Filed under Public Policy …

May 09 2013
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Politics, Public Policy

Zuckerberg’s FWD Raises Criticism

Somini Sengupta and Eric Lipton Report in the New York Times

“Fwd.Us, the new nonprofit advocacy group created by Mr. Zuckerberg and several technology executives and investors to push for an overhaul of immigration law, has bankrolled television ads endorsing the conservative stands taken by three lawmakers, prompting an outcry from liberal groups and a call to withhold advertisements from Facebook.”

The group is engaging in a kind of lobbying that works like this: when senators and congresspeople support FWD’s policies on immigration reform, FWD then promises to help these representatives on other issues, unrelated to immigration. As Sengupta and Lipto go on to say:

The group has faced the most vocal criticism for television advertisements sponsored by its two subsidiaries, which are known as Americans for Conservative Action and Council for American Job Growth. One of those spots takes swipes at President Obama’s health policies. Another lauds the Keystone XL pipeline, fiercely opposed by many environmental groups.

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Apr 30 2013
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Politics, Privacy, Public Policy

After Petition Against CISPA, Obama Responds

Responding to a petition signed by over 100,000 people on the White House’s We The People website, the Obama Administration has issued clarifying remarks on its stance towards CISPA. The President does not support the version of CISPA that the House of Representatives passed earlier this month. And as the Senate is expected to put forth its own version of the bill, Obama hopes to provide guidance for any new legislation.

According to Obama’s official response, the Administration will only stand by information-sharing legislation that embody “three key principles.”

1. “minimizing information that can be used to identify specific individuals.” This means erring on the side of discretion regarding the personal information of users/clients especially if that data is irrelevant to a specific cyber attack.

This, of course, is uncomfortably vague. Without the need for warrants, how will government agencies and private companies decide what is relevant information and what is not?

2. “new information should enter the government through a civilian department rather than an intelligence agency.” Here, Obama would like to see that the data collected under the protection of CISPA is gathered not by the NSA or the CIA but through civilian channels, like the Department of Homeland Security.

A longstanding American axiom: the CIA should not be able to spy on US citizens.

3. “Any new legislation ought to provide legal clarity for companies…But it should not provide broad immunity for businesses and organizations.” The Administration is hoping to guard against “unwarranted disclosure of personal information,” as well as practices that would “likely to cause damage to third parties.”

This last principle hopes to rid the legislation of dangerously broad language that would embolden companies to needlessly turn over damning personal data.

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Apr 03 2013
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Politics, Public Policy, Web Culture, Web Design

From Gadget Reviews To Philosophical Critique: The State Of Tech Criticism

My post on BuzzFeed

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Mar 29 2013
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Privacy, Public Policy

The FBI And Gmail Spying Powers

“It’s no secret that under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the feds can easily obtain archive copies of emails. When it comes to spying on emails or Gchat in real time, however, it’s a different story, writes Ryan Gallagher of Slate.

From the perspective of law enforcement, the data that passes through email, cloud services and chat is difficult to monitor in real time. As Gallagher notes, “That’s because a 1994 surveillance law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet providers and phone companies to install surveillance equipment within their networks.” For newer forms of communication, the FBI’s spying power is restricted.

Gallagher summarizes a recent speech by the FBI’s general counsel, Andrew Weissmann, and reports that the agency will push a proposal this year to expand their “Internet spy powers.”

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Mar 22 2013
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Media, Politics, Public Policy

WikiLeaks, The Pentagon Papers And The Free Press

The Columbia Journalism Review interviews James Goodale, chief counsel of the New York Times during the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and author of the forthcoming book, “Fighting for the Press.”

On the similarities between the Pentagon Papers and WikiLeaks/Julian Assange:

Well, I think it’s very much the same thing. We have a leak of classified information. And by the way — you’ve got to remember [Bradley] Manning’s the leaker. Everyone says Assange is a leaker. He’s not a leaker. He’s the person who gets the information.

