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September 9, 2008
Tim Wu brings his customary clarity and vision to the McCain and Obama’s tech policies. Rather than sticking with the “McCain’s never used Google, oh, and he’s old, too,” Tim tries to get at the differences guiding them. Chief among them: McCain sees the Internet as just another bit of the telecom panoply, while Obama thinks it’s special. But read the whole thing to get past my over-simplification…
August 19, 2008
Google is taking to the public in its lobbying of the FCC to make the “white space” available for wireless broadband. This is the space between designated channels. Right now, we use it as sort of bowling alley gutter bumpers between assigned frequencies, but given modern technology, we can make better use of it, if only we’re allowed to.
Google has a form for sending a message to the FCC, as well as some useful explanatory materials…
August 15, 2008
Craig Newmark weighs in on McCain’s scary Net agenda. (Craig says something very nice about me, but I’m linking to him anyway.) Craig’s written about this before. For example: Why a president needs to know tech.
And the cuticle on Harold Feld’s pinky knows more about the Net than all of McCain’s personal IM list does (because McCain doesn’t have one). Harold is, um, not impressed with McCain’s policy statement. To put it mildly. [Later: Part 2 of Harold’s post is more substantive but not as funny.]
And that ol’ AT&T veteran and certified visionary — he was right and AT&T was wrong — David Isenberg is equally aghast.
Matt Stoller runs just the subheads of McCain’s policy statement. Hilarious. As Matt says, “Seriously, this is approaching Chuck Norris-level aggrandizement.”
[Later] Susan Crawford, professor of law and ICANN rep, and one of the most clear-headed policy people arounds thinks McCain’s policy is “wistful.”
It’s not just that McCain’s policy is ludicrously wrong about the source and nature of the Internet’s value. It’s that McCain might win, in which case, the Internet is going to get a whole lot worse for us in the US … and, given that high on McCain’s agenda is exporting US copyright totalitarianism, it’s bad news for the rest of the world, too.
(My take, along with some more links, is here It’s also up at HuffingtonPost.)
More links at Sascha Meinroth’s place, including his own analysis.
July 25, 2008
Kevin Werbach has posted a terrific open letter to John McCain – on the news that Colin [d’oh] Michael Powell is drafting a tech policy for him – saying that technology is not a bunch of bits and bytes that are beneath the attention of a president. Nicely done. [Obvious disclosure: Go Obama!]
May 20, 2008
WASHINGTON — According to data released today by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), at the end of 2007 the United States ranked 15th out of the 30 member nations in broadband penetration — down from 12th place in 2006, and continuing its slide from fourth place in 2001.
The OECD data is here.
April 29, 2008
Chris Conley, a Berkman Fellow working on the Open Net Initiative, is giving a lunchtime talk on “Digital Surveillance and Transparency.” [Note: I am live-blogging, hence typing quickly, missing things — missing many things today, actually — getting things wrong, etc. The session will be available in full at Media Berkman. ]
The Surveillance Project looks for evidence of surveillance. But lots of surveillers don’t talk about what they do, so the project looks at tools and technologies, infrastructure, and the legal and/or political constraints. And it looks at the implications for privacy, civil rights, etc.
A security consultant, Ed Giorgio, said “Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.” But this isn’t necessarily true, says Chris. Disclosure can make surveillance more effective. For example, people may behave more the way you want by letting them know they’re being watched.
Chris goes through the parameters of the question. The effect of transparency depends on what you’re trying to do with surveillance. E.g., Facebook’s Beacon ad program watches what you’re doing, without a lot of transparency, to increase the accuracy of ads. Phorm watches what sites you go to in order to achieve the same aim. Surveillance for security purposes is aiming at preventing actions and may well want to be non-transparent. There’s also the audience to consider: the targets of the surveillance, affected third parties (e.g., victims of botnet infections), and other interested parties. It is, he shows, an equation with lots of variables.
Chris walks through some examples. E.g., if you monitor file sharing, announcing that you’re detecting 5% might have an effect. Or, you might announce that you were detecting all files available via BitTorrent. Or all those who are uploading. Each of these might have a different effect. Does announcing a surveillance program deter terrorists? Perhaps not, and announcing it might enable terrorists to counter the surveillance.
What’s the difference with digital surveillance, Chris asks. You can collect more, from more places, of more types. The legal constraints are often very unclear. The mechanisms are rapidly changing. Private entities are being involved. E.g., OnStar was collecting conversations in cars for policing purposes.
The goal of the project is to argue that surveillance needs oversight, public discussion of the goals, and how those goals can be most narrowly met. Chris ends by pointing at Zimbabwe’s recent law that requires ISPs to wiretap their users. Even though it may not actually be happening, this “transparency” can “be a tool to suppress expression on the cheap.”
