Will Mobile be the Death of Open Source?

Remember when free, open source software was going to topple Microsoft and Apple, and Linux was going to revolutionize the world?  The Open Source Movement - yes, a genuine social movement - has often been heralded for both producing great software and for providing an alternative ideology for how and why things ought to be accomplished.  The only problem has been its inability to go mainstream.  Despite years of constantly churning out high-quality products, it has stubbornly remained solely in the realm of the programmer/hacker community and within the halls of high-tech industry. 

But this is old news.  What's becoming a far more urgent existential threat is mobile computing. 

Even long-time members and supporters of the Open Source Movement have rarely stuck to open source for mobile.  One main reason is hardware.  When you buy an iPhone you're not empowered to customize the device the same ways you'd be able to on a PC.  Mobile devices themselves have far more built-in controls which means you often have to "jailbreak" them in order to do any basic tinkering.  Another reason is service providers.  When you buy a smartphone it would lose most of its value if you didn't subscribe to a cellular carrier's plan to actually, you know, use your phone as a phone.  But the trade-off is, again, more controls being placed upon your phone's level of operability.

Open Source is certainly not dead in mobile computing (yet).  Ubuntu Touch is soon to be released and, stemming from the Linux family tree, will serve as an open source alternative for non-Apple-based smartphones and tablets.   And, of course, Google's Android is (sort of) open source as well. 

But where's the buzz?  Where's the old energy?  Any supporters of the Open Source Movement need to be concerned about the current trajectory things are going in - and do something about it.  Download, experiment, and, above all, PLAY!


Open source operating systems:

• Ubuntu Touch
• Firefox OS
• Sailfish
• MeeGo

Mobile Apps:

• Apps for Android
• Apps for iPhone

  

Social Networking Sites Become Increasingly Political...

Since its inception, the Internet has often been heralded by some as a potential tool for raising levels of civic and political engagement.  New evidence seems to (finally) support this claim.

From 2008 to 2012 there was a major jump in how many online social network users engaged in some type of political activity, according to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.  Most notably, the overall number of people who posted links to political news stories or articles rose from 3% to 19%.

Here are a few other notable statistics:

• 38% of SNS users "Liked" or promoted political material that others have posted.
• 35% encouraged other people to vote.
• 34% posted their own comments/thoughts on political issues.
• 33% reposted political content.
• 31% encouraged others to take action.
• 28% posted links to political stories for others to read.
• 21% belonged to a group that is involved with a political issue or promoting a political cause.
• 20% actually followed elected officials or public figures.

Also, significantly, the total amount of SNS users who said they engaged in at least one of these activities was 66%.

What would be interesting to see is further research on the growth patterns for specific social-network sites.  For instance, how people use Facebook is often very different from how they use Twitter or Instagram, so breaking down these overall numbers into more detail would be instructive.  Also, correlating these numbers with voter turnout patterns or political party identification might also be revealing about the current state of affairs.

Nevertheless, considering that 66% of social-network users are engaging in some sort of political activity online, is that surprising, or does it merely confirm what you may have already noticed in your increasingly politicized news feeds?

  

Will Online Social Networks Help Find the Boston Marathon Bomber?

As I write this post exactly 48 hours after the horrific Boston marathon bombing, the race is on to discover the identity of the bomber(s) and there is a mass movement online of individuals participating in the hunt.  For better or worse.

On Facebook, these IMGUR high-resolution photos are spreading like wildfire - depicting a sequence of images where, some are claiming, two men are seen at the site of both bombs, mysteriously losing their bulging backpacks en route from one site to the next.

Also, on Reddit, there is currently a popular thread ominously-located in the "Conspiracy" category titled: "Two males seen at the site of both bombs, photographed later walking away - only one has a bag. The first picture shows a clear bulge from the bag, very consistent with the type of pressure cooker believed to be used." It's sole purpose seems to be to let orindary people chime in with their opinions on the photos.

There is also a more general Reddit discussion thread devoted to finding the bombers. Meanwhile, another thread is now emerging devoted to confirming certain people as innocent.

This is obviously a tremendously sensitive issue.  On the one hand, these public crowdsourcing efforts are a sign of just how much Americans want to help and contribute to the cause of finding whatever terrorists launched the attack and bringing them to justice.  On the other hand, and this ought to be clear to any reasonable person, there is an enormous danger of the crowd completely misidentifying individuals in such photos as terrorists when they are completely innocent.  And due to the viral online nature of these discussions, a mob mentality could ensue irreparably damaging someone's reputation forever based on the mere conjecture of totally random conspiracy-theorists on the Internet.

Anyone participating in these online discussion forums really ought to heed Reddit's own caveat...

This subreddit is a place for people to post images, links, and thoughts about the potential identities of those responsible for the bombing. HOWEVER, please keep in mind that most or all of the "suspects" being discussed are innocent people.

 

IMPORTANT: We do not support any form vigilante justice. We are not law enforcement. If you have major information about the identities of any of the bombers, please send a tip to the FBI or BPD.

Look, we all want to help.  And if these public crowdsourcing efforts actually lead to finding the bombers, that will truly be an amazing thing.  However, this is such a frightening endeavor, and so fraught with peril, that collectively we need to, at the very least, exercise severe caution and make sure that our efforts are helping more than they are harming the very-real investigation performed by law enforcement and counter-terrorist professionals.

  

Closing the Gender Gap in Computer Science...

