Missouri Possible: Show Us the Way to Best Deal with Internet Harassment

by on December 19, 2007 · 5 comments

Here’s your assignment: you’re a state governor who’s up for re-election, and your state is still reeling in the wake of a high-publicity suicide by a teenage girl brought upon by inflammatory statements communicated through a popular social networking website.  

What do you do? Panic and quickly push through a reactive new law, (maybe even sock it to the social networking industry), or do you study the issue to come up with a sound approach? If you’re the Governor of Missouri, you create a multi-disciplinary task force to review current law and enforcement related to Internet harassment and recommend changes to better protect the citizens of your state.

Yesterday I was in Jefferson City to participate in this task force, which included representatives from the law enforcement, nonprofit, academic, mental health, and business communities. The task force met to specifically create the new crime of cyber-harassment in response to Megan Meier’s suicide almost a year ago, but still newsworthy and on the minds of many people as this New York Times article from last week shows.

Cyber-harassment can be devastating and dangerous to victims. Due to the ease of sending electronic communications, harassment that occurs online can be instant, frequent, anonymous, and permanently public. Cyber-harassers can easily impersonate their victims and even encourage third parties to unwittingly "flame" and harass a victim.

Tina Meier, Megan’s mom, opened up our task force meeting by recounting the tragic story of her daughter’s death. Megan was a 13 year old girl that had befriended what she thought was a boy on MySpace but turned out to be an adult neighbor that lived next-door.

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Kevin Martin’s Double Vision

by on December 19, 2007 · 2 comments

The Wall Street Journal today nailed FCC Chairman Kevin Martin today for yesterday’s two-step on ownership, easing ownership rules on newspapers, but imposing new ones on cable. The WSJ’s conclusion:

“Mr. Martin’s animus toward the cable business is by now a matter of public record, and yesterday’s action can only be understood as part of his personal campaign to make the industry’s life as hard as possible. The D.C. Circuit is almost certain to strike down this rule, as it did the last time. But by then there may be a fresh face as FCC Chairman, and the only winners will be the lawyers who billed the hours”.

Worth reading.

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A Lonely Voice on REAL ID

by on December 19, 2007 · 2 comments

Amid Op-Eds and news stories today decrying REAL ID and illustrating its defects, DHS assistant secretary for policy development Richard Barth steps up to defend the national ID law.

Real ID is not a national identification card. Under Real ID, the federal government will not be issuing licenses or IDs, nor will it collect information about license or ID-card holders.

To which the commenters reply:

“Oh….a Bush Toadie… What a load of (inappropriate term)!”

“If someone from the Department of Fatherland Security says it…I believe it!!”

“I think that using your public office to lie should be a punishable offense. I would also say, the comment ‘The Real ID is not a National ID’ should get this man about 3 Years, maybe 2 with good behavior.”

Pity poor Richard Barth.

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Telco Immunity No-Go, At Least Until Next Year

by on December 18, 2007 · 0 comments

Wow. This is some really bad poetry, but it’s a pleasure to read.

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DeMint: Public Interest is in Free Markets

by on December 18, 2007 · 8 comments

In a December 13th speech to The Free State Foundation, Senator Jim DeMint quotes Randy May in asking if the FCC should be renamed the “Federal Unbundling Commission.”

DeMint expands on the unbundling theme covering Open Access, A la Carte and Multicast Must Carry, and Net Neutrality.

My favorite quote:

Market regulation is no less than market manipulation, and we need to take that
power away from the government and put it where it belongs, in the hands of
consumers in the free market.

Check out this excellent presentation on the absurdity of the FCC’s telecom and cable agenda at the The Free State Foundation.

If only more members of Congress took this position on telecom issues!

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Well Meaning, But Without Understanding

by on December 18, 2007 · 0 comments

Such a great idea – CommitteeCaller.com – and it’s even gotten play on BoingBoing. But ultimately its use would not help improve our democracy. This clever new app allows you to call every member of a congressional committee, and even rate the quality of the response.

Here’s the thing. Every citizen is represented by only one member of Congress. The other 434 members of Congress are not interested in hearing what you have to say (unless, I suppose, you’re a lobbyist or a potential contributor). They’re not supposed to be interested in what you have to say. They represent the people that live in their districts.

So if lots of people start calling lots of different congressional offices, it will simply make it harder for real constituents to get through to their own representatives’ offices. Email is already well known to be of limited utility, and Congress takes pains to filter out constituent email that doesn’t come from the actual people members represent.

Bombing Congress with calls will just cause Congress to withdraw further from public contact. And it’s withdrawn enough already.

Update: This problem came up pretty quickly in the comments on BoingBoing. Crowds. Wisdom.

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Regulations.gov gets an RSS feed

by on December 18, 2007 · 0 comments

rss-1.jpgIn my recent paper on e-transparency and in other forums I’ve been critical of the federal government’s Regulations.gov website for not offering XML feeds. Well, last week the site began offering an RSS feed for the site. You can see it here.

