The Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF), which was formed a year ago to study online safety concerns and technologies, today issued its final report to the U.S. Attorneys General who authorized its creation. It was a great honor for me to serve as a member of the ISTTF and I believe this Task Force and its report represent a major step forward in the discussion about online child safety in this country.
The ISTTF was very ably chaired by John Palfrey, co-director of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and I just want to express my profound thanks here to John and his team at Harvard for doing a great job herding cats and overseeing a very challenging process. I encourage everyone to examine the full ISTTF report and all the submissions, presentations, and academic literature that we collected. [It’s all here.] It was a comprehensive undertaking that left no stone unturned.
Importantly, the ISTTF convened (1) a Research Advisory Board (RAB),which brought together some of the best and brightest academic researchers in the field of child safety and child development and (2) a Technical Advisory Board (TAB), which included some of America’s leading technologists, who reviewed child safety technologies submitted to the ISTTF. I strongly recommend you closely examine the RAB literature review and TAB assessment of technologies because those reports provide very detailed assessments of the issues. They both represent amazing achievements in their respective arenas.
There are a couple of key takeaways from the ISTTF’s research and final 278-page report that I want to highlight here. Most importantly, like past blue-ribbon commissions that have studied this issue, the ISTTF has generally concluded
there is no silver-bullet technical solution to online child safety concerns. The better way forward is a “layered approach” to online child protection. Here’s how we put it on page 6 of the final report:
The Task Force remains optimistic about the development of technologies to enhance protections for minors online and to support institutions and individuals involved in protecting minors, but cautions against overreliance on technology in isolation or on a single technological approach. Technology can play a helpful role, but there is no one technological solution or specific combination of technological solutions to the problem of online safety for minors. Instead, a combination of technologies, in concert with parental oversight, education, social services, law enforcement, and sound policies by social network sites and service providers may assist in addressing specific problems that minors face online. All stakeholders must continue to work in a cooperative and collaborative manner, sharing information and ideas to achieve the common goal of making the Internet as safe as possible for minors.
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Last month, I noted that UCLA Law School professor Doug Lichtman has a wonderful new monthly podcast called the “Intellectual Property Colloquium.” This month’s show features two giants in the field of tech policy — George Washington Law Professor Daniel Solove and Santa Clara Law Professor Eric Goldman –- discussing online privacy, defamation, and intermediary liability. More specifically, in separate conversations, Solove and Goldman both consider the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which shields Internet intermediaries from liability for the speech and expression of their users. Sec. 230 is the subject of hot debate these days and Solove and Goldman provide two very different perspectives about the law and its impact.
Goldman calls Sec. 230 “pure cyberspace exceptionalism” in the sense that it breaks from traditional tort norms governing intermediary liability. But he argues that this new online version of intermediary liability (which is extremely limited in scope) encourages more robust speech and expression than the older, offline version of liability (which was far more strict). I completely agree with Eric Goldman, but I respect the arguments that Lichtman and Solove raise about the privacy and defamation problems raised by the purist approach that Goldman and I favor.
Goldman also does a nice job dissecting the Roomates.com and Craigslist.com cases. And Lichtman brings up the JuicyCampus.com case during the conclusion. These are important cases for the future of Sec. 230 and online liability. Incidentally, there’s also an interesting conversation between Lichtman and Solove (around the 32:00 mark) about an issue that Alex Harris and Tim Lee have been raising here about the nature of online contracts and the perils of messy EULAs / Terms of Service (TOS).
These are two absolutely terrific conversations. Very in-depth and very highly recommended. Listen here.
[Note: I recently reviewed Daniel Solove’s important new book,
Understanding Privacy, here.]
Over the past year, I have been monitoring a very interesting trend with important ramifications for the future of Internet policy. State Attorneys General (AGs) — often in league with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) — have been striking a variety of “voluntary” agreements with various Internet companies that deal with child safety concerns or other online issues. These agreements require the companies involved to take various steps to alter site architecture and functionality, commit to stop certain practices, or take steps to block certain users (ex: predators; escort services) or types of content (ex: child porn; online “discrimination”) altogether.
To begin, let me be very clear about one thing: Some of these activities or types of content warrant a law enforcement response. That is certainly the case with child pornography or predation, for example. However, as I will note down below, there is a legitimate question about whether state officials and a non-profit private organization should be crafting legal or regulatory policies to address such concerns for a global medium like the Internet. Regardless, these agreements are creating a new layer of Internet regulation (almost extra-legal in character) that is worthy of exploration.
