Brookings: Topics - Telecommunications

Would Ben Franklin Trade Liberty for Wiretapping?

Benjamin Wittes — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:57:00 -0400

Two years ago, I wrote a brief blog post about Ben Franklin’s iconic quote on the relationship between liberty and security:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

The post detailed research I was doing for a Brookings paper, published later in 2011, on the liberty-security relations seen through the lens of, among other things, data mining. The post, which details the rather surprising history and intended meaning of Franklin’s famous words, has had something of a renaissance in the context of the recent NSA wiretapping controversies. It has gone viral. A lot of people seem to be Googling Franklin’s quote this week. And Edward Snowden, the leaker himself, invoked the words in one of his interviews:

Snowden challenged this, saying the problem was that the Obama administration had denied society the chance to have that discussion. He disputed that there had to be a trade-off between security and privacy, describing the very idea of a trade-off as a fundamental assault on the US constitution.

In what were to be the last words of the interview, he quoted Benjamin Franklin: "Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."

The history of the quotation is, indeed, interesting; it actually does not mean what people (including Snowden) use it to mean. The larger paper, however, is worth reintroducing too in the context of the current conversation about the NSA’s data-mining programs. It is a broad examination of the relationship between security and liberty—and an attack on the idea that the two exist in some sort of “balance” in which a gain in one will tend to come at the expense of the other. It proposes a different way to think about this relationship—one based on an old text of evolutionary biology: the idea of a “hostile symbiosis.” And it proposed categories of surveillance that might even enhance, rather than erode, liberty.

And not only does it, like the blog post, detail the history of that famous Franklin quotation, it also gives the surprising history of Justice Robert Jackson’s famous warning about turning the Bill of Rights into a “suicide pact.”

Downloads

21 platform security wittes

Authors

Benjamin Wittes

Image Source: © Chip East / Reuters

Reaction to NSA Surveillance of U.S. Citizens’ Phone Records

Wells C. Bennett and Benjamin Wittes — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 09:49:00 -0400

We are at a bit of a loss to understand the FISA Court order that Steve discussed earlier and that Glenn Greenwald disclosed at the Guardian. As Steve noted, the order required Verizon Business Network Services, under Section 215 of the Patriot Act,

to produce to the National Security Agency (NSA) upon service of this Order, and continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this Order, unless otherwise ordered by the Court, an electronic copy of the following tangible things: all call detail records or “telephony metadata” created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.

The order---assuming it hasn’t been since modified or contravened---lasts for three months, beginning on April 25 and ending in mid-July.

We have only the order itself, not the application that underlies it, but we have a hard time imagining the application that could have produced it. Section 215, codified in law as 50 U.S.C. § 1861, allows the government to apply to the FISA court for an order for production “of any tangible things . . . for an investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. . . .” To acquire such an order, the government does not have to do much---just as it doesn’t have to do much in a criminal investigation: It merely has to offer, in pertinent part, “a statement of facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation . . . to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”

So we are trying to imagine what conceivable set of facts would render all telephony metadata generated in the United States “relevant” to a particular investigation----whatever it might touch on, or how broadly it might sweep. Presumably, the theory would have to be that the “tangible things” here are the giant ongoing flood of data from the telecommunications companies and that they are “relevant to an authorized investigation,” perhaps of Al Qaeda, “to protect against international terrorism.” That reading seems oddly consistent with the statutory text, which may be why the intelligence committee leadership seems so comfortable with the program. But assume this is right. And assume further that the government does not yet know the identities of all of the targets, or the persons with whom those targets might communicate. How is it possible that all calls between, say, a Washington D.C. restaurant and its fish supplier are “relevant” even to such a broad investigation?

The only possible answer to this question is that a dataset of this size could be “relevant” because there are ways of analyzing big datasets algorithmically to yield all kinds of interesting things---but only if the dataset is known to include all of the possibly-relevant material. The data itself may not be relevant, but the dataset is relevant because it is complete---and therefore is sure to include any communications by whomever the bad guys turn out to be.

The trouble is that if that constitutes relevance for purposes of Section 215, then isn’t all data relevant to all investigations? Grand jury subpoenas, after all, issue on the basis of relevance too—albeit relevance to a criminal investigation. Why couldn’t the FBI obtain all domestic metadata on the theory that some sort of data-mining would be useful in a mob investigation—and that a complete dataset is therefore “relevant” to it?