It looks like it’s a feed of every new proposed rule that is added to the site. Each item has a few elements, including a title, a link to the proposed rule’s page on Regulations.gov, a date, and a category that corresponds to the issuing agency. This is a big step in the right direction and I congratulate the folks who are making this happen. There’s a long way to go, though, in making the most of the technology, and I’d like to offer a few suggestions.

First off, the site isn’t yet offering feeds by agency. A feed of all proposed rulemakings in the government is less valuable to me personally than a feed for just FCC rules. On the other hand, a complete feed could be argued to be even more valuable because a third party could easily parse out the different agencies and offer individual agency feeds. (Anyone interested in helping a poor, code-impaired guy with a lazyweb request?) Still, individual agency feeds (in addition to a complete feed) should be pretty easy to make available.

Second, there is no description element. In your RSS reader all you get is the title and a link. You have to click the feed item to get to the web page that describes the regulation, etc. Why not include the Federal Register notice right in the feed?

Finally, and this is my dream scenario, why not offer feeds for each rulemaking? Subscribe to a rulemaking and be instantly alerted anytime a new document is filed in the docket? Why not also include the documents as attachments in the feed?

The “what’s new” section of Regulations.gov (which I can’t link to because the site uses dynamic frames!) says that there is more to come in the next few weeks. It says, “The all-new Regulations.gov 2.0 will be launched shortly featuring a powerful new search engine and a re-designed homepage that makes searching, commenting and accessing other site features quicker and easier.” I sure hope so, and I commend the Regs.gov team for their hard work. I also hope they adopt Google’s sitemap protocol to make keyword searches work from anywhere on the web.

The more government information is available online, and the easier it is to access it, the more accountable we can hold government.

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Brazen Act of Defiance

by on December 18, 2007 · 0 comments

The FCC voted today to allow a single entity to own a newspaper as well as a broadcast TV or radio station in the same market under certain conditions, and some people seem truly alarmed.

Democratic FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein worried that the FCC “has never attempted such a brazen act of defiance against Congress. Like the Titanic, we are steaming at full speed despite repeated warnings of danger ahead. It might yet sink. We should have slowed down rather than put everything at risk,” according to Broadcasting & Cable.

Many people were similarly horrified in 1987 when the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to air contrasting viewpoints on “vitally important controversial issues of interest in the community.”

Former FCC chairman Dennis Patrick recalled the bitter controversy, questionable motives and a demonstrably successful outcome resulting from the repeal during a wonderful lecture this past summer at an event sponsored by the George Mason University School of Law.

Patrick recalled how the FCC tried to duck the issue for years because it was so controversial, but the courts forced it to do something. What he and his fellow commissioners wanted (or thought they needed) to do wasn’t popular on Capitol Hill.

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FCC Allows Newspapers to Own Broadcast Stations

by on December 18, 2007 · 4 comments

The Federal Communications commission on Tuesday eased restrictions on the ability of newspaper companies to own television and radio stations in the same market, by a 3-2 vote.

After the vote becomes effective, newspapers would be allowed to own stations within the 20 largest broadcast markets. Mergers of newspapers and broadcast stations would still be allowed in smaller markets, although subject to some regulatory constraints.

Since the so called “cross-broadcast” ownership rule was put in place in 1975, newspapers have been barred from owning a radio or television stations unless such combinations existed prior to the rule’s application, or subsequently received a waiver of the rules.

The vote to ease the newspaper ownership restrictions split the commission on party lines, with the Republicans voting for the measure, and the two Democrats offering stinging dissents. The action, and the comments by the commissioners, was a sign of the politically controversial nature of media ownership in recent years.

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Defeat Terrorism

by on December 18, 2007 · 0 comments

Terrorism is a strategy used by the weak to goad the strong into self-injurious overreaction.

DownsizeDC has a campaign underway that I think is critical to defeating terrorism. It’s described on their site this way: “We’re looking for a few brave Americans to start a real war on terror — by not being afraid!”

The “I am Not Afraid” campaign is not about passing or killing any legislation. It is just to get Washington, D.C.’s consistent overreaction to the threat of terrorism under control. The sense of proportion this campaign seeks to create really makes it worth a visit, but here’s a taste:

Nearly 800,000 people have died in car accidents in the last twenty years. During that time there have been exactly two Islamic terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, with less than 3,000 total fatalities. That’s more than 200 TIMES as many Americans dying in their cars as at the hands of Islamic terrorism. And yet . . .

We’ve turned the whole world upside down in response to the two terrorist attacks. We’ve launched invasions, created vast new bureaucracies, shredded the Bill of Rights, compounded regulations, spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and disrupted travel and commerce. But no one is suggesting that we do 200 times as much to address the driving risk, which is 200 times greater.

Terror warriors, keep your straw men in the barn. This is not a pacifist, terrorism-denial campaign. It seeks proportional responses to threats, and acceptance of harms that cannot reasonably be prevented. The message to legislators:

“I am not afraid of terrorism, and I want you to stop being afraid on my behalf. Please start scaling back the official government war on terror. Please replace it with a smaller, more focused anti-terrorist police effort in keeping with the rule of law. Please stop overreacting. I understand that it will not be possible to stop all terrorist acts. I accept that. I am not afraid.”

This is good, important work to defeat terrorism.

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