Earlier this year, New York City’s massive plans to offer free Wi-Fi to the entire city have officially went live. As recently noted, “LinkNYC” started to retrofit older pay phone stations late last year, replacing them with the first of what’s expected to be 7,500 Wi-Fi kiosks that provide gigabit Wi-Fi, and through a partnership with Vonage, free phone calls anywhere in the country, as well as access to 311, 911, 411 and city services (via integrated Android tablet).

“In order to register for LinkNYC, users must submit their e-mail addresses and agree to allow CityBridge to collect information about what websites they visit on their devices, where and how long they linger on certain information on a webpage, and what links they click on,” complains the NYCLU.

“CityBridge’s privacy policy only offers to make “reasonable efforts” to clear out this massive amount of personally identifiable user information, and even then, only if there have been 12 months of user inactivity. New Yorkers who use LinkNYC regularly will have their personally identifiable information stored for a lifetime and beyond,” the complaint insists.

The city quickly downplayed the groups concerns in a statement to Fusion, insisting the NYPD will still need to get a subpoena to obtain any information gleaned from the pylons, and that the privacy policy is “the best way to protect New Yorkers and LinkNYC users while they safely and securely enjoy free superfast Wi-Fi across the five boroughs.” Still, the NYCLU says it would like to see the service’s privacy policy language changed to make it clear that user data won’t be stored indefinitely.

The city says it hopes to have 500 of the kiosks in place by July, with a general goal of installing around ten a day. Kiosks will be placed around 150 feet apart, and have an effective range of around 450 feet. CityBridge, the company contracted to install the kiosks, says it’s running $200 million of new fiber to feed the encrypted connections.