Over at TIME.com, [I recap](http://techland.time.com/2012/01/09/at-the-top-of-congresss-new-year-agenda-regulate-the-net/) the latest on SOPA and PIPA and look at what’s ahead once Congress reconvenes. I also address the argument that the piracy bills don’t amount to censorship since they’re aimed at unprotected speech.
>Both bills would likely affect non-infringing speech because they allow for entire sites to be blocked — even if they also include otherwise legal speech. Yet the Supreme Court has ruled, “Broad prophylactic rules in the area of free expression are suspect. Precision of regulation must be the touchstone in an area so closely touching our most precious freedoms.” And you can add to that a troubling lack of due process that’s a recipe for abuse.
Read [the whole thing here](http://techland.time.com/2012/01/09/at-the-top-of-congresss-new-year-agenda-regulate-the-net/).
Over at TIME.com, [I write](http://techland.time.com/2011/12/12/face-recognition-technology-comes-to-malls-and-nightclubs/) about face detection technology and how privacy concerns around the tracking of consumers and targeted advertising online may be coming to the physical world.
>As Congress and the FTC balance the public interest in privacy with the advantages of new tools, let’s hope they take Sen. Rockefeller’s insight to heart: Public policy does indeed have a tough time keeping up with technology. That should be a signal to policy-makers that they shouldn’t be too hasty, lest they strangle a nascent technology while it’s in the cradle.
>Smart sign and face detection technology is very new—so new that we don’t really know how consumers will react to it. It’s tempting to want to get out in front privacy concerns, but it would be better to allow the technology to develop and mature a bit before we make any judgments.
Read [the whole thing here](http://techland.time.com/2011/12/12/face-recognition-technology-comes-to-malls-and-nightclubs/).
On the podcast this week, Michael Froomkin, the Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Miami, discusses his new paper prepared for the Oxford Internet Institute entitled, Lessons Learned Too Well: The Evolution of Internet Regulation. Froomkin begins by talking about anonymity, why it is important, and the different political and social components involved. The discussion then turns to Froomkin’s categorization of Internet regulation, how it can be seen in three different waves, and how it relates to anonymity. He ends the discussion by talking about the third wave of Internet regulation, and he predicts that online anonymity will become practically impossible. Froomkin also discusses the constitutional implications of a complete ban on online anonymity, as well as what he would deem an ideal balance between the right to anonymous speech and protection from online crimes like fraud and security breeches.
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Regardless of what you think of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger or the recently announced purchase of SpectrumCo licenses by Verizon, these deals tell us one thing: wireless carriers need access to more spectrum for mobile broadband. If they can’t have access to TV broadcast spectrum, they will get it where they can, and that’s by acquiring competitors.
In a [new Mercatus Center Working Paper](http://mercatus.org/publication/federal-communication-commissions-excellent-mobile-competition-adventure) filed today as a comment in the FCC’s *15th Annual Report and Analysis of Competitive Market Conditions With Respect to Mobile Wireless* proceeding, [Tom Hazlett](http://mason.gmu.edu/~thazlett/) writes that while the market it competitive, the prospects for “new” spectrum look dim.
>[S]pectrum allocation is the essential public policy that enables—or limits—growth in mobile markets. Spectrum, assigned via liberal licenses yielding competitive operators control of frequency spaces, sets “disruptive innovation” in motion. Liberalization allowed the market to do what was unanticipated and could not be specified in a traditional FCC wireless license. That success deserves to grow; the amount of spectrum allocated to liberal licenses needs to expand. Additional bandwidth raises all consumer welfare boats, promoting competitive entry, technological upgrades, and more intense rivalry between incumbent firms.
>In this, the *Report* (correctly) follows the strong emphasis placed on pushing bandwidth into the marketplace via liberal licenses in the FCC’s *National Broadband Plan*, issued in March 2010. That analysis underscored the looming “mobile data tsunami,” noting that the long delays associated with new spectrum allocations seriously handicap emerging wireless services. But, as if to spotlight a failure to adequately address those challenges, the FCC Report speaks approvingly of the Department of Commerce (which presides over the spectrum set-aside for federal agencies) initiative that proposes a “Fast Track Evaluation report . . . examin[ing] four spectrum bands for potential evaluation within five years . . . totaling 115 MHz . . . contingent upon the allocation of resources for necessary reallocation activities.” A five-year regulatory “fast track”—if everything goes as planned.
>To paraphrase John Maynard Keynes: *In the long run, we’re all in a dead spot.*
You can [read the full report at the Mercatus Center website](http://mercatus.org/publication/federal-communication-commissions-excellent-mobile-competition-adventure).
Over at TIME.com, [I write](http://techland.time.com/2011/12/05/the-case-against-more-wireless-spectrum-for-first-responders/?iid=tl-main-feature) about the recent compromise on the D Block, which would give more spectrum to public safety, and I ponder if there may not be a better way..