According to press reports today, the government has sought, and won, judicial approval for comparable Section 215 orders for years in the past. Its broad-sweeping collection, moreover, has been briefed to members of congressional intelligence committees. In particular, the Chairman of the Senate intelligence committee said that these collection activities are years old and regularly renewed by the FISC. The Ranking Member added that the collection described in the Guardian report is “nothing new.”

From a legal standpoint, it is undoubtedly significant that judges and legislators repeatedly have blessed these activities. Still, the government ought to explain why Section 215’s “tangible things” and “relevance” language do not permit any metadata to be deemed relevant and thus subject to production under the law. In other words, what's the limiting principle here? This is an even more important question if the harvesting of these records from Verizon is so unremarkable, and so long-lasting, as Senators today seemed to imply. The government needs to explain its position to the public, and not just to the FISC and to appropriate members of Congress.

Authors

Publication: Lawfare

Image Source: © Lucas Jackson / Reuters

Building Trust in the Global Supply Chain

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Event Information

April 18, 2013
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Long supply chains and inadequate product evaluation before deployment create a situation of widespread vulnerability in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) supply chains. As trade grows more globalized, the supply chain has become more complex and challenging. Contemporary commerce involves hundreds of individuals, organizations, technologies, and processes across continents. In this situation, what are the vulnerabilities and what are the possible remedies for addressing those threats? What steps should be taken to ensure that supply chains are protected?

On April 18, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum to explore operational and technological threats to the ICT global supply chain and ways to identify best practices, standards, and third-party assessment for supply chain assurance. A panel of experts discussed the problems involved in cross-border supply chains and ways to address industry-wide risks.

What Will the Proposed Telecom Overhaul Mean for Mexico?

Andrés Rozental — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:17:00 -0400

In his first 100 days in office, President Peña Nieto has successfully garnered widespread political support for various reform packages that had been pending from previous administrations. Education and labor reforms were the first to be approved by Congress and in the case of the former is now constitutionally law.

The telecommunications reform package has won approval in the lower house of Congress and now must pass the Senate and be ratified by the states before becoming part of the Constitution. Rather than being specifically targeted at any individual company, the reform is designed to open the sector to competition and to guarantee Mexicans access to services that up to now have been expensive and oligopolistic in nature. Measures such as opening up national television to additional channels, wider broadband coverage and a stricter regulatory regime are all designed to fundamentally change Mexico's telecoms structure. When finally approved, these changes will greatly benefit the Mexican economy by generating competition and additional players in the sector.

All indications are that this reform package will be approved, perhaps with congressional modifications. Although there has been opposition by some in the PAN to parts of the proposal, the other parties are agreed on the majority of the changes. This augurs well for further proposals that Peña Nieto plans to send to Congress in the coming months, especially the energy and fiscal reforms that are so necessary for Mexico to guarantee future growth and prosperity.

Read the full article »

Authors

Andrés Rozental

Publication: Inter-American Dialogue's Latin America Advisor

Image Source: © Edgard Garrido / Reuters

Bound to Fail: Why Cyber Security Risk Cannot Be "Managed" Away

Ralph Langner and Perry Pederson — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Executive Summary: Rather than a much-needed initiative to break the legislative deadlock on the subject in Congress, President Obama’s new executive order for improving critical infrastructure cyber security is a recipe for continued failure. In essence, the executive order puts the emphasis on establishing a framework for risk management and relies on voluntary participation of the private sector that owns and operates the majority of U.S. critical infrastructure. Both approaches have been attempted for more than a decade without measurable success. A fundamental reason for this failure is the reliance on the concept of risk management, which frames the whole problem in business logic. Business logic ultimately gives the private sector every reason to argue the always hypothetical risk away, rather than solving the factual problem of insanely vulnerable cyber systems that control the nation’s most critical installations.

The authors suggest a policy-based approach that instead sets clear guidelines for asset owners, starting with regulations for new critical infrastructure facilities, and thereby avoids perpetuating the problem in systems and architectures that will be around for decades to come. In contrast to the IT sector, the industrial control systems (ICS) that keep the nation’s most critical systems running are much simpler and much less dynamic than contemporary IT systems, which makes eliminating cyber vulnerabilities, most of which are designed into products and system architectures, actually possible. Finally, they argue that a distinction between critical and non-critical systems is a bad idea that contradicts pervasiveness and sustainability of any effort to arrive at robust and well-protected systems.