Q: In the US, are there laws beyond wiretapping, child porn, and financial data retention, that have caused private companies to alter their data retention processes?
A: There are no data retention laws in the US.
(ethanz) The gap between what may be possible in surveillance and what people perceive to be possible is pretty vast. In the middle east among activists, it’s believed that the entire Net passes through seven servers in DC, and that every communication is monitored. This rumor has attained the status of fact in the developing world. The panopticon effect is orders of magnitude more powerful than what these systems are capable of doing. People will not stop believing this.
Q: How well do the counter-digital-surveillance techniques work?
A: Unclear. If you’re identified as a target in a technologically sophisticated country, there’s very little you can do on line to counter it.
Ethan: In one country, they were listening in through parabolic mics a few doors down. There’s nothing you can do about it in a sufficiently motivated environment.
Chris: The best way to keep yourself unidentified is obfuscation. Talk about your topic when in World of Warcraft.
Do people use steganography?
Roger: It’s a myth that it can’t be detected. You can detect non-random low-order bits in graphics.
Ethan: And if they communicate through Tor, you’re flagging (in many countries) that you’re up to no good.
Ethan: I’d like information so people can make better risk assessments. How good are the surveillers? Are they as good as the “tin hats” think? I doubt it, but it would be good to know. E.g., people in Zimbabwe are dropping off of political humor lists, for fear they’re being watched. People over-estimate the ability of governments to watch us.
Gene: Let me sum up: To stop terrorists we’d also stop activists. We have a false sense of security but also a false chilling effect.
Chris: Yes, from the point of surveillance, terrorists and activists are both people trying to hide their communication.
Gene: If from a policy/legal standpoint there’s no difference…
Chris: In a repressive regime, there’s no difference…
Ethan: It’s a difference between behavioral and content analysis. If we were capable of doing the sort of content analysis that most people think we’re capable of doing, people wouldn’t be scared off from (e.g.) participating in Koranic online discussions to argue against suicide bombing.
April 20, 2008
Tomorrow, for the second to last class of our Web Difference class, John Palfrey is leading a discussion of chapter 11 of Yochai Benkler‘s Wealth of Networks. So, I just re-read it and liked it even more than the first time. Which is saying something.
The book as a whole is at times daunting because of its thoughtfulness, detail, and multi-disciplinary expertise. But, Chapter 11 should be required reading for anyone who cares about the Net’s future. In it, Benkler considers the multiple layers of challenges we face in building (and maintaining) the Net we want … one rich in collaborative creation. Clear, comprehensive, magnificent.
April 7, 2008
Steve Pepper is calling for a demonstration against Norway’s flaky acceptance of Open XML as an ISO standard, AKA Caving in to Microsoft. Here’s a list of the “irregularities” of the process.
April 5, 2008
Damian Kulash Jr., of the band OK Go, has a great Net neutrality op-ed in the NY Times. He ties it back to the rules of common carriage. Here’s an excerpt:
They won’t be blocking anything per se — we’ll never know what we’re not getting — they’ll just be leapfrogging today’s technology with a new, higher-bandwidth network where they get to be the gatekeepers and toll collectors. The superlative new video on offer will be available from (surprise, surprise) them, or companies who’ve paid them for the privilege of access to their customers. If this model sounds familiar, that’s because it is. It’s how cable TV operates.
We can’t allow a system of gatekeepers to get built into the network. The Internet shouldn’t be harnessed for the profit of a few, rather than the good of the many; value should come from the quality of information, not the control of access to it.
For some parallel examples: there are only two guitar companies who make most of the guitars sold in America, but they don’t control what we play on those guitars. Whether we use a Mac or a PC doesn’t govern what we can make with our computers. The telephone company doesn’t get to decide what we discuss over our phone lines. It would be absurd to let the handful of companies who connect us to the Internet determine what we can do online. Congress needs to establish basic ground rules for an open Internet, just as common carriage laws did for the phone system.
Susan Crawford views with concern the court decision that says that Roommates.com has to abide by the fair housing law that forbids asking about sexual orientation, gender, whether you have children, etc. (See her previous post as well.) It’s not that Susan would like to see some good, old-fashioned discrimination back in the housing market. Rather, she’s concerned about the continued applicability of laws that protect Web sites from bad speech that occurs on them. She cites from a recent CDT/EFF amicus brief:
Broad Section 230(c) immunity fosters freedom of speech and the development of the Internet. Without broad immunity, interactive computer services would lack the freedom to structure their websites in any way they want and to solicit and encourage user-generated content. They would run a high risk of being treated as publishers of objectionable third-party content and face liability for it. Broad immunity has allowed the flexibility for the eBays, Amazons, MySpaces, and blogs of the world to create unique sites that encourage the sharing and development of content, information, and speech by their users.
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