Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The DHS Privacy Committee meets at 1:00 p.m. (Eastern) today, via telephone, and you can listen in! From the Federal Register notice:
Members of the public are welcome to listen to the meeting by calling (800) 320-4330 and entering Pin Number 215132. The number of teleconference lines is limited, however, and lines will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.
I’ve been following President Obama’s early moves on government transparency here on Tech Liberation and on the Cato@Liberty blog.
Last week, Obama’s first broken campaign promise was the pledge to post legislation online for five days before signing it.
Well, the White House is working to address that, but it appears to be doing so with a half-measure that comes up short. On Sunday, the White House blog announced that the SCHIP legislation pending in the Senate was up for public comment. And it is, of course, but it hasn’t passed the Senate yet.
It was implicit in the promise to post bills online for five days prior to signing that the bill posted would be the one passed by the House and Senate and presented to the President.
If the White House were to implement the promised practice of leaving bills sitting out there, unsigned, after they pass Congress, that would have significant effects. The practice would threaten to reveal excesses in parochial amendments and earmarks which could bring down otherwise good bills. President Obama’s promised five-day cooling off period would force the House and Senate to act with more circumspection.
Taking comments on a bill as it makes its way through the House and Senate does not have the same salutary effect. If the White House is trying to start the five-day clock on the SCHIP bill with the posting of a comment page on Sunday, that is not consistent with President Obama’s promise.
The Senate version of the economic stimulus package (H.R. 1) winding its way through Congress would provide $9 billion in direct public subsidy for broadband network deployment subject to a “non-discrimination” requirement which, like the “open access” requirement in the House bill, could turn into onerous “network neutrality” regulation.
Meanwhile, Britain has outlined its digital transition plans in “Digital Britain – Interim Report.”
It is interesting to compare the substantially more free-market direction Britain is taking with the silly approach our own Congress is considering. For one thing, Britain is going to let private investors finance network upgrades.
The Government is not persuaded that there is a case now for widespread UK-wide public subsidy for Next Generation Network deployment, since such widespread subsidy could simply duplicate existing private sector investment plans or indeed chill such plans.
Another reason direct public subsidies should be avoided is they distort competition. Over at the Progress & Freedom Foundation blog, Ken Ferree cites a recent U.S. government audit report (analyzing significant problems with the current broadband grant and loan programs of the USDA Rural Utilities Service) which asked the evident question: “What is the government’s responsibility if, due to subsidized competition, a preexisting, unsubsidized broadband provider goes out of business?”
Next, the British report touches on the third rail of broadband policy, by noting that if Internet service providers offer guaranteed service levels to content providers in exchange for increased fees, it could lead to “differentiation of offers and promote investment in higher-speed access networks. Net neutrality regulation might prevent this sort of innovation.” The report adds that
the Government has yet to see a case for legislation in favour of net neutrality. In consequence, unless Ofcom [Britain’s FCC-equivalent] find network operators or ISPs to have Significant Market Power and justify intervention on competition grounds, traffic management will not be prevented.
So the British digital transition is based on some sound free market insights, and keep in mind that Britain has a Labour government! Here in this country we are heading in the other direction due to some muddled thinking, and not just on the Left. A prominent Republican writes that “conservatives should cheer” over the fact the stimulus package will include billions to promote broadband deployment and adoption.
Online child safety — especially the fear of predators lurking on social networking sites (SNS) — continues to spur calls by state and federal lawmakers for regulation. At first, some federal lawmakers advocated outright bans on SNS in schools and libraries via the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA). Meanwhile, state and local lawmakers — specifically state Attorneys General (AGs) — have been even more vociferous in their calls for regulation in the form of mandatory age verification for social networking sites, which would cover a broad swath of online sites and activities according to their definitions of SNS. But the question that ultimately gets lost in this debate is: Just how much risk do social networking sites really pose for teens? Which risks are real and which are overblown? And what’s the best way to deal with the risks that we find to be legitimate?