Downloads

Download the full paper

Authors

Ralph Langner
Perry Pederson

Image Source: © Jim Urquhart / Reuters

The Satellite Question: Why SiriusXM Should Pay Higher Performance Royalties to Artists

John Villasenor — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

On Feb. 14, the Copyright Royalty Board issued a “final determination” setting SiriusXM’s statutory sound recording performance royalty rate for 2013 at 9% of “gross revenue.” This rate is too low by several percentage points, depriving artists and labels of tens of millions of dollars of royalty payments that will instead flow into SiriusXM’s coffers.

SiriusXM’s satellite radio service is subject to a standard called 801(b), which requires the CRB to balance the interests of copyright holders and the public when setting statutory royalty rates. In addition, 801(b) mandates calculating rates that “minimize any disruptive impact on the structure of the industries involved and on generally prevailing industry practices.” During the CRB proceeding for the previous licensing period, which covered 2007-12, the CRB judges concluded that 13% of gross revenue was the “upper boundary for a zone of reasonableness.” But, in the interest of avoiding disruption to the satellite radio industry, artists were forced to accept much lower rates, ranging from 6% to 8%.

How has this artist-subsidized growth of satellite radio worked out? Pretty well. In recent years, SiriusXM has thrived, with revenue increasing from less than $2.5 billion in 2009 to more than $3.4 billion in 2012. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization grew from about $463 million in 2009 to more than $920 million in 2012. Speaking to a Forbes interviewer in early 2012, former SiriusXM CEO Mel Karmazin called the satellite broadcaster “a very profitable, successful company.”

“If we want a performer,” he added, “we can afford to pay more than anybody else can because we’re making more.”

Against this backdrop, it’s hard to argue that SiriusXM still needs a government-sanctioned discount from rates that the CRB deems appropriate. But that’s in essence the argument the company made in the CRB proceeding to set rates for 2013-17. In written testimony, Karmazin warned against an increase that could “take improper advantage of the company’s only recently improved economic circumstances” and “jeopardize the company’s ability to earn a fair return on long-term investments to which investors in our company are entitled.”

In a decision signed by two of the three judges, the CRB appears to have at least partially heeded that warning. While concluding that “the most appropriate rate” for satellite radio for 2013-17 is 11% of gross revenue, to “minimize any potential disruptive impact of the rate increase” the judges elected to “phase it in over the license period.” Thus, SiriusXM will pay a rate that starts at 9% in 2013 and rises in annual increments to 11% in 2017. “Gross revenue” has a complex definition, and can be significantly less than the total revenue reported in SiriusXM’s financial statements.

If 11% is indeed the appropriate rate, it’s hard to see why requiring a thriving company like SiriusXM to pay that amount for the entire 2013-17 period would have been particularly burdensome. In fact, under the 9% rate that will apply for 2013, there’s a good argument that artists will suffer more disruption from their unfairly low income than SiriusXM will avoid thanks to its discounted payment obligations.

There are also consequences for the broader music delivery ecosystem, since SiriusXM can use the money saved by paying artificially low satellite radio royalties to subsidize its expansion into market segments with higher royalty costs. And if the launch of its new MySXM Internet radio service thins the number of companies providing digital music services in the coming years, then everyone, not just artists, will pay the price for SiriusXM’s low royalty rates.

This item was originally published in Billboard.

Authors

John Villasenor

Publication: Billboard

Image Source: © Larry Downing / Reuters

Broadband Technology Opportunities Program

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:00:00 -0500

Event Information

January 16, 2013
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 included $7.2 billion to expand access to high-speed Internet services to close the digital divide, drive economic growth, and build the technology infrastructure and skills that America needs to compete in the 21st century. Roughly $4 billion of that total supports the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, or BTOP. The program, which is administered by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), is investing in roughly 230 projects to increase broadband access and adoption around the country.

On January 16, Governance Studies at Brookings provided an update on the BTOP program three years after Vice President Joe Biden announced the first round of BTOP awards at a factory in Dawsonville, GA. The event featured keynote remarks by NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling, followed by a panel of officials from BTOP projects that provided firsthand accounts from around the country.

