Downtown Wi-Fi gets interference from Juarez

Posted: July 25, 2008 06:03 PM CDT

By ABC-7 Reporter Darren Hunt

EL PASO -- We've seen several recent examples now of how the drug war in Mexico has bled over into El Paso.

And now we have another.

Accessing the City of El Paso's new free WiFi connection in the Chihuahuita neighborhood in Downtown El Paso is easy now. But that wasn't the case as recently as a couple of weeks ago.

"It's interesting," El Paso City Representative Beto O'Rourke said. "The violence hasn't really crossed the border, but some other aspects ... "

Like Thomason Hospital, where nearly two dozen victims of the drug war in Mexico have been transported for treatment over the past seven months.

And now, not even Internet access is safe.

"It's an example of the activity in Juarez bleeding over in El Paso," O'Rourke said.

After receiving several calls from the residents of Chihuahita about problems accessing the new Downtown WiFi connection, the city IT department looked into the issue.

"We learned it was due to rogue networks accessing or interfacing with our networks," O'Rourke said, "many of which originated in Juarez."

O'Rourke said the city started to see a spike in this type of activity when violence in Juarez began to rise. "We thought it was both federal -- maybe Narco -- networks operating in Juarez interfering with ours."

ABC-7 asked several residents of the neighborhood -- which is just across the border from Juarez -- what they thought of the cartel interfering with their Internet.

No one would appear on camera. "We leave them alone and they leave us alone," said one man off camera.

"To a degree, drug cartel business is run like any other business," O'Rourke said, "and it has an IT component to it."

The network has since been restructured, shutting out the interference from Juarez.

"Luckily, the fix was inexpensive," O'Rourke said. "We're back up to where we need to be, but it does show you how interconnected our two cities are."

http://www.kvia.com/Global/story.asp?S=8738396