First, let me itemize some of these recent “voluntary” agreements between Internet companies and the AGs and/or NCMEC:
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I’ve spent a lot of time in recent years trying to debunk various myths about online child safety or at least put those risks into perspective. Too often, press reports and public policy initiatives are being driven by myths, irrational fears, or unjustified “moral panics.” Luckily, the New York Times reports that there’s another study out this week that helps us see things in a more level-headed light. This new MacArthur Foundation report is entitled Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project. This white paper is a summary of three years of research on kids’ informal learning with digital media. The survey incorporates the insights from 800 youth and young adults and over 5000 hours of online observations. The information will eventually be contained in a book from MIT Press (“Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media.”)
From the summary of the study on the MacArthur website:
“It might surprise parents to learn that it is not a waste of time for their teens to hang out online,” said Mizuko Ito, University of California, Irvine researcher and the report’s lead author. “There are myths about kids spending time online – that it is dangerous or making them lazy. But we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age.”
Importantly, regarding the concerns many parents and policymakers have about online predation, Ms. Ito told the
New York Times that, “Those concerns about predators and stranger danger have been overblown.” “There’s been some confusion about what kids are actually doing online. Mostly, they’re socializing with their friends, people they’ve met at school or camp or sports.”
In the report, according to the summary, the researchers “identified two distinctive categories of teen engagement with digital media: friendship-driven and interest-driven. While friendship-driven participation centered on “hanging out” with existing friends, interest-driven participation involved accessing online information and communities that may not be present in the local peer group.” The specific findings of the study are as follows:
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Of the titles I included in a mega-book review about Internet optimists and pessimists that I posted here a few months ago, I mentioned Lee Siegel’s new book, Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. It is certainly the dourest of the recent books that have adopted a pessimistic view of the impact the Internet is having on our culture, society, and economy. Because Siegel’s book is one of the most important technology policy books of 2008, however, I decided to give it a closer look here.
Siegel’s book essentially picks up where Andrew Keen’s leaves off in
Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture (2007). I posted a two-part review of Keen’s book here last year [Part 1, Part 2], but here’s a quick taste of Keen’s take on things. He argues “the moral fabric of our society is being unraveled by Web 2.0” and that “our cultural standards and moral values are not all that are at stake. Gravest of all,” Keen continues, “the very traditional institutions that have helped to foster and create our news, our music, our literature, our television shows, and our movies are under assault as well.”
As I noted in my earlier “Net optimists vs. pessimists” essay, after reading
Cult of the Amateur, I didn’t think anyone else could ever be quite as over-the-top and Chicken Little-ish as Keen. But after working my way through Siegel’s Against the Machine, I realized I was wrong. It made Keen seem downright reasonable and cheery by comparison! Keen and Siegel seem to be in heated competition for the title “High Prophet of Internet Doom,” but Siegel is currently a nose ahead in that race.
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This week, I have been up at Harvard University participating in another meeting of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF), of which I am a member. The ISTTF was organized earlier this year pursuant to an agreement between 49 state attorneys general (AGs) and social networking giant MySpace.com. A group of experts from academia, non-profit organizations, and industry were appointed to the Task Force, which is charged with evaluating the market for online child safety tools and methods and issuing a report on the matter to the AGs at the end of this year. ISTTF members have been meeting privately and publicly in both Cambridge, MA and Washington, D.C. The Task Force has been very ably chaired by John Palfrey, co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
Although the ISTTF is looking at a wide variety of tools and methods associated with online child protection (ex: filters, monitoring tools, educational campaigns, etc.), many of the AGs who crafted the agreement with MySpace that led to the Task Force’s formation have made it clear that they are
most interested in having the ISTTF evaluate age verification / online verification technologies. In fact, at the start of this week’s session at Harvard Law School, AGs Martha Coakely of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut both spoke and made it abundantly clear they expect the Task Force to develop age and identify-verification tools for social networking sites (SNS). AG Blumenthal said we need to deal with “the dangers of anonymity” and repeated his standard line about online age verification: “If we can put a man on the moon, we can make the Internet safe.” [Of course, putting a man on the moon took hundreds of billions of dollars and a decade to accomplish, but never mind that fact! Moreover, one could also argue that if we can put a man on the moon we can cure hunger, AIDS, and the common cold, but some things are obviously easier said than done. Finally, putting a man on the moon didn’t require all Americans or their kids to give up their anonymity or privacy rights in order to accomplish the feat!]
On many occasions here before, I have outlined various questions and reservations about proposals to mandate online age verification. Last year, I also published a lengthy white paper on the issue and hosted a lively debate on Capitol Hill [transcript here] about this. I also have discussed age verification in my book on parental controls and online child safety. [Braden Cox also talked about his experiences up at Harvard this week here, and CNet’s Chris Soghoian had a brutal assessment of this week’s proposals on his “Surveillance State” blog.]