Video

Full Event - Broadband Technology Opportunities Program

Audio

Broadband Technology Opportunities Program

Transcript

Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20130116_btop_transcript

Mobile Technology: A Change Agent in the United States and Across the Globe

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Event Information

December 13, 2012
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Mobile technology has revolutionized how we communicate with one another, but is also transforming the world in the areas of culture, education, banking and personal finances, and politics. How is mobile technology being used to engage voters, raise money, deliver candidate messages, and help reporters cover campaigns domestically and globally? What is mobile technology’s impact on different populations, ethnic groups and communities? Which countries are best leveraging mobile innovations to enable democracy and empower citizens? In which countries is the impact of mobile greatest, and which policies have proven the most effective and should be replicated in other countries?

On December 13, Governance Studies at Brookings hosted an event focused on the powerful influence of mobile technology in the United States and around the world. This forum is part the Mobile Economy Project, which examines how the rapid expansion of mobile technology around the world is transforming economic opportunity for millions of people. A panel of experts examined the sociological, governmental and economic effects of mobile technology’s sudden growth in the United States as well as in developing countries.

Video

Audio

Mobile Technology: A Change Agent in the United States and Across the Globe

Transcript

Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20121213_mobile_technology

Internet Everywhere: Broadband as a Catalyst for the Digital Economy

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:00:00 -0500

Event Information

November 27, 2012
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM EST

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Register for the Event
Broadband technologies power the country’s digital infrastructure and have become essential platforms for 21st century communications and commerce. One of the most important economic and policy issues facing the new administration is whether U.S. regulation of broadband platforms will help or hinder the kind of innovation, investment, competition and economic growth the country needs to climb out of the economic decline it has been experiencing in the last few years.

On November 27, the Economic Studies program at Brookings hosted a forum to discuss how a well-crafted regulatory paradigm can work to foster investment, continue innovation, and increase consumer welfare. Former Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Litan and co-author Hal Singer, managing director and principal at Navigant Economics, presented policy recommendations from their soon-to-be-published e-book, The Need for Speed: A New Framework for Telecommunications Policy for the 21st Century (Brookings Press, 2013). Darrell West, vice president and director of Governance Studies, moderated a panel of industry and academic experts on the current and future economic potential of broadband platforms for bringing the Internet everywhere, and catalyzing the digital economy.

Video

Audio

Internet Everywhere: Broadband as a Catalyst for the Digital Economy

Transcript

Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20121127_internet_everywhere_transcript

Mobile Entrepreneurship around the World

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

October 23, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Entrepreneurship is crucial for economic development around the world. In places such as Nigeria, Egypt, and Indonesia, micro-entrepreneurs generate 38 percent of the gross domestic product. Data studies show that small businesses create a disproportionate share of new jobs, generating innovative ideas, business models, and methods for selling goods and services.

Mobile devices are invaluable tools for entrepreneurs to overcome the challenges of doing business. They help people communicate with one another, access market information, sell products across geographic areas, reach new consumers, access mobile payment systems, and empower women and the disadvantaged.

On October 23, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a discussion on how mobile entrepreneurship improves the opportunities for social and economic development around the world. Moderated by Vice President Darrell West, a panel of experts examined innovative examples of mobile entrepreneurship and its impact on business income, how mobile technology can boost overall development, and how to overcome barriers to mobile entrepreneurship. Darrell West also released a paper on the topic at the event.

After the program, speakers took audience questions.

Video

Full Event - Mobile Entrepreneurship around the World

Audio

Mobile Entrepreneurship around the World

Transcript

Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20121023_mobile_entrepreneurship_transcript

Fostering Internet Competition

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

October 10, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

The Internet is the dominant platform for communications, electronic commerce, and entrepreneurship, generating 4.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product and, in some countries, double that figure. By 2016, it is estimated that the digital economy will account for $4.2 trillion among G-20 nations, up from $2.3 trillion in 2010.

To meet the challenges of an ever-evolving Internet, it will be vital to maintain competitive practices that foster its continued growth and viability. New business models to fuel Internet competition – based on combinations of open or closed platforms, licensing agreements, partnerships and leveraging strategies – continue to emerge. This plethora of options across services, platforms, and business models must be evaluated to determine their potential effectiveness.

