued to keep tabs on the topic ever since.

It isn't necessary to immediately jump to wacky CIA conspiracies, when there's probably a much more prosaic explanation for this.

Don't most large vacation cruise ships come equipped with Wi-Fi these days? Some Cubans may be able to catch some rays off these ships passing through the Caribbean area.

Blame it on the Norwegians! Those dastardly Norwegians operate a Cruise Ship Line which could be spreading their rays all over. Wi-Fi is ambient in many places and nearly ubiquitous lately.

The Cubans can't afford to turn tourists or cruise ships away, since they're deriving necessary revenue from these visitors, so they'll just have to put up with it.

We can't turn off all the Wi-Fi that might be floating around the Caribbean just to suit some Cuban big shot.

Anyway, they don't even need dishes anymore. Ever hear about the old phone-in-the-shoe trick? It's called the Thuraya satellite phone nowadays.

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