Archive: Year: 2014

Middlemen Remember disintermediation? How the Internet eliminates the need for middlemen? Well, it sure doesn't look like it's working that way down at the level of connections between the large networks that form the Internet's backbone. As Vox's Timothy Lee explains, Level 3--one of the world's main providers of long-distance connectivity--is reporting that six large broadband providers with dominant local market shares are "deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers" by refusing to augment their capacity. Five of these are in the US. Lee notes: The basic problem is those six broadband providers want Level 3 to pay them to deliver traffic. Level 3 believes that's unreasonable. After all, the ISPs' own customers have already paid these ISPs to...

Civics Lessons Code for America's director of organizing (and friend of PDM) Catherine Bracy blogs about an important shift in CfA's focus, from creating capacity inside City hall to "organizing the community to participate…especially those who have traditionally been left out of the public decision-making process." In sum, she says, "civic tech doesn't work unless it works for everyone." Speaking of civic tech: Our Eilis O'Neill reports on the PoplusCon unconference that just concluded in Santiago, Chile. Its theme: "lowering the tech barriers for civic startups" worldwide. Meanwhile, back in the land of self-interest: In Politico, Tony Romm profiles Netflix's uphill battle for influence in Washington, DC for Politico, complete with this revealing quote from a former company lobbyist: "Here they are jumping...

Big Data Analytics The White House report on "Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values" is out. The report, you may recall, was a by-product of President Obama's January 17 speech on reforming the government's "signals intelligence practices," aka Big Surveillance. The report sings the praises of "Big Data," describing it as a new form of managerial magic. "Computational capabilities now make “finding a needle in a haystack” not only possible, but practical….[but] in order to find the needle, you have to have a haystack." "The fusion of many different kinds of data, processed in real time, has the power to deliver exactly the right message, product, or service to consumers before they even ask." Correctly, the report notes that "'perfect personalization' also leaves...

Adjustments The Republican National Committee's new CTO Andy Barkett is being demoted to a diminished role, signaling trouble with the committee's efforts to upgrade its national voter database Beacon, reports Jon Ward for the Huffington Post. Now Facebook is allowing users to log in anonymously to mobile apps. And in case you haven't noticed, Facebook is also "throttling" the organic reach of nonprofits and political activists. Writing for Valleywag, "B. Traven," a pseudonym for someone running social media for a mid-sized international NGO in Washington, DC, says, "It's starting to look like Facebook is willing to strangle public discourse on the platform in an attempt to wring out a few extra dollars for its new shareholders." The Atlantic's Adrienne Lafrance and Robinson Meyer pen...

Messaging Department of self-delusion: Less than 40% of America internet users have changed their passwords in response to the Heartbleed bug, Pew Research Center's Lee Rainie and Maeve Duggan report. Seven in ten think their internet accounts are generally secure, with 23% saying they think that means their accounts are "very secure." A new Gallup poll finds that political messaging via mobile phone is still an under-developed arena. Less than 1/4 of Americans have received a "take action" request on their phone; just under 1 in 10 have received an instant notification about a rally or protest; and only 4% say they have made a monetary contribution to a candidate or interest group via their smartphone or tablet. Jed Alpert, the founder and...

Data Acts Last summer, Edward Snowden retained top Washington defense lawyer Plato Cacheris, "in hopes of reaching a plea deal with federal prosecutors that would allow him to return to the United States," Charlie Savage and Matt Apuzzo report for the New York Times. No deal appears to be in sight, they add. Trevor Timm fisks Hillary Clinton's recent critical comments about Snowden. He notes that Bill Clinton "was much more conciliatory and nuanced about people's anger over the NSA…so it would be easy for her to switch gears." Michael Daniel, the White House cybersecurity coordinator, explains how the government is handling so-called "zero-day" vulnerabilities. Who says Congress can't agree about anything? The Digital Accountability and Transparency (DATA) Act, which will modernize how the...

Unfreezing Cory Doctorow explains why the FCC's proposal to allow Internet service providers to charge for "premium" service is like letting the phone company favor one pizza parlor with better phone service, in language you can use to explain net neutrality to your dullest relative. Tech analyst Steve Kamman makes a critical point about the FCC's consideration of a "fast lane" option for Internet service providers: it's all about ratifying artificial scarcity, and if the FCC's new rule is approved, it will create an "obvious incentive … to degrade regular service to force traffic onto their 'premium' lanes." Susan Crawford explains why the future of "fair and equitable Internet access" is in municipal broadband networks. For background, read Bill Bradley's piece on "How...

Commercially Reasonable Highway Robbery Tim Wu, who coined the term "net neutrality," says that the FCC's new rule is "net discrimination" and reminds New Yorker readers that what the agency is proposing is something a presidential candidate named Barack Obama specifically campaigned against. Techdirt's Mike Masnick says that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's "first foray into net neutrality is a joke," because the new "commercially reasonable" rule will allow Internet service providers to create fast and slow lanes for service, allowing bigger players to effectively "double charge big companies, who will now have to pay for both their own bandwidth and a portion of your bandwidth" and eventually leading to higher costs for consumers. Dan Gillmor writes in The Guardian that the best response...

Wheeler Dealer The Brazilian Congress just passed legislation guaranteeing equal access to the Internet. The FCC chairman Tom Wheeler is reportedly...

The Fire This Time The New York Police Department was hoping for some Twitter love when it asked people to tweet and tag photos of cops with #myNYPD but it's gotten a bitter taste of hashtag activism in response, as stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Daily News, and The Guardian attest today. According to the Daily News' Thomas Tracy, Timothy O'Connor and Dareh Gregorian (with Mark Morales), by midnight last night, "more than 70,000 people had posted comments on Twitter decrying police brutality, slamming the NYPD for the social media disaster and recalling the names of people shot to death by police." Note to Daily News editors: Does it really take 3.5 people to report on a trending Twitter...