There is a fabulous article in the New York Times today profiling the gender gap in computer science.  Just to restate some of the statistics...

• Even though women represent more than half the overall work force, they hold less than a quarter of computing and technical jobs.
• Women earn just 12% of computer science degrees, down from 37% in 1984.
• Roughly 74% of girls in middle school express an interest in engineering, science and math. But by the time they get to college, just 0.3% choose computer science as a major.

As an instructor of computer science myself, I can definitely attest the accuracy of these figures.  In my freshman-level Intro to Programming class, I would anecdotally say that it's common to have only 6 or 7 female students in every class of 35.  In the more advanced courses, that number dwindles to only 1 or 2.

Researchers have attributed this phenomenon to a variety of causes such as discouraging parents, inadequate resources for teachers, and a lack of exposure.  None of these seem especially convincing.  After all, aren't boys similarly affected by teachers not having adequate resources for their classrooms, and in this digital era aren't boys and girls pretty equally exposed to high-tech products and the Internet from an early age?

What groups like Girls Who Code are doing is very welcome.  They are strategically shifting towards teaching girls how to actually write code, and moving away from past attempts at teaching girls the skills needed to build start-ups, raise venture capital, and climb the management ranks at big companies.  Not that these are bad things, mind you.  They just haven't led to more women pursuing high-tech careers.

Girls Who Code should be lauded, but it's a shame that such groups are even needed in the first place.  Why does this gender gap even exist?  Socialization must be the biggest culprit.  It is certainly not inability, contrary to some archaic stereotypes.  In fact, most of the female programming students I have had regularly outperformed the overall class average.  And it isn't discrimination either.  My experience echoes that of the tech executives, recruiters, and financiers cited in the Times article:  The problem is that women simply aren't walking through the door.

The solution to the gender gap ultimately rests upon changing social norms.  That's a process that takes time, and I'll leave it up to the advocacy coalitions to determine the best tactics for realizing this objective.  I'll just add, from the relative insider perspective of a political-scientist-turned-computer-scientist, that nobody should be intimidated from pursuing a high-tech skillset.

  

The Mess that is U.S. Cybersecurity Policy...

After spending the better part of the past two months conducting research on cybersecurity, I am dumbstruck at the headlines that continue to come out on a daily basis.

Let's create a little context.  Just in the past few months, the world has been made aware that large American businesses like Google, Microsoft, and the New York Times have been the victims of massive cyberattacks originating in China.  This follows on the heels of news that U.S. governmental institutions like the Defense Department have been similarly and continuously attacked as well.  Then a report comes out, confirming what U.S. intelligence officials secretly were aware of for years, that an overwhelming number of such cyberattacks can be tracked down to a single building on a single street in Shanghai - which just so happens to be the headquarters of the Chinese government's military cyberunit, named Unit 61398.

So there is pretty damning evidence that the Chinese government - not a random group of hackers, but the military itself - is actively engaged in cyberwarfare against American businesses and American governmental institutions.  In response, what have we seen the discussion in the U.S. focus on?  How about criticism of American companies being "disturbingly silent" about when they are victims of a cyberattack, and debates over whether companies should tell the public when they get attacked.  It seems that some people consider the solution to cyberwarfare to be, simply, better information-sharing.

Granted, the Obama Administration has tried to present itself as taking a harder line on the issue.  The President recently went so far as to issue an Executive Order, however it, too, merely encourages the voluntary sharing of information with the private sector.  Also, officials have said they plan to tell China’s new president, Xi Jinping, this week that "the volume and sophistication of Chinese cyberattacks have become so intense that they threaten the relationship between Washington and Beijing".  Their solution?  To get China to agree to "acceptable norms of behavior in cyberspace".

In the meantime, the cyberattacks against U.S. targets continue.  Oh yeah, and the proposed Cybersecurity Act of 2012 has just died in the Senate due to partisan bickering and the filibuster.

Let's be constructive, shall we? 

First, let us recognize plainly that the ideas of better information-sharing and general coordination between the public and private sectors, and within the private sector, are definitely worthy ideas and ought to be pursued.  However, there's nothing new about them.  They've been part of the policy discourse at least since the Bush Administration's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace was developed just after the 9/11 attacks.  So it's time officials stop banging that drum as smokescreen for their lack of new ideas.

Second, the challenges of cybersecurity reside on two fronts:  prevention and response.  Better information-sharing really only targets the response side of the equation, seeking to mitigate the effects of a cyberattack after it has occurred.  Such ideas do nothing in terms of prevention.

What steps can be taken to actually try to prevent cyberattacks?  There are two main ideas circulating out there...

The first is deterrence in the form of the U.S. engaging in offensive cyberwarfare of its own.  As General Keith Alexander, who runs both the National Security Agency and the military's Cyber Command has said, foreign governments need to fear that the U.S. would carry out offensive cyberattacks if America were hit with a major attack.  This far more proactive (or aggressive) policy would require an established set of criteria for when an offensive cyberattack was warranted as well as specific rules of engagement.  These determinations would be no easy feat in the context of cyberspace.

The second is enabling the government to mandate that the private sector deploy certain cybersecurity measures on its own networks.  Thus far, the design of national cybersecurity policy has focused almost exclusively on voluntary public-private partnerships.  But at what point do government mandates start to make sense?  Anytime there is discussion of not just government regulations, but government mandates, it becomes highly politicized - and rightfully so.

