Government Control of Language and Other Protocols

by on June 6, 2011 · 1 comment

It might be tempting to laugh at France’s ban on words like “Facebook” and Twitter” in the media. France’s Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel recently ruled that specific references to these sites (in stories not about them) would violate a 1992 law banning “secret” advertising. The council was created in 1989 to ensure fairness in French audiovisual communications, such as in allocation of television time to political candidates, and to protect children from some types of programming.

Sure, laugh at the French. But not for too long. The United States has similarly busy-bodied regulators, who, for example, have primly regulated such advertising themselves. American regulators carefully oversee non-secret advertising, too. Our government nannies equal the French in usurping parents’ decisions about children’s access to media. And the Federal Communications Commission endlessly plays footsie with speech regulation.

In the United States, banning words seems too blatant an affront to our First Amendment, but the United States has a fairly lively “English only” movement. Somehow, regulating an entire communications protocol doesn’t have the same censorious stink.

So it is that our Federal Communications Commission asserts a right to regulate the delivery of Internet service. The protocols on which the Internet runs are communications protocols, remember. Withdraw private control of them and you’ve got a more thoroughgoing and insidious form of speech control: it may look like speech rights remain with the people, but government controls the medium over which the speech travels.

The government has sought to control protocols in the past and will continue to do so in the future. The “crypto wars,” in which government tried to control secure communications protocols, merely presage struggles of the future. Perhaps the next battle will be over BitCoin, an online currency that is resistant to surveillance and confiscation. In BitCoin, communications and value transfer are melded together. To protect us from the scourge of illegal drugs and the recently manufactured crime of “money laundering,” governments will almost certainly seek to bar us from trading with one another and transferring our wealth securely and privately.

So laugh at France. But don’t laugh too hard. Leave the smugness to them.

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Bitcoin, Silk Road, and Lulzsec oh my!

by on June 3, 2011 · 25 comments

Earlier this week, Adrian Chen wrote [a great exclusive](http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imaginable) for Gawker about the online market for illicit drugs Silk Road. I strongly commend the piece to you. The site is only accessible via the [anonymizing router network TOR](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)), although it is [viewable using tor2web](https://ianxz6zefk72ulzz.tor2web.org/). Transactions are made using bitcoins, the virtual digital currency I’ve [previously](http://techland.time.com/2011/04/16/online-cash-bitcoin-could-challenge-governments/) [written](http://techliberation.com/2011/04/16/bitcoin-imagine-a-net-without-intermediaries/) about, and which I explain in a [new video for Reason.tv](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYTqvYqXRbY&feature=youtu.be&t=16s) (below), also out this week.

After his piece was published, Chen added the following addendum:

>**Update:** Jeff Garzik, a member of the Bitcoin core development team, says in an email that bitcoin is not as anonymous as the denizens of Silk Road would like to believe. He explains that because all Bitcoin transactions are [recorded](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Transactions) in a public log, though the identities of all the parties are anonymous, law enforcement could use sophisticated network analysis techniques to parse the transaction flow and track down individual Bitcoin users.

>”Attempting major illicit transactions with bitcoin, given existing statistical analysis techniques deployed in the field by law enforcement, is pretty damned dumb,” he says.

I’ve been [asked](https://twitter.com/#!/elidourado/status/76088980852064257) by several folks about this: just how anonymous is bitcoin? My answer is that we don’t exactly know yet. Yes, all transactions are recorded in the public ledger that is the bitcoin network, but all that means is that you can see how many bitcoins were transferred from one account on the network to another account. This tells you nothing about the identity of the persons behind the accounts. Theoretically, you could identify just one person on the network and ask them (or coerce them) to identify the persons from whom they received payments, then go to those persons in turn and ask them who they accepted payment from, etc., until you’ve identified everyone, or just a person of interest. But you can imagine all the reasons this is impractical. More likely, a bitcoin user will be revealed through [identifying information inadvertently revealed](http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8.msg10621#msg10621) in the course of a transaction.

That all said, it seems that this week has also brought us a “natural experiment” that might settle the issue. LulzSec, the hacker group responsible for the [recent PBS hack](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/technology/31pbs.html), this week [announced](http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/attacks/229900111) that it has compromised the personal information of over a million Sony user accounts and has released a batch of 150,000. Here’s the thing: LulzSec is [accepting donations via Bitcoin](https://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/76388576832651265) and [say they have received](https://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/76667674947633152) over $100 so far. The group’s bitcoin receiving address is 176LRX4WRWD5LWDMbhr94ptb2MW9varCZP. Also, while in control of PBS.org, the group [offered vanity subdomains](https://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/75159378801598464) (e.g. techliberation.pbs.org) for 2 BTC each.

