I think the concept that a city wide network is comparable to where we’re at with the web is not the best comparison. Of course you can isolate issues that would happen with a city wide surveillance network. That’s a pretty specific purpose. The Internet has had to adapt to all the interests of multiple competing groups, and it all is piled upon technologies that were meant for a very specific use case. (BGP was pretty awesome in a research network.)
It’s not pie vs nuclear war. That actually seems like a bit of a hyperbolic way of speaking about the issue.