It's not too hard to imagine why both of these solutions fail to gain much traction.  In purely political terms, no one wants to come across as either too militaristic or too authoritarian.  But in the face of an ongoing cyberwar with China, doesn't something need to change at a fundamental level besides simply improving information-sharing and getting China to sign an agreement on "acceptable norms of behavior"?

Where is the American strategy for actually preventing cyberattacks?

  

Amazon's Domain Name Squatting Overreach...

Who should own specific top-level domain names?  We're all familiar with .com, .net, and .edu, and maybe a few country codes like .uk as well, all of which are administered by the independent institution known as ICANN.  But with decisions looming over the fate of several new top-level domain names (gTLDs), to what extent will the most well-capitalized private corporations be able to dominate the future of the Internet's domain name system?

For some context, consider this Wall Street Journal article reporting on how Amazon has recently submitted applications to ICANN to acquire new gTLDs including ".book", ".author", and ".read".  They're also trying to buy the rights to non-book-related suffixes like ".movie", ".wow", and ".app". 

Not everyone is thrilled with this prospect, as you might imagine.  Last week, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers raised their objections, and tech companies including Google, Microsoft, and Apple are objecting to Amazon's request for ".app", to name only one example, although all of these companies are vying for their own share of gTLDs as well.

Here's the debate.  Those who object to Amazon's squatting of gTLDs argue that granting ownership rights of such generic domains to single private entities is anti-competitive.  They argue that doing so would create a monopolistic environment with great potential for abuse, especially considering Amazon has already gone on record stating that they have no plans to resell any domain names using those suffixes to outside parties.

Meanwhile, Amazon (and other firms who are submitting similar requests) defend themselves by arguing that obtaining these doman names would "protect the integrity of their brand and reputation".  They point to the same system that's been used for years for adminstering conventional domain names.  Amazon's senior counsel is quoted as saying, "Why should a company be able to own 'widget.com' and not '.widget'?  There is no evidence that past 'closed' domains have led to any market power".

So where do you stand?  Regardless of which argument resonates more with you personally, what this case really highlights is ICANN's flawed model for both distributing domain names and also for resolving disputes.

As The Nerfherder has complained about before, ICANN undermines its own mandate by distributing domain names, not based on principles of fairness, but solely on a "first-come-first-served" basis.  Yes, this principle might be conceived as a fair one, however, when you look at the real-life consequences of this policy - namely, the hostage-taking of domain name rights by squatters who have no intention whatsoever to even use them - then it's hard to argue that ICANN's system isn't badly in need of reform.

How ICANN resolves disputes over domain names, as is the case here with Amazon, is also problematic.  Their decision over who gets the rights to ".app", for example, will have multi-million dollar implications, and the process by which ICANN will determine the winners and losers isn't nearly transparent enough.  Who only knows how many free dinners or vacation junkets or back-room deals are influencing the decision-making process?  Maybe none; but that's the point - we'll never know.  Shedding more sunlight into the process would mitigate conspiratorial fears of corruption.

Ultimately, the narrow question over Amazon's request for very generic domain names is an economic one.  Both sides in the debate make legitimate arguments, so what's really at issue is how best to allocate resources to ensure both an innovative and competitive marketplace.  However, the more general question, as it relates to ICANN, is a normative question about values.  What type of Internet do we want to create, and what political values do we want to guide decision-making? 

That is the lens through which everyone should be interpreting these headlines.

  

Has the Digital Divide Withered Away?

Since the Web's inception, scholars have raised concerns about how the Digital Divide - the disparity between those people with Internet access and skill-sets versus those without - was leaving behind millions of Americans from the educational and economic opportunities that the Web provides.

A new research study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, however, indicates that the Digital Divide may, in fact, be withering away - or may have even disappeared altogether.

Granted, there are still plenty of Americans with no Internet access, particularly in rural areas, and that's a problem.  However, if we focus on people's technical abilities to use the Web interactively, and one can reasonably argue that regular use of online social networking sites is a measure of that, then many of the early disparities are significantly narrowing.  Consider...

• Race:  Blacks and Hispanics are now using online social networking sites at a greater clip than Whites (68% and 72%, respectively, to 65%).


• Education:  High school graduates and non-graduates are using social networking sites at almost exactly the same clip as college graduates (66%-65%).


• Income:  Those making less than $30,000/year use social networking sites more than those earning more than $75,000/year (72%-66%).

What does this mean?

Surely, there remain great inequalities of wealth in American society, but it's possible that Internet usage is no longer an accurate reflection of those inequalities.  It has become as pervasive as electricity and running water, used by rich and poor alike.

The one object of contention in this study is the finding that those on the lower income and education ends of the spectrum actually have higher rates of Internet access and social networking usage through mobile devices.  At first glance, this may seem to suggest another positive development - if one assumes that technical abilities on a mobile device stem from strong technical abilities on a PC or laptop.  But that's not necessarily the case.  It's possible that such high rates of mobile penetration really indicate an alternative track stemming from a lack of access to non-mobile computing devices.  And, unfortunately, PCs are still where most white-collar office skill-sets still call their home.

So, wither the Digital Divide?  Maybe we're moving in the right direction.  But we're not there yet.

  

Political Parties Struggle to Define Internet Freedom...