>Patrol cars are as indispensable to police as radio communications. Yet when we provision cars to police, we don’t give them steel, glass and rubber and expect them to build their own. So why do we do that with radio communications?
Read [the whole thing here](http://techland.time.com/2011/12/05/the-case-against-more-wireless-spectrum-for-first-responders/?iid=tl-main-feature).
On the podcast this week, danah boyd, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, and Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, discusses her recent article in First Monday with Ester Hargitai, Jason Schultz, and John Palfrey. It’s entitled, “Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.” boyd discusses COPPA as it applies to Facebook, namely that children under 13 are not allowed to use the site. She then talks about her research, which looks at whether this restriction is helping parents protect their children’s privacy, and whether it is meeting COPPA’s ultimate goals. boyd discusses her findings, which indicate parents are allowing their children to lie about their age to obtain a Facebook account. According to boyd, parents want guidelines when it comes to data protection, but they do not necessarily want strict requirements. boyd feels that COPPA is not achieving its goal of privacy protection and should be evaluated with more transparency so parents and the public in general know how to protect their privacy.
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Over at TIME.com, [I write](http://techland.time.com/2011/11/28/hackers-blow-up-illinois-water-utility-or-not/) about the “Russian hackers are in our water plants” min-panic that erupted last week. Turns out it was a false alarm, but that didn’t stop the rhetoric from going on overdrive. Check out [this story from Nov. 21](http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Stuxnet-Hit-on-Utility-Signals-New-Era/story.xhtml?story_id=111003TTUKBI&full_skip=1), one day before DHS and the FBI announced there was no attack, which said that a variant of Stuxnet had been used to attack the Illinois water plant and “caused the destruction of a water pump”. My takeaways from this incident:
>First, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions based on sketchy first reports of cyberattacks. Bad reporting tends to take on a life of its own. Two years ago, an electrical blackout in Brazil was similarly blamed on hackers, but the cause turned out to be [nothing more than sooty insulators](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/brazil_blackout/). That hasn’t stopped pundits, defense contractors and politicians from citing the debunked incident as evidence that we need comprehensive legislation to regulate Internet security.
>Second, although Bellovin was mistaken in believing the initial reports, he’s right that such an attack is possible. The discussion should be about the possible magnitude of attacks and what can be done to prevent them. Although the rhetorical engines of those who want new cyber-legislation were spinning into overdrive before the facts abruptly shut them down, this incident, if it had been a cyberattack, would not have shown a dire need for new rules. Instead, it showed that the damage was not catastrophic and that the water utility worked well with federal authorities under existing law.
Read [the whole thing](http://techland.time.com/2011/11/28/hackers-blow-up-illinois-water-utility-or-not/) at TIME.com.
On the podcast this week, Joseph Flatley, Features Editor with The Verge, discusses his recent article entitled, “Condo at the End of the World.” Flatley first gives an overview of The Verge, a new website dedicated to in-depth reporting usually seen in traditional media such as newspapers and magazines. He describes The Verge as a website dedicated not only to what technology means, but also to how it affects our lives. The discussion then turns to Flately’s article on survival condos, which have attracted the attention of wealthy citizens concerned about end of the world calamity and economic collapse. According to Flatley, the interest in survival condos has increased after 9/11, and after the recent economic downturn. The “condos” are abandoned missile silos that date back to the cold war. Flatley describes his interviews with different people who are carving out a market for high-end survival real estate, turning these abandoned missile silos into luxury living. He describes how survivalists might live in an end of the world scenario, including what they will eat and how they will stay properly hydrated.
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Over at TIME.com, I write that while Congress mulls an Internet blacklist in SOPA, there are efforts underway to reengineer parts of the Net to make communications more decentralized and censorship-proof. These include distributed and decentralized DNS systems, currencies, and social networks, as well as attempts to circumvent ISPs using mesh networking.
>It’s not a certainty that these projects will all succeed. Most probably won’t. Yet these far-out efforts serve as proof-of-concept for a censorship-resistant Internet. Just as between Napster and BitTorrent there was Gnutella and Freenet, it will take time for these concepts to mature. What is certain is the trend. The more governments squeeze the Internet in an attempt to control information, the more it will turn to sand around their fingers.
Read the whole thing here.
On the podcast this week, Laura Heymann, Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School, discusses her recent article in the Boston College Law Review entitled, The Law of Reputation and the Interest of the Audience. Heymann proposes viewing the concept of reputation as something formed by a community rather than something owned by an individual. Reputation, according to Heymann, is valuable because of the way a community uses it. She then discusses how thinking of reputation differently leads to thinking about different remedies for reputation-based harms. Heymann thinks current remedies for damage to one’s reputation do not focus enough on the affect it has on the community and proposes remedies for emotional injuries be separate from remedies for damages to the reputation. She then discusses how the Internet affects reputation, including how it enlarges communities, and how it intersects with privacy.
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.