LinkNYC WiFi kiosks are hubs for pervs and vagrants, business leaders say

[Kamaji]

LinkNYC WiFi kiosks are hubs for pervs and vagrants, business leaders say

By Dean Balsamini
July 23, 2022

Midtown business leaders want to pull the plug on LinkNYC, the WiFi and ad kiosks that they say have become hubs of perversion, harassment and crime.

“I want them removed,” fumed Barbara Blair, the head of the Garment District Alliance, which is grappling with a wave of open heroin use on sidewalks. “There doesn’t seem to be the political will to restore order in the public realm. We’ve ceded the public realm to bad actors.”

Blair said she again wrote to the commissioner of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) two weeks ago but has yet to get a response. Blair wrote to DoITT several years ago to request that the “troublesome links” be removed.

Blair said there are nine links alone between West 40th and West 36th Street on Eighth Avenue.

“It’s a tremendous redundancy,” she said.

Anthony Mignano, who manages 1450 Broadway, a 42-story office tower located on the corner of West 41st Street, said the homeless “create a living space with chairs, cardboard boxes and tents” at the kiosks.

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Source:  https://nypost.com/2022/07/23/linknyc-kiosks-are-magnets-for-pervs-vagrants-business-leaders/

[Kamaji]

I'm surprised they haven't been used by hackers to hack into the phones and tablets of passersby.

[PeteS in CA]

The sacred homeless use the kiosks for hook-ups, shoot-ups, surfing for porn, and sleep in? Who’d a thunk it?