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article yesterday titled, "GOP looks to rebrand as new Internet freedom fighters".  It describes current Republican efforts, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, to establish an "Internet freedom platform" that advocates against regulation, supports a ban on taxes, and focuses on online rights.

These are all apple-pie statements that nobody's going to disagree with.  The devil is, as always, is in the details.  What "Internet freedom" means for one person might mean something entirely different to another.

For example, take the issue of Net Neutrality.  A reasonable argument can be made by the anti-neutrality crowd that Internet freedom means preventing the government from regulating the nation's telecommunications companies.  It's the libertarian principle that the government should stay out of Internet affairs altogether.  On the other hand, the pro-neutrality crowd could argue that Internet freedom really means protecting the rights of individuals from censorship and anti-competitive trusts.

So does "Internet freedom" mean freedom from regulation for businesses, or freedom of speech and choice for individuals?

The WSJ article is right in suggesting that neither political party has thus far succeeded in narrowing their message of what it means to support the concept.  Republicans have taken heat from Internet activists for coming out against Net Neutrality and consumer protections, while Democrats have also come under scrutiny for backing anti-piracy legislation and clamping down on sites like Wikileaks, to name only a few quick examples.

Let's help our nation's politicians get better at this since they often seem so utterly lost in the darkness when it comes to Internet politics and policies.  Here are a few recommendations to help clue them in...

1. "Internet freedom" should, especially for political purposes, refer to individual freedoms first, and corporate interests second.  This is why talking about no new sales taxes (and how it directly affects the individual consumer's wallet) is good, but talking about letting telecom corporations do whatever they want (regardless of the consequences to the individual) is bad.


2. Focus on rights.  Freedom of speech, freedom of choice, privacy rights, etc.  These are all big-time winning issues.


3. Avoid any appearance of "cracking down" on anything, except child pornography and cyberterrorism.  Government should stop overreaching on issues like preventing piracy by fining a 10-year-old girl $20,000, and should instead - oh, I don't know - put those same efforts into preventing the Chinese government from hacking our military's nuclear commands.  I dare any politician to oppose that idea.


4. Get issue-specific:  Support Net Neutrality, protect individual data from being sold to third-party marketing companies without their consent, oppose the anti-piracy SOPA and PROTECT-IP Acts, support local-level WiFi initiatives, and come out staunchly against corporate efforts to track a person's location and browsing history through their mobile devices.  Oh yes, and on the international front, fight against any state-sponsored efforts geared towards censorship, or control of the Web's architecture, in general.

How's that for an Internet freedom platform?

What's really needed is the establishment of a set of constitutional principles that call for the government to adopt as much of a libertarian hands-off approach as possible, except when it comes to guaranteeing the protection of individual rights and liberties.

Sound familiar?
 

  

Open Source Education Resources...

Open source software has, for years, been touted as the embodiment of the Web's founding principle - resource sharing.  The central idea is that, rather than all content being closed and proprietary, authors could choose to openly share their material and make it available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design.  Making one's work open source transforms it into a collaborative project, often leading to a better end-product.

This is hardly news.  However, with the start of a new semester, it seemed prudent to raise awareness about an equally valuable yet little-known movement known as Open Educational Resources (OER).  Guided by the same open source principles, OER is a collection of freely accessible, openly formatted and openly licensed documents and multimedia files that can be used by any educator or, really, anybody who wants to learn.  Educators voluntarily share their course materials - including syllabi, readings, assignments, modules, audio and video lectures, and more - all in the interest of sharing and collaboration.

If you take a look at the OERCommons.org website, you'll notice that there are thousands of materials posted covering most major fields of study, and designed for primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels of education.  It's as valuable for a second grade or high school teacher as it is for a college professor.

For example, after a quick search on the topic of "Web Development", this course came up, along with all of its corresponding materials.  And, again, because it is an OER resource, not only can I use these materials for my own course without worrying about copyright issues, but I can also modify them and try to improve upon them, so long as I then re-share my modifications and give attribution to the original creator.  It's not only allowed; it's actually encouraged.

Yes, there are plenty of other projects out there seeking to make educational content freely available.  For instance, my personal favorite is Coursera, which allows anyone to enroll in an ivy-league-caliber class for free.  But while making it free to enroll in a high-quality educational class is a very positive thing, it's still fundamentally different than making the class design itself an open and collaborative effort.

Designing syllabi through open and mass collaboration?  The world is clearly progressing forward.

  

Mobile Privacy and the APPS Rights Act...

Mobile privacy is suddenly on the national political agenda in a big way.  On Friday, the F.T.C. announced recommended mobile privacy guidelines that "lays out a clear picture of what sort of activities might bring a company under investigation".  This comes right on the heals of Congressman Hank Johnson (D-GA) releasing the APPS Rights Act which aims to "improve the security and transparency of user data in mobile apps".

What's at issue here is the fact that, as people are now statistically connecting to the Internet more frequently through mobile devices like smartphones or tablets than they are through PCs or laptops, the laws regulating the types of data that companies can collect, store, and sell to third-parties are quickly being found to be either obsolete or nonexistent.  There have been cases where companies have collected personal information about underage users younger than 13 and then also accessed information about all of the contacts in their address book, and other cases where companies have conveyed the impression that an app will gather geolocation data only one time, when, in fact, it does so repeatedly.

There has always been some level of online privacy legislation in the works; mobile is just lagging behind.  Thus, there have been policy proposals for a Do-Not-Track setting in common PC-based web browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer, but not for mobile browsers or apps.