On October 10, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings (CTI) hosted an event exploring policies to maintain Internet competition. Moderated by Vice President and Director of Governance Studies and CTI Director Darrell West, a panel of experts discussed policy recommendations that encourage innovation without stifling competition.

You can follow the conversation on this event on Twitter using the hashtag #TechCTI.

Related Paper:
How to Maintain a Competitive Internet, by Darrell M. West and Elizabeth Valentini

Video

Full Event - Fostering Internet Competition

Audio

Fostering Internet Competition

Transcript

Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

Riding the Mobile Wave: The Future of Mobile Computing

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

October 5, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

In his new book The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything (Vanguard Press, 2012), CEO of MicroStrategy Michael Saylor examines the transformative possibilities of mobile computing on business, society, economies and everyday life. Saylor argues that mobile technologies such as smartphones and tablet computers – “the fifth wave of computer technology” – will be indispensible tools for modern life and completely alter how we live.

On October 5, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum on mobile computing and its monumental impact on our future. Moderated by Vice President Darrell West, Michael Saylor discussed key highlights from his book and offered insights as to what sort of change we can expect from the macro level down to the most mundane of everyday humans tasks.

Audio

Riding the Mobile Wave: The Future of Mobile Computing

Transcript

Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20121005_mobile_wave

Improving Spectrum Access Through Reverse Auctions

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:30:00 -0400

Event Information

June 15, 2012
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

Demand for mobile broadband will soon outpace the amount of available wireless spectrum. In its national broadband plan, the Federal Communication Commission called for 500 megahertz of new wireless spectrum, 300 megahertz of which, the FCC specified, should be freed up within the next five years. Despite government and industry recognition of the coming spectrum crisis, a number of the reforms needed to increase wireless broadband capacity remain unfinished and unaddressed. Reverse government auctions have been identified as the most expedient and cost-effective way to combat this imminent crisis, but what are the implementation and transactional challenges associated with this policy move? What are the merits of reverse auctions versus other spectrum policy ideas?

On June 15, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum on broadening spectrum access in the United States through reverse government auctions. Moderated by Governance Studies Director Darrell West, a panel of experts discussed the coming spectrum shortage and which policy levers should be used to alleviate it.

After the program, panelists took audience questions.

Audio

Improving Spectrum Access Through Reverse Auctions

Transcript

Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20120615 spectrum access transcript corrected

Participants

Panelists

Chris Guttman-McCabe

Vice President, Regulatory Affairs

Thomas Hazlett

Professor, Law & Economics; Director, Information Economy Project

Peter Pitsch

Executive Director, Communications; Associate General Counsel

Thomas C. Power

Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Telecommunications, Office of Science & Technology Policy

Mark Fratrik

Vice President and Chief Economist

How to Further the Mobile Technology Revolution

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

June 12, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

A Conversation with AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson and Silver Lake Co-Founder Glenn Hutchins

Mobile technology has transformed nearly every aspect of modern life, most notably in the areas of health care delivery, education, global economics, e-commerce, entertainment and personal communications. To further these revolutionary changes, how can the nation create a climate for investment that allows mobile innovation to thrive? What are the policy issues that need to be addressed to foster continued advancement in the area of mobile technology?

On June 12, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum focused on the future of mobile technology and how the public and private sectors can boost mobile technology’s growth and success in the U.S. and global marketplaces. Moderated by Director Darrell West, Randall Stephenson, chairman and CEO of AT&T, and Glenn Hutchins, co-founder of Silver Lake and vice chairman of the Brookings Board of Trustees, offered their perspectives on what is required to continue mobile technology’s revolutionary impact.

After the program, speakers took audience questions.

Video

Full Event - How to Further the Mobile Technology Revolution

Audio

How to Further the Mobile Technology Revolution

Transcript

Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20120612 mobile technology revolution uncorrected transcript

Participants

Panelists

Randall Stephenson

Chairman and CEO

Glenn Hutchins

Co-founder, Silver Lake
Vice Chairman, The Brookings Institution

Broadband and Energy Efficiency

Wed, 30 May 2012 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 30, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

Broadband Internet providers are reconsidering how they think about power consumption. Focusing on long-range energy efficiency will help ensure sustainable growth and contain costs as the price per kilowatt of power and consumer demand for broadband capacity both continue to grow. Broadband firms are approaching energy efficiency as a critical advance planning exercise, just as they prepared for the major switch in Internet addressing. Power consumption will become an up-front consideration in the planning and design phases for networks, services, and equipment.

