Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
WASHINGTON, July 3, 2007 – The Federal Trade Commission intends to monitor the information that telecom and cable companies provide about high-speed Internet service in the service plans they offer to customers, according to a report issued last week by the agency.
The FTC asserts in the report, released on June 27, that since it has jurisdiction over matters involving consumer protection, it “will continue to enforce the consumer protection laws in the area of broadband access.”
This very fine Ars story on the emergence of contactless payments is a terrific opportunity to spot examples of people minding other people’s business.
Example 1, Federal Reserve minding consumers’ business: “The Federal Reserve sets rules for receipts, and last week the Feds said that purchases of $15 or less don’t even require a receipt now, let alone a signature.”
I’m sure the Federal Reserve cares, and I’m sure they’ve done a careful job, but I really think that the need for, and content of, receipts can be hashed out among buyers and sellers. I now wonder how many billions of receipts are handed out each year because of this “protection.” (If it’s one billion more than consumers actually want and need, think paper, ink, print mechanism, and a second or two of people’s time x 1,000,000,000 – costs all borne by consumers directly, or indirectly in the form of higher prices, without a commensurate benefit.)
Example 2, Security researchers minding credit card companies’ business: “Security researchers independent from credit card companies are sounding alarms, while the credit card companies themselves believe that they have the right balance of security and functionality.”
The researchers care, and they want the best possible system, but they’re security researchers. Almost by definition, they are going to overweight security.
Payment systems are actually supposed to balance many competing interests, security being just one. Others include convenience, level of repudiability, privacy, and so on. So long as the credit card associations bear the risk of loss (and in these low-dollar transacations, they do), security is the credit card associations’ problem.
(Yes, the costs of insecurity are also passed to merchants and consumers. The solution that will keep these costs in check, yet in balance with other demands on the system, is competition among credit card associations and among payment systems for both kinds of customers. The job of each credit card association is then to constantly tweak the mix of interests its products serve. With each tweak, it aims to bring more customers on board than it loses.)
If the researchers convince the Fed to hold up experimentation with RF payments, that’s two busy-bodies getting together to run transactions for which consumers, merchants, and credit card associations are supposed to be responsible.
When lines of authority break down, results suffer. No one is better positioned to balance risks than self-interested parties.
Faithful readers will recall that I frequently pen essays responding to calls by politicians or other critics to regulate media content or the Internet “for the children.” One of the most intriguing things about these calls to regulate to protect children is that they are seemingly completely devoid of any historical perspective. Politicians or critics either imply or state directly that children are at grave danger from media content or the Internet, but I think we’ve lost all perspective about what really harms kids.
Cynthia Crossen of The Wall Street Journal has an excellent column on this issue today entitled “Lemonade Stands? Children Used to Toil 14 Hours, Every Day.” She notes that:
about a century ago, some two million American children between 10 and 15 years old had “gainful employment,” according to census data. And unlike teenagers with summer jobs now, these children often worked 12- or 14-hour days, seven days a week. Most of them worked on family farms, but others were employed in mines, mills, canneries or city streets, polishing shoes, hawking newspapers or delivering messages. They attended school sporadically, if at all.
For industrial employers, young workers were cheap and tractable. They could do simple, repetitive tasks for long hours, and their small size often worked to their advantage. To many people, it seemed as natural for children to work in factories as it did to work alongside their parents planting seeds, washing dishes or milking cows.
That really gives you some appreciation for how far we’ve come, doesn’t it? I’ll take the problems we have today versus those of 100 years ago! And I feel the “harm” associated with media content or the Internet is something most parents can handle on their own without resorting to government regulation.
I do not mean to completely belittle concerns about online child safety or access to inappropriate media content — after all I just wrote a whole book entitled “Parental Controls & Online Child Protection“! But I do think we need to put things in a little perspective when it comes to “child safety” and appreciate the strides we’ve made.
Many lawmakers and regulators are currently proposing the expansion of broadcast industry regulation. For example, fines have been greatly increased for “indecent” programming on broadcast television and radio, and efforts are underway to extend indecency regulations to cover cable and satellite television. Meanwhile, some policymakers are advocating government regulation of “excessively violent” programming on both broadcast and pay TV. In my latest law review article, “Why Regulate Broadcasting: Toward a Consistent First Amendment Standard for the Information Age,” I hope to show why these efforts are seriously misguided, likely unworkable, and almost certainly completely unconstitutional.
This 52-page article appears in the latest volume of the Catholic University Law School’s CommLaw Conspectus. The article can be found online here.
In this essay, I make the case that the radically unfair system of modern broadcast industry regulation must be completely abolished. “If America is to have a consistent First Amendment in the Information Age,” I argue, “efforts to extend the broadcast regulatory regime must be halted and that regime must be relegated to the ash heap of history.” I go on to make the case against all the traditional broadcast industry regulatory rationales and conclude that: “the traditional rationales for asymmetrical regulation of broadcasting — scarcity, pervasiveness, and the public interest — either no longer make sense or are increasingly impractical to enforce in an age of technological convergence and media abundance. Instead of resisting the inexorable movement toward media parity and a consistent First Amendment standard for the Information Age, policymakers should embrace these changes and focus on responding to the problem of objectionable content through education and empowerment-based strategies that enable families to craft their own household media standards.”
The podcast of my keynote speech at EDUCAUSE, “Mapping the Fault Lines in Telecom, Media and Tech Lobbying,” is now available an online podcast.
Here’s the blurb from the event:
The digital convergence of telecommunications, media, and technology is changing the landscape for policy makers and the industries that lobby them, as well as the users of computers, telephones, entertainment and knowledge. The Center for Public Integrity’s Well Connected project tracks each of the major telecom, broadcast, cable, news, entertainment, wireless, and computer companies. Americans can access this free database to see who owns the media and communications networks in their city by typing in their ZIP code. The project is also responsible for a freedom of information lawsuit to obtain data about local broadband deployment from the FCC. This session will address the need for the educational users of computing and communication to be attuned to the lobbying fault lines that affect all of these sectors, with a particular focus on recent developments in telecommunications and intellectual property.
TLFers may be interested to note that Jim Harper’s keynote podcast is also available.
Now that I have completed my 10-part series of essays to coincide with “National Internet Safety Month,” I thought I’d list them all in one place. All the information in this series of essays was condensed from my new Progress & Freedom Foundation special report, “Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools and Methods.” I will be making constant updates to that report online, so if you have suggestions please let me know.
The links for the 10 installments in the series are listed below:
Part 1: Online Safety Metasites
Part 2: Internet Filters & Monitoring Tools
Part 3: Operating Systems and Web Browser Controls
Part 4: Website Labeling and Metadata Tagging
Part 5: Search Engine Filters and Portals for Kids
Part 6: A Voluntary Online Code of Conduct for Online Safety
Part 7: The Importance of Online Safety Education
Part 8: Social Networking Safety
Part 9: Online Safety and Law Enforcement Efforts
Part 10: Good Parenting Means Everything!
One of the themes I’ve been hitting a lot recently in talks on the subject is how going digital with identification is changing the meaning of being identified. IDing someone used to be a one-time interaction. It is becoming a record-keeping event.
Via Reason’s Hit and Run, here’s a story on how Tennessee is now requiring everyone to show ID to buy beer. The story shows how that’s ramping up surveillance.
There are plenty of absurdities. One is that really old people, who are obviously of-age, are having to show ID. The other – more subtle, but more important – is that people are showing ID to prove age. This violates the privacy protecting practice of “data minimization” – collecting only the information you need to serve your purpose. Tennessee law requires people to share identity information as well as age, violating the principle of data minimization daily, every time someone buys beer.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