But this is hardly a slam-dunk, no-brainer of an issue.  First of all, there are the familiar competing interests to consider between what is good for individual privacy versus what is good for innovation and macroeconomic growth.  As some tech observers have argued, these types of federal privacy guidelines are usually unenforceable, written by people outside the industry, and place a huge legal burden on small developers.

Second, if you actually read the text of the APPS Rights Act, you'll notice that, when it gets down to it, the noble goals of "Transparency, User Control, and Security" are all addressed by a set of guidelines that will most likely just be incorporated into the legalese of companies' Terms of Service agreements (which nobody ever reads).  Virtually no common practices by mobile developers have actually been prohibited.

That said, I would argue that such federal guidelines still serve an important and positive role.  Whether or not they develop into meaningful regulations with the force of law isn't necessarily the point.  Such guidelines act as policy catalysts.

For instance, while it's been introduced several times in the past decade, a Do-Not-Track bill has never actually been passed by Congress.  Instead, companies like Microsoft, Apple, and the non-profit Mozilla Foundation have chosen to voluntarily incorporate Do-Not-Track features into their software - either because they saw a legitimate market demand for it, or because they sought to preempt government regulation.  Either way, they've done it.  Additionally, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - the leading standards-setting institution for the Web - is currently in the process of developing a Do-Not-Track technical standard, the DNT header field, to build the feature into the code itself.

What this demonstrates is that, while federal online privacy guidelines might truly be unenforceable, they nevertheless still often serve a vital purpose in guiding the direction of policymaking in the private sector.  And even if the F.T.C.'s new recommendations and the APPS Rights Act ultimately go nowhere, that matters.

  

Unlocking Your Phone is Now Illegal (and that's just ridiculous)...

With almost no media attention, this week witnessed one of the great tragedies of the Digital Age.  Up until now, when you bought a cell phone designed for one service carrier's network, you had the ability to "unlock" the phone to use it on another's.  This isn't piracy or copyright infringement, as anyone who ever wanted to use their iPhone overseas, or wanted to switch from AT&T to Verizon after their contract was up, can attest.  It was just a matter of people who legally purchased a device wanting to open up the hood and make some adjustments.

Nevertheless, the Librarian of Congress decided to close a long-standing exemption in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and make unlocking one's phone illegal as of this past Saturday.  In response, there's now a White House petition circulating seeking to overturn the Librarian's decision.

Everyone should consider for themselves the pros and cons behind unlocked cell phones.  Much of the debate, as perceived by the Librarian of Congress in his ruling, focused on to what extent unlocked phones would affect consumers in the marketplace.  And that's a very legitimate debate to have.  However, what's additionally striking is that this has become yet another case of individuals being considered strictly as consumers, and failing to frame the issue in terms of property rights.

Property rights is the more appropriate venue.  When you buy a car, you're able to open up the hood and customize the engine.  Heck, you can completely change any aspect of the car.  And the reason is that you own it.  Now, imagine if you bought a Honda but the government came out proclaiming it was suddenly illegal to have anyone but Honda Corp. service it or change any components, and even that Honda Corp. had to right to approve or reject any changes before they could be made.  It would be absurd because the very concept of property rights, by definition, protects your ability to do what you want with your property, so long as it doesn't cause physical harm or damage to others.  The determination has nothing to do with how your changes might affect the extremely general notion of economic externalities in the broader marketplace.  You can bring your Honda to your local mechanic shop regardless of whether that will hurt Honda Corp.'s financial interests.

So guess what everybody?  You thought that when you paid $500 for that iPhone in your pocket that you actually bought it?  Think again.  According to the U.S. government, you are now legally locked-in to a device through, what is essentially, a perpetual lease.  You don't own it anymore than you own the PC in your office cubicle.  It's subject to someone else's rules in perpetuity, for the entire life of the device.

Whatever happened to a Culture of Ownership?

  

Schools Requiring Students to Wear RFID Trackers...

In November, a high school student named Andrea Hernandez was suspended for refusing to wear the ID badge that her school requires.  Now, many schools issue some type of ID card, however this school in particular issued their ID card with a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip embedded within it.  It enables school administrators to track the location of each student on campus at all times.

With the ongoing debate about enhancing public safety in schools - mostly centered on gun control - where does this case of mandatory RFID trackers fit in?  The school district argues that these chips are also needed for ensuring the safety of students, however, how can such concerns over safety be reasonably reconciled with other valid concerns regarding individual privacy?

Earlier this month, the case went to federal court and U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia dismissed Hernandez's request for a preliminary injunction - basically upholding the school's ability to require RFID cards.

But before everyone assumes that privacy is dead and that Big Brother has finally arrived, it should be noted that the case isn't as simple as that.

First of all, the school offered Hernandez a compromise - that she would still have to wear the ID badge, but could have the RFID chip removed.  Hernandez refused.  The judge noted that this seriously undermined her claim.

Second, and this is especially interesting, Hernandez wasn't arguing that the RFID card violated her rights to privacy, but rather that it violated her religious freedom.  Her evangelical Christian father, Steven Hernandez, had equated the badges to the Biblical "mark of the beast", and it was on those grounds that the injunction was dismissed.

So the privacy issue is still very much undetermined. 