So why we’re so concerned about the prosecution of Assange is what he did is the same as what the Times did in the Pentagon Papers, and indeed what they did with WikiLeaks. The Times published on its website the very same material WikiLeaks published on its website. So if you go after the WikiLeaks criminally, you go after the Times. That’s the criminalization of the whole process.

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Mar 19 2013
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Google, Privacy, Public Policy

Google Testifies To Congress Calling For Email Privacy

Writing on The Verge, Carl Franzen reports that Google’s legal director, Richard Salgado, will testify in front of a subcommittee in the House of Representatives. Salgado will argue for a legislative update on the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).

The subcommittee’s meeting subject: “Lawful access to stored content,” will deal with our society’s mismatch between new information technology and outdated legal paradigms.

Other companies and privacy advocates have spent years calling for updates to ECPA. The law currently gives government agencies and law enforcement organizations the ability to request all user email older than 180 days with just a subpoena, while access to newer email requires a stricter search warrant. The law has also been used to enable the government to request other cloud-based user information and even mobile device location information. But Google and those calling for reform want to see search warrants required to access all stored web user info and emails, regardless of their freshness or whether users have opened them.

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Mar 15 2013
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Energy, Public Policy

In Search Of Energy Miracles

In a new monthly column on the political and technological challenges of climate change, Justin Gillis of The New York Times discusses the promising future of nuclear research and our troublesome hope for miracle energy solutions.

Two approaches to the issue — spending money on the technologies we have now, or investing in future breakthroughs — are sometimes portrayed as conflicting. In reality, that is a false dichotomy. The smartest experts say we have to pursue both tracks at once, and much more aggressively than we have been doing.

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Mar 06 2013
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Mobile, Public Policy

White House Reverses Its Stance On Cell Phone Unlocking After Citizen Petition

After being interviewed on Monday by Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now!” the political activist and former GOP staffer, Derick Khanna received a call from the White House. Khanna was told that the Obama administration would change it’s stance and come out against the Librarian of Congress who, in January 2013, decided that cellphone unlocking was a criminal offense.

The Administration said it will also put forth its own legislation that will decriminalize cellphone unlocking and would be in favor of tablet unlocking as well (so long as the consumer owns the device, and is not under contract by a carrier).

Khanna, along with Sina Khanifar, collected over 114,000 signatures on their online petition at “We The People,” a website run by the White House.

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Feb 20 2013
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Privacy, Public Policy, Web Culture

Proposed Ohio Law Would Officially Allow Snooping on Kids’ Text Messages, Calls, and Emails

Writing on Slate, Ryan Gallagher reports on an Ohio representative’s bill that would enable adults to monitor their children’s digital communication.

“Rep. Brian Hill, R-Zanesville, is pushing to amend a state wiretapping law…making it permissible for parents, grandparents, guardians, and custodians to snoop on their kids’ communications so long as they are under the age of 18. The interception would have to be made, according to the proposed law, “in good faith for the protection of the child.”

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Jan 22 2013
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Privacy, Public Policy, Web Culture

Even If It Enrages Your Boss, Social Net Speech Is Protected

In it’s 2nd social media report, the National Labor Relations Board aims to protect employees’ rights to speech.  The memo “covers 14 cases, half of which involve questions about employer social media policies…The remaining cases involved discharges of employees after they posted comments to Facebook.”

Writing in The New York Times, Steven Greenhouse goes through some of these cases and helps explain what kind of things employees can say online and what things can rightfully get someone fired.

The labor board’s rulings, which apply to virtually all private sector employers, generally tell companies that it is illegal to adopt broad social media policies — like bans on “disrespectful” comments or posts that criticize the employer — if those policies discourage workers from exercising their right to communicate with one another with the aim of improving wages, benefits or working conditions.

Greenhouse also mentions that California and Illinois recently joined 4 other states in preventing companies from forcing workers to hand over their social media passwords.

The author quotes the president of the National Workrights Institute, Lewis L. Maltby: “No one should be fired for anything they post that’s legal, off-duty and not job-related.”

These rulings do not apply to public sector workers, however. And as Greenhouse reminds us, the internet speech of teachers, police officers, corporate execs and college students falls into a bizarro grey area that we are only beginning to grapple with.

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