New York Times

[Commentary] Over the next decade, approximately five billion people will become connected to the Internet. While the technologies of repression are a multibillion-dollar industry, the tools to measure and assess digital repression get only a few million dollars in government and private funding.

Of course, detection is just the first step in a counterattack against censorship. The next step is providing tools to undermine sensors, filters and throttles. For example, software using peer-to-peer algorithms lets users route an Internet connection through another computer without having to go through a VPN, helping to address the trust and scalability issues.

Today it’s possible to use networks like Facebook or Google Hangouts to verify one another’s identities similarly to how we do offline. Obfuscation techniques -- when one thing is made to look like another -- are also a path forward. A digital tunnel from Iran to Norway can be disguised as an ordinary Skype call. Deep packet inspection cannot distinguish such traffic from genuine traffic, and the collateral damage of blocking all traffic is often too high for a government to stomach. Finally, advances in user-experience design practices are a big, if not obvious, boon. The Internet is becoming easier to use, and the same goes for circumvention technologies -- which means that activists will face less of a challenge getting online securely.

[Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, are the authors of “The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses and Our Lives.”]

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents that revealed a vast network of surveillance by American government agencies, wants the technology industry to become serious about protecting the privacy of its customers. Snowden, speaking at the South by Southwest festival via videoconference, said the early technology adopters and entrepreneurs who travel to Austin every year for the event are “the folks who can fix this and enforce our rights.”

The Washington Post cited Snowden’s appraisal of the NSA: “They’re setting fire to the future of the Internet,” Snowden said. “We need public advocates. We need public oversight. Some way [to have] trusted figures, sort of civil rights champions to advocate for us, to protect the structure. How do we fix our oversight? How do we structure an oversight model that works? The key factor is accountability.”

On stage while Snowden spoke were Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project and Snowden’s legal adviser. All three men said that they wanted to raise a call to arms to developers and activists to build better tools to protect the privacy of technology users. Snowden said that even the companies whose business models rely on collecting data about their users “can still do this in a responsible way.”

“It’s not that you shouldn’t collect the data,” he said. “But you should only collect the data and hold it as long as necessary.” Hundreds of people sat quietly as Snowden spoke.

The technology community should pressure those companies to introduce security measures that are stronger and easier to use, Soghoian said. “We need services to include security by default,” he added.

[March 10]

In a ruling intended to break virtual monopolies in Mexican telecommunications and television broadcasting, a recently created regulator issued tough new conditions for two of the country’s largest companies, the wireless carrier América Móvil and the media company Televisa.

The ruling promises to redraw the landscape of both industries as it takes direct aim at the core businesses of Carlos Slim Helú, whose control over telephony here has made him one of the world’s richest men; and Emilio Azcárraga, whose television channels play an outsize role in the country’s politics. Televisa and América Móvil confirmed that they had been notified of the ruling. Both companies said they were studying the measures.

The conditions imposed on Televisa “look very good in my opinion,” said Irene Levy, president of Observatel, a consumer advocacy group. They are aimed at “promoting effective competition and avoiding the abuses of such a large company.” Mony de Swaan, a former telecommunications regulator, posted to Twitter that it was a “very hard pill to swallow” for América Móvil, adding that it was a “tap on Televisa’s shoulder.” At the center of the rulings by the regulator, the Federal Telecommunications Institute, known as Ifetel, is the requirement that the companies share their infrastructure, eliminating the central barrier for new firms looking to enter or to grow in the market.

Slim, who owns a stake of about 17 percent in The New York Times Company, turned the high margins he earned from Mexico’s fixed-line telephone monopoly, Telmex, into América Móvil, a telecommunications giant with 270 million wireless subscribers across the Americas. But in Mexico, competitors complained that his control over telecommunications infrastructure made it too expensive to compete. Telmex controls 80 percent of the fixed-line business, and Telcel, the mobile carrier, has 70 percent of the wireless market.

The lack of serious competition in Mexico has kept prices high, has limited investment and has held back the penetration of new technologies. According to the International Telecommunications Union, only 26 percent of Mexican households had access to the Internet in 2012, compared to more than 45 percent in Brazil.

[March 10]

New York Public Radio has received a $10 million grant from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation, which it says is the largest single gift ever made to a public radio station.

The foundation had previously given New York Public Radio two gifts totaling $11 million. The majority of the new grant, $8 million, is earmarked to support the development of digital operations, including a new feature called “Discover” on the WNYC mobile app. Designed originally with offline underground subway riders in mind, the feature will generate custom downloadable playlists for users who punch in the topics that interest them and the amount of time they want to listen. Developed in house, the feature will save listeners the trouble of searching for podcasts of public radio shows they already like.

Perhaps as important, it will help WNYC introduce users to content they may not be familiar with. It will also keep listeners within the WNYC ecosystem, where they can be encouraged to contribute financially.

“It’s our view, the board’s view, that we have this incredibly unique and special content,” he said by telephone, and digital technology can potentially help solve one of public radio’s biggest historical problems: much of that content is broadcast during hours when listeners are otherwise engaged and they never discover it. Digital can also be a way to reach younger listeners who may shun traditional radio listening, he said. The stations still get the majority of their audience from their terrestrial signals, but more and more public radio listening is migrating to digital, said Laura Walker, New York Public Radio’s chief executive.

[March 10]

For all the tension and media coverage of San Francisco’s rising rents and tech shuttle buses, there have not been a whole lot of people stepping forward with solutions. Enter Marc Benioff. Salesforce’s chief executive used the occasion of his company’s 15th anniversary to announce the formation of SF Gives, a partnership with the non-profit organization Tipping Point, that hopes to raise $10 million over the next 60 days for Bay Area antipoverty programs.

With SF Gives, Benioff channels local philanthropic heroes like Charles R. Schwab, founder of the giant discount brokerage firm, the Gap co-founders Don and Doris Fisher, and Warren Hellman, the deceased investor who gave millions of dollars to cultural, educational and medical charities in the Bay Area and founded and financed a free bluegrass concert series, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Benioff is also putting his colleagues in the tech industry on the spot.

SF Gives is challenging 20 companies to pledge $500,000, and eventually expand the program to $100 million. The initiative has already received $5 million in commitments for donations from companies like Box, LinkedIn, Google, Zynga, PopSugar, IfOnly and Jawbone. The end goal, Benioff told The San Francisco Chronicle, is to change the way Silicon Valley thinks about local philanthropy.

[March 7]

For the big television industry event called Upfront Week, NBCUniversal will borrow a page from the playbook of its parent, Comcast, and bundle together its cable channels.

NBCUniversal intends to invite Madison Avenue to a combined presentation of plans for the 2014-15 season by the company’s cable holdings, which include 17 channels like Bravo, E!, Esquire Network, Oxygen, Sprout, Syfy and USA Network. For the last several years, NBCUniversal has hosted its cable upfront parties, receptions and other events separately, typically scheduling six to eight -- or more -- in February, March and April. The combined presentation by what is known as the NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group -- including discussion of digital content like online video -- will be on May 15, the final day of the 2014-15 Upfront Week, in an afternoon time slot used since 2011 for upfront events for USA. The presentation will be at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, a site that NBCUniversal has also reserved for a presentation by its broadcast network, NBC, to be held on the morning of May 12.

[March 7]