Nancy Willard devotes her life to answering those questions. Willard is one of America’s leading experts on online safety and risk prevention. She runs the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use and she is the author of two outstanding books, Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats and Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens. In my opinion, Willard’s general approach to online child safety is the most enlightened, level-headed, and likely to be effective. That’s because Willard focuses on putting fears in perspective, identifying the actual risks that kids face online, and devising sensible strategies to deal with risks and problems as they are discovered. Her approach is holistic and built upon sound data, targeted risk-identification strategies, and time-tested education and mentoring methods. For my money, it’s the most sensible approach to online safety issues. In fact, when other parents ask me for “just one thing” to read on the topic, I usually recommend Willard’s work — especially her amazing book Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens. And her background in early childhood education, special education for “at risk” children with emotional and behavior difficulties, as well as experience in computer law, means she is uniquely suited to be analyzing these issues. In sum, this is woman we should all be closely listening to on these issues.
Recently, Willard has been responding to criticisms that state AGs have leveled against the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF) and its final report. [Disclaimer: I was a member of the ISTTF.] I’ve already outlined the ISTTF’s work at length here, but the three key takeaways from the report were that:
I finally got around to reading Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know, by Randall Stross. It’s very well done. Stross is a frequently contributor to the New York Times and the author of several other interesting books on the technology industry. He knows how to weave a story together, and it helps that Google’s story is a pretty amazing one.
Each chapter discusses a different part of Google’s growing family of services — GMail, Google Maps, Google Earth, Book Search, and YouTube. Of course, it all started with search and Stross does a good job explaining how the ingenious Google search algorithm has grown from dorm room project to the greatest aggregator of human knowledge that the world has ever known. This, in turn, has powered Google’s hugely successful online advertising system. The real secret of their success with online advertising, Stross argues, is that “Google’s impersonal, mathematical approach search also provides you with the ability to serve advertisements that are tailored to a search, rather than to the person submitting the search request, whose identity would have to be known.”
Despite the benefits of such generally anonymous searching, as Google has grown and added new services and capabilities, concerns about the sheer volume of data that the company collects have led to heightened privacy concerns. Indeed, privacy is a core theme that Stross uses in the book to tie many of the chapters and issues together. Google is constantly struggling to strike the right balance between providing more access to the world’s information while also being careful not to raise privacy concerns. But it’s unclear exactly how much more information collection that users (or public officials) will tolerate before advocating stricter limits on Google’s reach. As Stross points out:
Guided by its founding mission, to organize all the world’s information, Google has created storage capacity that allows it to gain control of what its users are you doing in a comprehensive way that no other company has done, and to preserve those records indefinitely, without the need to clear out old records to make way for new ones. Moreover, Google differentiates its service by refining its own proprietary software formula to mine and massage the data, technology that it zealously protects from the sight of rivals. This sets up a conflict between Google’s wish to operate a “black box” (completely opaque to the outside) and its users’ wish for transparency.
Via engadget, here’s a fun video showing how easy it is to pick up information from passport cards and “enhanced driver’s licenses.” (Enhancement is in the eye of the beholder, of course.)
These cards use RFID to broadcast information when properly interrogated, and this information can be used (at a minimum) to track people’s movements. Hacker Chris Paget demonstrates this and discusses the weakness of using RFID on people.
San Francisco ex-pats like myself will take special delight from the video as Chris drives past Red’s Java House at minute 1:56. Burger me – NOW!
And he would scrap WHTI. I’ll have one of those too.
Witness the majesty of the internet: Less than two months ago I blogged on this site about an idea to build a website to crowdsource the task of rating the slew of “shovel ready” projects proposed by localities. I asked for volunteers to help develop the site, and to my amazement, it worked. With the help of all-around heroes Peter Snyder and Kevin Dwyer, today we launch StimulusWatch.org.
Stimulus Watch looks at the 10,000+ projects listed in the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ “MainStreet Economic Recovery Report.” The mayors and local officials around the country have asked that these projects be funded with federal money. Here are some of the proposed projects of interest to readers of this blog:
Once the stimulus bill passes, however, not every project will be funded. The agencies that administer the federal grant-making programs, which Congress will fund through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will have to decide which of these projects to fund.
As I am getting ready to watch the Super Bowl tonight on my amazing 100-inch screen via a Sanyo high-def projector that only cost me $1,600 bucks on eBay, I started thinking back about how much things have evolved (technologically-speaking) over just the past decade. I thought to myself, what sort of technology did I have at my disposal exactly 10 years ago today, on February 1st, 1999? Here’s the miserable snapshot I came up with:
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