On May 30, the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings hosted a forum on the future of energy efficiency and its relevance for the Internet ecosystem. A panel of experts discussed the rationale for and implementation challenges to bringing efficient and reliable energy throughout the network and product-planning process, beginning at the design phase.

After the program, speakers took audience questions.

Participants followed the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #TechCTI.

Video

Full Video: Broadband and Energy Efficiency

Audio

Broadband and Energy Efficiency

Transcript

Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20120530_broadband_energy_transcript_uncorrected

Participants

Panelists

Darrell M. West

Mark Colbitz

Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning

Beth Colleton

Senior Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility

Pietro S. Nivola

Lorie Wigle

General Manager, Eco-Technology

Charlotte Field

Senior Vice President, Infrastructure and Operations, National Engineering and Technical Operations

Communication Technologies: Five Myths and Five Lessons from History

J. P. Singh — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Mobile phones in the developing world have myriad uses: banking services, reminders for medicine regimens, e-governance, and more. This is a far cry from a generation ago when 99 percent of the people in low-income countries lacked POTS, or “plain old telephone service.”

Information and communications technologies are now indispensible for development, prioritized through varying levels of market-driven measures and participatory politics. From international organizations to local administrations, the importance given to these technologies for development today is a counterpoint to the immediate post-colonial era when telephones were considered a luxury and nationalized radio broadcasting was used for bringing “modern” ideas to populations. Along with policy changes, the move toward market forms works to ensure that people have phones and access to communication infrastructures, in turn providing incentives for entrepreneurs and political brokers to develop applications for delivery of social services and provide alternatives to users who in an earlier era lacked even basic access to these technologies.

Information technology diffusion rates can be quite spectacular. Only one in a thousand people had a mobile phone in 1995 in low-income countries. Now more than 25 in a thousand people do. Social media and the Internet have revolutionized political participation globally and provided voice and solidarity to communities. In January 2008, a 33-year-old civil engineer from Bogotá used a Facebook page to organize a protest in 40 countries against the paramilitary group FARC, gathering over 12 million people. The digital divide is not fully bridged, but the exponential growth rates of political voice and telephony promise a bright future.

What lessons can policymakers learn from the last 60 years of deploying communication technologies for development? Looking beyond the growth rate numbers suggests processes that either need to be continued or encouraged, but also fine-tuned at micro levels to address demands.

Encouraging Markets: Ensure regulatory independence and market incentives for providing access to infrastructures. Problems remain with corruption among officials and private firms, which calls for independence of regulatory agencies and dispute resolution, as well as smart policies to incentivize delivery in underserved areas.
Developing Polycentric Policymaking: Direct, top-down development interventions do not work effectively. International civil-society and international governmental organizations are best served as knowledge brokers and facilitators of information exchanges.
Allowing Participation and Voice: Locate political spaces for participation and voice. Development interventions tend to be expertise driven and top-down; however, it is not difficult to provide synergies between development aspirations and local contexts.
Understanding Representation: Allow people to represent themselves over various forms of audio-visual media. Old paternalistic habits are still too controlling, even as new social media defy this logic.
Prompting Ingenuity: Encourage technological and business entrepreneurship that enables political voices, social services delivery and micro-level efforts.

Downloads

Download the paper

Authors

J. P. Singh

Revolution at the U.S. Department of State: The Spread of Ediplomacy

Fergus Hanson — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:29:00 -0400

Executive Summary: This report is the first time the rapidly growing ediplomacy effort at the U.S. State Department has been mapped. It reveals that State now employs over 150 full-time ediplomacy personnel working in 25 different nodes at Headquarters. More than 900 people use ediplomacy at U.S. missions abroad.

It finds ediplomacy is being used in eight different program areas, not just for public diplomacy, and suggests a conceptual framework for understanding this effort.