While some privacy advocates have commented on how that's a shame, perhaps it's actually a blessing in disguise.  Rather than getting a comprehensive and precedent-setting ruling on privacy rights, in a case where an intractable plaintiff has rejected a very reasonable compromise, it may suit privacy advocates better in the long run to wait for a case where it's the school district who refuses to budge and comes across as far more totalitarian.

And that's what everyone should remember about this case, despite the headlines.  In the end, the school did not require the RFID tracker.  Better to seek a privacy ruling on a case where they did.

  

Should Congress Ban 'Wiki Weapons'...

In the wake of the Newtown school shooting, a lot of national attention is focusing on the issue of gun control, and under the radar there is public policy being pursued related to plastic guns being made with 3D printers.

Hardly anyone seems aware of 3D printers yet, but basically they are computer printers that any individual can buy for their home PC, except that instead of printing text or graphics onto a piece of paper, it prints a three-dimensional (a.k.a. - "real") object using plastic.

As I've argued before, this is a potentially transformative technology because it democratizes manufacturing to the masses.  Anyone can now be a plastics manufacturer of goods, from the comfort of their home, at little cost.

However, the downside of this democratization is that it's also far easier for individuals to create objects that are harmful and dangerous.  There is even the potential for people to manufacture, yes, plastic guns.  And, in case you're wondering, this is no longer hypothetical.  Just last month, a 3D printed gun successfully fired off a few live rounds.

Trying to get ahead of the curve, Congressman Steve Israel has called for a legislative ban on such gun manufacturing using 3D printers.  He correctly notes that any gun control legislation that didn't include such a provision would be easily circumvented by such 3D printed plastic guns that would be capable of bypassing metal detectors.

On the other side of the argument, Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing points out that, while 3D printed guns are problematic, there are major flaws with how Rep. Israel's ban would be implemented...

Firmware locks for 3D printers? A DMCA-like takedown regime for 3D shapefiles that can be used to generate plastic firearms (or parts of plastic firearms?). A mandate on 3D printer manufacturers to somehow magically make it impossible for their products to print out gun-parts?

Every one of those measures is a nonsense and worse: unworkable combinations of authoritarianism, censorship, and wishful thinking. Importantly, none of these would prevent people from manufacturing plastic guns. And all of these measures would grossly interfere with the lawful operation of 3D printers.

The conflicting ideals of public safety versus individual freedom lie at the heart of this debate over 3D printed "Wiki Weapons", just as they do in the larger issue of gun control, more generally.  But while politicians grapple with striking an appropriate Second Amendment balance, here's something else to consider:  3D printers are only as accessible a manufacturing tool for ordinary users as their software empowers them to be.  This is fundamentally a software question as much as it is a legislative one.  Technologists like Lawrence Lessig have been arguing for years that "code is law" and that software inevitably comes to embody certain core political values at the expense of others.  Let's put this theory to test.  Since 3D printing software is still in its nascent infancy, its future design will either evolve to make it easier for such Wiki Weapons to be manufactured, or more difficult, or, most likely, set the parameters for how limited these weapons will or will not be.

Computer programmers of the world, take note.  The resolution of this issue is as much in your hands as anyone's.

  

The Digital Payment Blockade Arms Race...

Almost two years ago, when Wikileaks published thousands of classified State Department documents, many large financial companies like Visa, Mastercard, Western Union, PayPal, and others decided to no longer allow payments to be made to the Wikileaks website.  This "donation blockade" very nearly shut down the website completely, and while it ultimately failed to do so, it nevertheless proved its effectiveness as an existential threat to, basically, any website deemed undesirable.

Now, in response, Daniel Ellsberg (from the famous Pentagon Papers Supreme Court Case) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have announced that they're creating of the Freedom of the Press Foundation - an independent organization that will help raise money and channel it to websites that are the targets of future donation blockades.
How would it work?  As Forbes describes...

On the Foundation’s website, any user will be able to make a donation through an encrypted form, specifying which organization under the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s umbrella will receive the funds. By mixing groups together under its banner, the Foundation hopes to make it more difficult for funding to be cut off to any one of them, and to also offer donors a way to make a contribution to a controversial group like WikiLeaks without publicly revealing that they’ve done so.

Whether we call this crowdfunding or proxy funding, the central idea is to hide the identities of who's making financial donations and to then hide how that money gets disbursed.  It's ironic that these are the explicit goals of an advocacy group championing the cause of freedom of information.

Notice that what's developing before our very eyes is a digital arms race between those who want to utilize payment blockades as a means of controlling Internet content and those who seek to liberate that content through circumvention.  What's additionally noteworthy is how all of this is occurring outside of the legal arena.  After all, Wikileaks was never found to be in violation of U.S. law.  It's a completely private sector phenomenon.

My question is whether supporters and opponents of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, regardless of which side they fall on, would stand by their arguments being made here when applied to a different context - say, campaign finance reform?  Do the same people support and oppose anonymous political campaign contributions?

  

The Web (Some People Think They've) Lost...

Blogger Anil Dash is getting a decent amount of attention for posting about "The Web We Lost".  He highlights a number of ways in which the more open social web of a decade ago has gradually been replaced by the more tightly controlled social web of today, and argues that people need to be reminded about "what the Web means".

We've lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we've abandoned core values that used to be fundamental to the web world. To the credit of today's social networks, they've brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they've certainly made a small number of people rich.

But they haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilities of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be.