So, here’s a high-profile group the FBI and Secret Service are no doubt itching to get their hands on. A bitcoin receiving address for them is public. I guess we’ll find out how anonymous it is.

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Guest Post: The Case against Taxing Cell Phones

by on June 2, 2011 · 1 comment

[The following essay is a guest post from Dan Rothschild, Managing Director of the State and Local Policy Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.]

As cell phone ownership has tripled in the United States over the last decade, policymakers have increasingly seen mobile devices as a cash cow. In some states, consumers now pay as much as a quarter of their cell phone bills in taxes. And while state revenues are beginning to tick back up from their low point during the recession, Medicaid costs are fast on their tails. So it’s likely that over the coming years, states will be looking to find taxes to hike or new taxes to create — all without calling them tax hikes, of course.

Policy makers may be tempted to hike taxes on cell phones, or to create (or “equalize”) taxes on untaxed (or “under taxed”) parts of wireless telephony, such as cell phone data plans or e-readers with cellular connections. As I argue in a recent issue of Mercatus on Policy, this is a bad idea for a number of reasons. Continue reading →

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In town for CFP? Check out these GMU “cyber” conferences

by on June 1, 2011 · 1 comment

Jim [posted earlier today](http://techliberation.com/2011/05/31/be-sure-to-attend-cfp/) about the [Computers, Freedom and Privacy](http://www.cfp.org/2011/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) conference June 14th to 16th, which I’m very much looking forward to attending. If you’re in town for that, though, I’d like to bring to your attention two other related conferences being put on by the Center for Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security at George Mason University.

The first is the **The Tenth Workshop on Economics of Information Security**, the leading forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on information security, combining expertise from the fields of economics, social science, business, law, policy and computer science. Prior workshops have explored the role of incentives between attackers and defenders, identified market failures dogging Internet security, and assessed investments in cyber-defense. [It starts on June 13th and the program is here.](http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/tab1.aspx?EventID=960652)

More relevant to my interests is the **Workshop on Cybersecurity Incentives** to be held June 16th, and featuring a keynote by Bruce Schneier. [The program is here.](http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/tab2.aspx?EventID=959995) The workshop will look at how scholarship in law, economics and other fields within the behavioral sciences inform stakeholders about how markets, incentives and legal rules affect each other and shed light on determinations of liability and responsibility.

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Super-Injunction Dysfunction & Information Control Follies

by on June 1, 2011 · 5 comments

My latest Forbes column is entitled “With Freedom of Speech, The Technological Genie Is Out of the Bottle,” and it’s a look back at the amazing events that unfolded over the past week in the U.K. regarding privacy, free speech, and Twitter. I’m speaking, of course, about the “super-injunction” mess. I relate this episode to the ongoing research Jerry Brito and I are doing examining the increasing challenges of information control.

I begin by noting that:

When it comes to freedom of speech in the age of Twitter, for better or worse, the genie is out of the bottle. Controlling information flows on the Internet has always been challenging, but new communications technologies and media platforms make it increasingly difficult for governments to crack down on speech and data dissemination now that the masses are empowered. The most recent exhibit in the information control follies comes from the United Kingdom, where in the span of just one week the country’s enhanced libel law procedure was rendered a farce.

I go on to explain how Britain’s super-injunction regulatory regime unraveled so quickly and why it’s unlikely to be effectively enforceable in the future. Read the entire essay over at Forbes and then also check out Jerry’s Time TechLand editorial from last week, “Twitter’s Super-Duper U.K. Censorship Trouble.” I also just saw this piece by British defamation expect John Maher: “Law Playing Catch-up with New Media.” It’s worth a read.

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Be Sure to Attend CFP

by on May 31, 2011 · 1 comment

The Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference—the original privacy conference—is June 14th through 16th at the Georgetown University Law School here in D.C.

It has a neat layout this year, with a focus on each of the topics—computers, freedom, and privacy—on each of its three days. I’ve always found that it’s a rollicking conference at which the newest ideas and problems get aired. It’s got some big draws if you’re into that kind of thing: Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will speak on Thursday. But there really is something for everyone. TLFer’s Ryan Radia and Berin Szoka will join yours truly and other experts on a panel entitled “Do Not Track: Yaaay or Boooh?”, which should be fun.