Downloads

Download Full Report

Authors

Fergus Hanson

Publication: The Lowy Institute

Google Adds (Even More) Links to the Pentagon

Noah Shachtman — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

On Monday, the Defense Department’s best-known geek announced that she was leaving the Pentagon for a job at Google. It was an unexpected move: Washington and Mountain View don’t trade top executives very often. But it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. The internet colossus has had a long and deeply complicated relationship with America’s military and intelligence communities. Depending on the topic, the time, and the players involved, the Pentagon and the Plex can be customers, business partners, adversaries, or wary allies. Recruiting the director of Darpa to join Google was just the latest move in this intricate dance between behemoths.

To the company’s critics in Congress and in the conservative legal community, Google has become a puppet master in Obama’s Washington, with Plex executives attending exclusive state dinners and backing White House tech policy initiatives. “Like Halliburton in the previous administration,” warned the National Legal and Policy Center in 2010, “Google has an exceptionally close relationship with the current administration.” To the company’s foes outside the U.S. — especially in Beijing — Google is viewed as a virtual extension of the U.S. government: “the White House’s Google,” as one state-sponsored Chinese magazine put it.

But in the halls of the Pentagon and America’s intelligence agencies, Google casts a relatively small shadow, at least compared to those of big defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Northrop Grumman, and SAIC. Yes, a small handful of one-time Googlers joined the Obama administration after the 2008 election, but most of those people are now back in the private sector. Sure, Google turned to the network defense specialists at the National Security Agency, when the company became the target of a sophisticated hacking campaign in 2009. (Next week, the Electronic Privacy Information Center goes to federal court in an attempt to force the NSA to disclose what exactly it did to help Google respond.) The Lockheeds and the Northrops of the world share with the Pentagon information about viruses and malware in their networks every day.

Government work is, after all, only a minuscule part of Google’s business. And that allows the Plex to take a nuanced, many-pronged approach when dealing with spooks and generals. (The company did not respond to requests to comment for this article.)

Google has a federally focused sales force, marketing its search appliances and its apps to the government. They’ve sold millions of dollars’ worth of gear to the National Security Agency’s secretive eavesdroppers and to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s satellite watchmen. And they’re making major inroads in the mobile market, where Android has become the operating system of choice for the military’s burgeoning smartphone experiments. But unlike other businesses operating in the Beltway, Google doesn’t often customize its wares for its Washington clients. It’s a largely take-it-or-leave-it approach to marketing.

“They s*** all over any request for customization,” says a former Google executive. “The attitude is: ‘we know how to build software. If you don’t know how to use it, you’re an idiot.’”

Some of that software, though, only made it to Mountain View after an infusion of government cash. Take the mapping firm Keyhole, backed by In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. Google bought Keyhole in 2004 — and then turned it into the backbone for Google Earth, which has become a must-have tool in all sorts of imagery analysis cells. When I visited a team of Air Force targeteers in 2009, a Google Earth map highlighting all the known hospitals, mosques, graveyards, and schools in Afghanistan helped them pick which buildings to bomb or not.

Around the same time, the investment arms of Google and the CIA both put cash into Recorded Future, a company that monitors social media in real time — and tries to use that information to predict upcoming events.

“Turns out that there are several natural places to take an ability to harvest and analyze the internet to predict future events,” e-mails Recorded Future CEO Christopher Ahlberg. “There’s search, where any innovation that provides improved relevance is helpful; and intelligence, which at some level is all about predicting events and their implications. (Finance is a third.) That made Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel two very natural investors that provides us hooks into the worlds of search and intelligence.”

The government and Google have more than a mutual interest in mining publicly available data. The feds ask Google to turn over information about its customers. Constantly. Last fall, the Justice Department demanded that the company give up the IP addresses of Wikileaks supporters. During the first six months of 2011, U.S. government agencies sent Google 5,950 criminal investigation requests for data on Google users and services, as our sister blog Threat Level noted at the time. That’s an average of 31 a day, and Google said it complied with 93 percent of those requests.

Google is pretty much the only company that publishes the number of requests it receives — a tactic which sometimes causes teeth to grind in D.C. But it’s essential to the well-being of Plex’s core business: its consumer search advertising. Google, as we all know, keeps a titanic amount of information about every aspect of our online lives. Customers largely have trusted the company so far, because of the quality of its products, and because there’s some sense that the Plex and the Pentagon aren’t swapping data wholesale. These small acts of resistance maintain that perceived barrier.