In this essay, I will discuss the new fault lines in the debate over online age verification and outline where I think we are heading next on this front. I will argue:
- There is now widespread understanding that it is extraordinarily difficult to verify the ages and identities of minors online using the methods we typically use to verify adults. Because of this, age verification proponents are increasingly proposing two alternative models of verifying kids before they go online or visit SNS…
- First, for those who continue to believe that we must do whatever we can to verify kids themselves, schools and school records are increasingly being viewed as the primary mechanism to facilitate that. This raises two serious questions: Do we want schools to serve as DMVs for our children? And, do we want more school records or information about our kids being accessed or put online?
- Second, for those who are uncomfortable with the idea of verifying kids or using schools, or school records, to accomplish that task, parental permission-based forms of authentication are becoming the preferred regulatory approach. Under this scheme, which might build upon the regulatory model found in the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), parents or guardians would be verified somehow and then would vouch for their children before they were allowed on a SNS, however defined. But how do we establish a clear link between parents and kids? And will parents be willing to surrender a great deal more information (about themselves and their kids) before their kids can go online? And, is it sensible to use a law that was meant to protect the privacy and personal information of children to potentially gather a great deal more information about them, and their parents?
- It remains very unclear how either of those two verification methods would make children safer online. Indeed, that could actually make kids less safe by compromising their personal information and creating a false sense of security online for them and their parents.
- It is highly unlikely the Internet Safety Technical Task Force will be able to reach consensus on this complicated, controversial issue. A small camp will likely flock to the sort of proposals mentioned above. Another, larger camp (including me) will flock to education-based approaches to child safety as well increased reliance on other parental empowerment tools and strategies, industry self-regulatory efforts, social norms, and better intervention strategies for troubled youth. But the age verification debate will go on and, as was the case over the past two years, the legal battleground will be state capitals across America, with AGs likely pushing for age verification mandates regardless of what the Task Force concludes.
Continue reading if you are interested in the details.
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Forget net neutrality and the growing Googleplex. The real threat to Internet freedom comes from plain old criminal law.
In three weeks time, Missouri housewife Lori Drew will face trial for entering false personal details when she signed up for a MySpace account. Her indictment alone, whether or not she is convicted, should frighten anyone who’s ever filled out a form online.
The case, which captured the tabloid media when it broke last year, turns on unusual facts. Drew, posting as a teenage boy, created the MySpace account to probe why a neighbor’s daughter, Megan Meier, had broken off a friendship with her own daughter. She gave a few others access to the account, and things quickly spiraled out of control. Before long, “Josh Evans” (the fictional teen) and Meier were an online couple, and soon after that, they were hurling insults at one another on public message boards.
Meier, already suffering from depression, was devastated by Josh’s turnabout. A final private message from the Evans account–“The world would be a better place without you”–pushed her over the edge. Twenty minutes after receiving it, Meier hung herself in her closet.
Even though she was not responsible for the worst of the messages (according to a prosecutor who investigated the case but declined to file charged), Lori Drew mislead an emotionally troubled youth, and that was surely wrong.
But it’s more problematic to say that it’s a crime.
The theory of the prosecutor behind this case would make all Internet users criminals. Continue reading →
Just FYI, the latest update of my booklet on “Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools & Methods” is now live. The new version, Version 3.1, provides minor updates to all sections of the book and a new appendix of relevant research in the field. I issue major updates early each year and 1 or 2 tweaks during the course of the year to reflect the evolution of the parental control and online child safety market and debate. 
For those not familiar with the report, it explores the market for parental control tools, rating schemes, education efforts, and initiatives aimed at promoting online child safety. I believe that the parental controls and content management tools cataloged in the report represent a better, less restrictive alternative to government regulation. As I conclude after evaluating that state of the market: “There has never been a time in our nation’s history when parents have had more tools and methods at their disposal to help them decide what constitutes acceptable media content in their homes and in the lives of their children.”
The report is available free-of-charge on the PFF website, and the previous editions of the report are housed there too in case you want to see how it has evolved over the past two years. For those interested in taking a quick look at the report, I have embedded it down below the fold as a Scribd file. Finally, as is always the case, I encourage readers to send me updates and suggestions for how to improve the report and I will incorporate them into future versions.
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By Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer
As we noted in our intro to this ongoing series, Google’s tenth anniversary has passed with Googlephobia reaching new heights of hysteria.
But is Google really too big and dangerous, or are people just too lazy to find other alternatives to each of the wonderful services that Google offers? If one is truly paranoid about the firm’s supposed dominance, it doesn’t take much effort to live a Google-free life. To prove it, we set out to find alternatives to each of the services that Google provides. After awhile, we got a little tired of compiling alternatives in each category and just provided links for the additional choices at your disposal. It’s tough to see what the fuss is about with the cornucopia of choices at our disposal. If you don’t like Google, then just don’t use it or any of its services. The choice is yours.
In each case, we’ve listed Google first, even though Google may not be the market leader (
e.g., Google’s relatively unknown social network Orkut).
Search Engines
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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.