Check out the agenda, then register.

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Konstantinos Stylianou on technological determinism and privacy

by on May 31, 2011

On the podcast this week, Konstantinos Stylianou, a former Fulbright Scholar now working on a PhD in law at Penn Law School, and author of the provocative new essay, “Hasta La Vista Privacy, or How Technology Terminated Privacy,” discusses technological determinism and privacy. Stylianou’s thesis is that the evolution of technology is eliminating privacy; therefore, lawmakers should switch emphasis from regulating the collection of information, which he claims is inevitable, to regulating the use of that information. Stylianou discusses why digital networks specifically make it difficult to keep information private, differences between hard and soft technological determinism, and when he thinks people will realize about their private information what the recording industry has finally realized about digital music.

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Sarkozy, Facebook, Moral Panics & the Third-Person Effect Hypothesis

by on May 29, 2011 · 0 comments

John Naughton, a professor at the Open University in the U.K. and a columnist for the U.K. Guardian, has a new essay out entitled “Only a Fool or Nicolas Sarkozy Would Go to War with Facebook.” I enjoyed it because it touches upon two interrelated concepts that I’ve spent years writing about: “moral panic” and “third-person effect hypothesis” (although Naughton doesn’t discuss the latter by name in his piece.) To recap, let’s define those terms:

“Moral Panic” / “Techno-Panic“: Christopher Ferguson, a professor at Texas A&M’s Department of Behavioral, Applied Sciences and Criminal Justice, offers the following definition: “A moral panic occurs when a segment of society believes that the behavior or moral choices of others within that society poses a significant risk to the society as a whole.” By extension, a “techno-panic” is simply a moral panic that centers around societal fears about a specific contemporary technology (or technological activity) instead of merely the content flowing over that technology or medium.

“Third-Person Effect Hypothesis“: First formulated by psychologist W. Phillips Davison in 1983, “this hypothesis predicts that people will tend to overestimate the influence that mass communications have on the attitudes and behavior of others. More specifically, individuals who are members of an audience that is exposed to a persuasive communication (whether or not this communication is intended to be persuasive) will expect the communication to have a greater effect on others than on themselves.” While originally formulated as an explanation for how people convinced themselves “media bias” existed where none was present, the third-person-effect hypothesis has provided an explanation for other phenomenon and forms of regulation, especially content censorship. Indeed, one of the most intriguing aspects about censorship efforts historically is that it is apparent that many censorship advocates desire regulation to protect others, not themselves, from what they perceive to be persuasive or harmful content. That is, many people imagine themselves immune from the supposedly ill effects of “objectionable” material, or even just persuasive communications or viewpoints they do not agree with, but they claim it will have a corrupting influence on others.

All my past essays about moral panics and third-person effect hypothesis can be found here. These theories are also frequently on display in the work of some of the “Internet pessimists” I have written about here, as well as in many bills and regulatory proposals floated by lawmakers. Which brings us back to the Naughton essay.

Continue reading →

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Does Spin Magazine Own the Word “Spin”?

by on May 29, 2011 · 1 comment

Their lawyers seem to think so.

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Unlocked Bootloaders, Increased Smartphone Openness & Zittrainian Generativity

by on May 27, 2011 · 136 comments

In my work critiquing the Lessig-Zittrain-Wu school of thinking–which fears the decline and fall of online “openness” and digital  “generativity”–I have argued that, while there is no such thing as perfect “openness,” things are actually getting more open and generative all the time. All that really counts from my perspective is that we are witnessing healthy innovation across the generativity continuum.

Will some devices and platforms continue to be “closed”? Sure. Think Apple and cable set-top boxes. But (a) there’s a ton of innovation taking place on top of those supposedly “closed” platforms and (b) there are other options consumers can exercise if they don’t like those content /information delivery methods. [See this chapter from the Next Digital Decade book for my fuller critique.]

And, even if one adopts a rigid Zittrainian view of openness and generativity, each day seems to bring more good news. From that perspective it’s hard to find a better headline than this one: “Smartphone Makers Bow to Demands for More Openness.” That’s from ArsTechnica today and it refers to the fact that smartphone giant HTC just announced it would no longer attempt to lock the bootloader on its smartphones, meaning geeks like me can root and hack their devices to their heart’s content. As the Ars story notes:

Continue reading →

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