It's an argument that's certainly been made before.  Reminiscing with nostalgia about the Internet of the 1990s where practically everything was freely and openly accessible, then turning with dismay at the "walled gardens" of sites like Facebook, which are essentially private clubs that deny access to their content to the rest of the Web, the argument is put forth that today's social web leads to corporate turf wars where the user winds up with reduced interoperability and where someone else owns all of our personal content.

However, I would take issue with a few of Dash's points.  First of all, if we're harkening back to the late 90s, a lot of people's entire experience on the Internet took place completely within that original social web giant, AOL - which was one of the greatest walled gardens of all time.  You can even make a plausible argument that the walled gardens of today are more open and accessible than the walled gardens of the past.

Second, the examples of Flickr and Technorati are used to show how photos and other social content used to be more easily tagged, searchable, and discoverable.  But even most social network users of today, who notoriously pay very little attention to privacy, would be aghast at the thought of all their photos and content being instantly discoverable to any Web user outside their approved social network of friends.  The market actually met a need that the older sites weren't adequately servicing.  And, yes, there of plenty of cases where Facebook photos get copied and shared publicly anyway, but at least the site doesn't make that the default as a matter of policy.

Additionally, it seems like an exaggeration to say that Google AdSense has corrupted hyperlinks forever.  While, of course, there's widespread monetization, that's a pretty cynical view.  Also, his claim that a decade ago, "if you made a service that let users create or share content, the expectation was that they could easily download a full-fidelity copy of their data, or import that data into other competitive services, with no restrictions", is really not how some of us remember things.  Dash seems to be romanticizing a bit here.   

My favorite point, though, is this...

In the early days of the social web, there was a broad expectation that regular people might own their own identities by having their own websites, instead of being dependent on a few big sites to host their online identity. In this vision, you would own your own domain name and have complete control over its contents, rather than having a handle tacked on to the end of a huge company's site. This was a sensible reaction to the realization that big sites rise and fall in popularity, but that regular people need an identity that persists longer than those sites do.

I personally love this idea, to a large extent follow this path myself, and even recommend it to students.  But not everyone has even the elementary technical skills to necessary to maintain their own website with constantly updated content.  And just because people generally choose to use a walled social network rather than hosting much of their online social identity in an open-Web approach, there's absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so if that's what they want.  It's an individual choice.  No one's hand is being forced.

The modern social web shouldn't be looked at in strictly binary terms where it's either a positive or negative development, and people shouldn't have to make the choice between which is better, the social Web of today versus the social Web of a decade ago.  We're fortunate for the benefits that today's incarnation has brought us, yet we'd probably all see some benefit from at least a few of the walls in those walled gardens to open up a bit.  Ideally, we need both approaches existing concurrently, side-by-side, with users being empowered to make their choices uninhibited.

  

White House Petitioners Want a Death Star by 2016...

A few years ago, the Obama Adminstration unveiled an initiative called "We The People" in order to grant everyone the ability to directly petition the White House.  Basically, anybody can submit a petition to the website, and for any petition that gathers 25,000 e-signatures, the White House will issue an official response.

Sounds great, right?  Philosophically, the idea can be linked to such noble democratic aspirations as direct democracy, the wisdom of crowds, governmental accessibility, transparency, accountability... you name it.

But in reality, "We The People" has often become a case study in Web 2.0 gone awry.

Last month, in the wake of the President's re-election, 20 petitions were submitted calling for states to secede from the Union.

Now, topping that, an actual petition has been submitted to the White House (thank you Star Wars fanatics) calling for the United States government to secure funding and resources, and begin construction on a Death Star by 2016.  It's even framed in terms of economic stimulus...

By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.

Everyone's having fun with it.  Politico writes, "The petition needs 24,505 more signatures to generate a White House response — and several hundred years of technological progress to become a reality".

Commenters on the website itself are also game.  Zach Claywell writes, "As President of Earth, I would vote in favor of such a program. [However, instead of a planet-destroying laser (which could fall into the wrong hands on Earth, or a villain on Dr Who), I would have it play an awesome laser light show.]". 

Likewise, Brad VanHorn adds, "Hmm...might work! But change it to an exploratory ark that will launch to the abyss with all republicans on it".

All of which is super-amusing and if this doesn't put a smile on your face than you're surely made of stone.  That said, it also highlights everything that's wrong with trying to directly crowdsource public policy.  Unfortunately, the "We The People" experiment seems to have become a joke.

  

H.R. 2471 and How Federal Law Discriminates Against Netflix...

Whenever you login to Facebook, your feed is likely to have all sorts of social media advertisements from your friends - what songs they're currently listening to on Spotify, which newspaper articles they recently read in the Washington Post, which products or companies they "Like", which iPhone apps they started using, what new high scores they achieved on SongPop or other gaming sites, etc. 

One thing you won't see, however, is which Netflix movies they've rented or are instantly streaming.

Why?  There's an outdated federal law named the Video Privacy Protection Act, passed in 1988, that forbids a person's video rental history from being made public unless consent is given on a rental-by-rental basis.  So, whereas I can give Spotify permission to share my song selections on Facebook, I cannot give permission to Netflix to do the same for my video selections, even if I want to.

Where is the sense in this?  Even if you're a staunch privacy advocate and you take issue with people's media consumption being shared publicly by these services - which is a valid argument to make - you'd still be pretty hard-pressed to explain the difference between Netflix doing it is versus Spotify and others doing, what seems to be, exactly the same thing.  The law is unfairly discriminating against online video services as compared to other forms of media. 

