Dead Drops

A USB dead drop is a publicly accessible USB drive that anyone can connect to. With all the buzz of the government spying on practically anything attached to the Internet, some people have been moving their file sharing offline. Just like dead drops that are infamously used by spies to share messages, these dead drops are for strangers to share files. These dead drops allow people to anonymously share files. The medium where the files are stored is only a USB drive that is never connected to the Internet, they are completely anonymous. So instead of connecting to your favorite website and having to risk downloading a file that a three letter organization is recording, you can connect to your local dead drop and see what's new.

However cool these are, there are some problems with them. Anyone can place any file on them. This could be horribly evil content, or files that are potentially malicious. Some people online have described this as unprotected sex with strangers with your computer. There is also nothing preventing anyone from damaging a USB dead drop. Along with those concerns, they also require you to walk up to a wall with your laptop and stick your computer to it. It is not very practical to stand in an awkward position with your laptop against a wall.

The newer version of this idea involves small devices such as a Raspberry Pi, and a wifi transmitter, With this setup, people are able to connect to a wireless network and be able to connect to the files. You wouldn't have to stand awkwardly with your laptop against a wall, and risk being stationary in public with a possibly expensive laptop. This would also allow the device owner to pick more appropriate locations, such as public libraries or parks.
Even though most people seem to think this is only for copyrighted material, it does not have to be the case. If these dead drops were used in a place like a public library, they could even be loaded with public domain books. With Project Gutenberg's extensive collection, there shouldn't be much of a problem finding the books. They could even be loaded with freely sharable music and movies from archive.org's. If these were used properly, they could allow for people to freely share media and files without being tracked.

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NYCR_USB_deaddrop.jpg