Not long ago — in the middle of the last decade, say — Google held an almost talismanic power inside military and intelligence agencies. Google made searching the web simple and straightforward. Surely, the government ought to be able to do the same for its databases.

“You kept hearing: ‘how come this can’t work like Google,’” says Bob Gourley, who served as the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Chief Technology Officer from 2005 to 2007. “But after a while the technologists got educated. You don’t really want Google.”

Or at least, not in that way. Even complex web searches are single strands of information. Intelligence analysts are hunting for interlocking chains of events: Person A in the same cafe as person B, who chats with person C, who gives some cash to person D. Those queries were so intricate, government engineers had to program each one in by hand, not so long ago. But lately, more sophisticated tools have come onto the market; the troops and spooks have gotten better at integrating their databases. Google’s products are still used, of course. But it’s just one vendor among many.

Authors

Noah Shachtman

Publication: Wired Magazine (Danger Room Blog)

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Director Bolts Pentagon for Google

Noah Shachtman — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) director Regina Dugan will soon be stepping down from her position atop the Pentagon’s premiere research shop to take a job with Google. Dugan, whose controversial tenure at the agency lasted just under three years, was “offered and accepted at senior executive position” with the internet giant, according to DARPA spokesman Eric Mazzacone. She felt she couldn’t say no to such an “innovative company,” he adds.

Dugan’s emphasis on cybersecurity and next-generation manufacturing earned her strong support from the White House, winning her praise from the President and maintaining the agency’s budget even during a period of relative austerity at the Pentagon. Her push into crowdsourcing and outreach to the hacker community were eye-openers in the often-closed world of military R&D. Dugan also won over some military commanders by diverting some of her research cash from long-term, blue-sky projects to immediate battlefield concerns.

“There is a time and a place for daydreaming. But it is not at DARPA,” she told a congressional panel in March 2011. “DARPA is not the place of dreamlike musings or fantasies, not a place for self-indulging in wishes and hopes. DARPA is a place of doing.” For an agency that spent millions of dollars on shape-shifting robots, Mach 20 missiles, and mind-controlled limbs, it was something of a revolutionary statement.

The shift was only one of the reasons why Dugan was a highly polarizing figure within her agency, and in the larger defense research community. The Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) is also actively investigating hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of contracts that DARPA gave out to RedX Defense—a bomb-detection firm that Dugan co-founded, and still partially owns. A separate audit is examining a sample of the 2,000 other research contracts Darpa has signed during Dugan’s tenure, to “determine the adequacy of Darpa’s selection, award, and administration of contracts and grants,” according to a military memorandum.

Results of the inspector general’s work haven’t been released. And the work had “no impact” on Dugan’s decision, according to her spokesman, Mazzacone. “The only reason” she decided to leave the Pentagon was the allure of working at Google.

“Dr. Dugan’s departure is not related to an OIG investigation,” Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, adds in a statement. “The OIG conducts regular audits of Defense agency contracts and ethics programs; as a Defense agency, this includes DARPA.”

“In the spring, questions were raised over whether it was appropriate for DARPA to have funded a proposal submitted by RedXDefense, particularly in light of the director’s continuing interest in this closely held small business,” Morgan says. “In response, the Department reviewed the processes in place at DARPA to ensure that those processes would ensure integrity and public confidence.” That review—separate from the OIG’s ongoing audits—found that DARPA and its chief’s actions “were consistent with the letter and spirit of relevant laws, regulations, and policies governing conflict of interest.”

Dugan is expected to depart “sometime in the next few weeks,” Mazzacone notes in an email. DARPA deputy director Kaigham “Ken” Gabriel, who has overseen the agency’s day-to-day operations since mid-2009, will serve as the acting Darpa chief. He’ll certainly be a strong contender for the permanent position, as will Lisa Porter, the head of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity—DARPA's counterpart in the intelligence community.

In the meantime, the Pentagon’s leadership are hailing the first female director of its most important research agency. “Regina Dugan’s leadership at DARPA has been extraordinary and she will be missed throughout the Department,” Frank Kendall, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, says in a statement. “We are all very grateful for the many contributions she has made in advancing the technologies that our war fighters depend on. She leaves for an exciting new opportunity and we wish her every success.”

Authors

Noah Shachtman

Publication: Wired Magazine (Danger Room blog)