I bring this up as a timely issue because a bill is coming up before the Senate this week (H.R. 2471) which seeks to rectify the problem and update the 1988 law so that video service providers "may obtain a consumer's informed, written consent on an ongoing basis and that consent may be obtained through the Internet".  The bill has already been passed in the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, 303-116.

The counterarguments being made against H.R. 2471 focus on protecting consumer privacy (certainly a noble cause dear to my heart), but this is a case of online privacy protection done right.  Consumers have to actively opt-in to sharing, and they can later opt-out at any time.  That's hardly invasive, and in this digital age, it's even better than the norm.

Yes, I instinctively cringe when reading that Netflix spent $200,000 lobbying for this bill last year, and I was admittedly cynical when reading the Politico op-ed piece by the company's head of global policy, Christopher Libertelli, so publicly advocating for the measure.

Nevertheless, the logic behind H.R. 2471 is there.

  

Pros and Cons of Email Voting in New Jersey...

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, displaced New Jersey residents were given the ability, at the last minute, to cast their vote in Tuesday's election via email or fax.

There were some very valid reasons why Governor Chris Christie decided to offer this emergency measure.  As of Saturday, 2.4 million of the state's 8.8 million residents were still without power, and by Tuesday - Election Day - over 500,000 homes and businesses still didn't have power.  When you also factor in the continuing gasoline shortage making travel extremely difficult, there was a real possibility that thousands of voters would have been disenfranchised.

However, it was inevitable that problems would arise associated with implementing this major and sudden change to the voting system only 72 hours before the election.  Election officials were inundated with a flood of application requests that filled their inboxes, making it impossible for them to process them all within the allotted time.  There was also plenty of general confusion among NJ voters, many of whom, still lacking power, became aware of this new voting measure solely through word-of-mouth, and misinformation spread about the details and the process.

And these problems only relate to the last-minute nature of the voting measure.  There are other well-established concerns with email voting relating to hacking, the lack of encryption, the difficulty in identity verification, and other cybersecurity issues.

How did NJ's email voting process actually work?  Basically, it was the exact same process that has been used for years for members of the military or other overseas citizens.  NJ residents could email to their county clerk a "mail-in ballot" application by 5pm on Election Day (Tuesday, Nov. 6th).  The county clerk then had until noon on Friday, Nov. 9th to process, hopefully, all of those applications.  Assuming the application was approved, the voter then had to email, fax or mail in a signed waiver of secrecy along with the voted ballot for receipt by the appropriate county board of elections no later than 8pm, also on Friday, Nov. 9th.  Finally, the County Board of Elections would have to verify that (a) the voter did not cast a vote in a voting machine at his or her assigned polling place and, (b) the voter did not submit any other paper ballot.

Whew.

Taking a long-term view, the national debate over email or Internet voting can be summarized by exactly what happened in New Jersey last week:  striking a balance between enabling more citizens to vote vs. legitimate concerns about security and fraud.  The technology is ready, but election laws and implementation procedures surrounding them, particularly at the local level, don't seem quite ready for primetime just yet.

Ironically, it may have worked to New Jersey's advantage to announce email voting only 72 hours ahead of time.  This gave hackers and people committed to fraud very little time to figure out how to game the system.

  

Final Presidential Social Media Stats...

On this presidential election day, without yet knowing the results, we thought it might be worth taking one final look at how online social media may, or may not, have affected the election outcome.

In terms of measuring people's expectations about the social media presence of presidential candidates, consider...

• 88% of social media users are registered voters.
• 51% of social media users used social media to learn more about the Presidential candidates for the 2012 election.
• 6 in 10 people expect presidential candidates to have a social media presence.
• 1 in 4 social media users with mobile phones aged 10-34 said that “it is important to receive information about candidates on their mobile phone”.
• 38% of social media users agreed that information found on social media was as impactful in making a decision as traditional media.

How much did the candidates actually make use of online social media?  By almost all measures, Barack Obama had vastly superior numbers...

	Barack Obama	Mitt Romney
Facebook likes	31.7 million	11.9 million
Twitter followers	21.8 million	1.7 million
YouTube views	253 million	27 million

As usual, however, these stats probably say more about each candidate's base of supporters than about the candidates' use of the medium itself.

Let's see how everything unfolds tonight, and then we can postulate on the relevance, or non-relevance, of all of this.

  

Walking Diesel Up Staircases After the Hurricane...

Wanting to avoid becoming yet another aggregator of Hurricane Sandy photos, here's a different angle to consider in the storm's aftermath... how are all those websites and ISPs whose hardware is based on the East Coast still running?

As ReadWrite reports, the number of web outages has thus far been surprisingly small when considering the tremendous damage to infrastructure overall.  One reason for this is cloud computing - the more services that companies are delivering remotely, the lower the risk of one geographic location shutting them down.

But there's another, surprisingly non-tech, phenomenon aiding the situation as well.  Many New York City-based firms are relying on generators to power their servers and web services, and over the last week of power outages, they've come to rely on "bucket brigades" consisting of people hand-carrying canisters of gasoline up large numbers of flights of stairs in order to keep those generators running.

It may seem like a solution better suited to two centuries ago, but in Hurricane Sandy's aftermath, any workable solution seems good enough.