Revere Digital

[Commentary] The 10th anniversary of Gmail reminds us of Google’s uncanny ability to symbiotically evolve with and shape the future of the Web.

When the service launched in 2004, it successfully disrupted the then-dominant players in the space, a feat that the company pulled off for search, and repeated with Android. The most recent example of Google’s adaption is its move to extend Gmail encryption. No, this isn’t deja vu. While Google made a similar announcement about email protection in 2010, it will now encrypt all inter-server traffic for Gmail to offer an additional step to enhance user privacy in the era of Web-powered communications. At the center of Google’s approach to protecting the next generation of the Internet is a revamp of email encryption, a technique that traces back to the 1990s.

Historically, HTTPS made it possible for e-commerce to flourish by securing the IT tunnels for payment transactions, authenticating websites and securing digital communications. Now, Google is adapting the protocol as part of its model for securing the future of the Internet by building trust in its technologies and by setting the stage for a more secure Internet. The fact is that the Web is evolving much faster than we can grasp, and not always in a good way. But, as Google’s latest move shows, encryption is becoming a much more pervasive and trusted technology in our connected world. Google has brought end-to-end encryption to email tunnels. Now it’s time to extend that protection to data across the IT stack that businesses and consumers touch. As Edward Snowden pointed out in his SXSW panel, encryption is most powerful when applied from end to end.

[Kothari is Founder and CEO, CipherCloud]

The Turkish Constitutional Court ruled that a countrywide Twitter ban violated principles of free speech in Turkey, and ordered Turkey’s Telecommunications Directorate to cease the block on the microblogging service immediately.

Twitter is working to restore service to Turkish citizens, after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blocked access to the microblogging social network.

“We stand with our users in Turkey who rely on Twitter as a vital communications platform,” Twitter’s policy team said. “We hope to have full access returned soon.”

The ban came shortly after anonymous users posted audio clips of what could be incriminating evidence of Erdogan and other top Turkish officials engaging in corruption -- clips that emerged just days before key local elections in the country. Erdogan apparently used a court order to command Turkey’s telecommunications authority to block Twitter use within the country, though many have found easy ways to circumvent the ban and access the service.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul spoke out against Erdogan’s actions -- in a series of tweets, appropriately enough -- claiming that suppression of the service should occur only if citizens’ personal freedoms were being violated.

[Commentary] You may have created a social startup that finds favor with the tech blogs and is so hot that it overtakes the 20-to-40-year-old social/tech hipsters. But never, ever forget this cardinal rule: 16-year-old girls run the Internet.

Two of the hottest social network apps right now are Secret and Whisper. Whisper and Secret are both scaling very quickly. Are they part of a fad that’s going to fade? Or can we count on one of these as the perfect outlet to dump our feelings and thoughts on society? Building a social interest network that is not a fad requires:

• Developing cultural pillars. At a minimum, both Whisper and Secret need to give you some sense of their values, purpose statement and expectations to help shape the intent of the network. Not everyone listens, but these guidelines and expectations have a powerful effect on networks, especially early in the user experience of the service.
• Relying on your contacts. Scanning contacts freaks people out a little, but the genius of scanning your contacts is that it sets a cultural tone. Because Secret scans contacts, users of Secret take it more seriously than Whisper. With Whisper, you get the distinct feeling that you’re revealing your innermost shenanigans to a random crowd of strangers from all age groups and interests. his is precisely the experience Secret is increasingly positioned to deliver on, that is getting more and more difficult for Whisper to capture.
• Develop a solid collaborative filter. A collaborative filter in the main feeds will connect users with content that’s more relevant to them based on what “Whispered Secrets” they “Like.” Unfortunately for Whisper, all they have to go on is “Like” data for this, because they don’t know who their users are, where they’re from or what they like. Secret is developing a substantial edge here, since they’ve already set a precedent that they’re going to ask for personal data like contacts. Expect them to ask more questions soon. It’s the only path toward a killer browsing experience.

[Sotira is the co-founder and CEO of deviantART, the largest online social community for artists and art enthusiasts]

National Security Agency Deputy Director Rick Ledgett called former contractor Edward Snowden’s release of documents about his agency’s surveillance programs “inappropriate” and “arrogant” in a video interview from Fort Meade (MD), beamed into the TED conference in Vancouver.

But he acknowledged that the outcry around the Snowden revelations has led the NSA to try to be more transparent.

“The vulnerabilities we find, the overwhelming majority we disclose to the people who are responsible for manufacturing or developing those products,” Ledgett said. “We’re actually working on a proposal right now to be transparent and to publish transparency reports in the same way the Internet companies do.”

Google CEO Larry Page was hesitant to tell the world about the medical condition that was hurting his ability to speak, but publicly sharing his voice troubles helped him realize the value of openness.

Thousands of people with similar conditions replied to him online. If people could only share their medical records anonymously -- and if research doctors could find them online and connect to the patients -- Page estimates that 100,000 lives could be saved in 2014. That same premise should apply to online privacy, Page said.

“I’m just very worried that with Internet privacy, we’re doing the same thing we’re doing with medical records, we’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We’re not thinking about the tremendous good that can come from people sharing the right information with the right people in the right ways.”

Nearly two years after Google, Facebook and other Internet companies launched their own DC lobbying group, the Internet Association is expanding to open a Sacramento-based office.

While the trade group hasn’t been around very long, it has already become a growing presence on Capitol Hill, where Michael Beckerman and his staff of seven have made Internet companies’ and startups’ feelings known about a wide range of issues, from NSA surveillance programs and data security to privacy issues and patent troll legislation.

Although the Internet Association plans to hire more lobbyists to focus on state and local issues in the future, it’s kicking off those efforts in California because that’s where a majority of its members are based, Beckerman said.

It’s March Madness time; it’s also time to make sure that your pay-TV subscription is up to date.

A good chunk of the tournament’s 67 games will only be available to people who have access to Turner-owned cable channels TNT, TBS and TruTV. And for the first time ever, that includes the two semifinal games on Saturday, April 5: If you don’t have pay TV and you don’t want to watch the Final Four games at a bar, you’re going to be out of luck.

The (legal) Internet won’t help you, either: There are official tournament apps available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Kindle, etc., which will stream all the games, but the only way to get the ones that are on cable channels are by “authenticating” -- proving that you have a pay-TV subscription. The CBS games -- including the April 7 final -- will stream for free, though.

[Commentary] Just like the unfounded fears of Japan taking over America, a new bogeyman has been invented -- an argument that America is allegedly falling behind Japan and other regions in broadband.

This scare tactic has been employed opportunistically both by those who advocate government intervention in broadband and by companies with a regulatory objective. While certain critics love to conjure a European broadband utopia, as an American academic at a Danish university, I am hard-pressed to find a European who would subscribe to such a notion.

Indeed, European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes observes that Verizon LTE reaches more than 90 percent of Americans; no European carrier can claim the same for Europeans. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Japan’s richest man, who turned SoftBank into the country’s most profitable operator, who criticized American broadband when speaking the US Chamber of Commerce, knows that competition in the mobile industry comes from technology, not the number of competitors.

This fact is evident in Son’s jettisoning Sprint’s Kansas headquarters to set up command central in Silicon Valley -- next to Google and Apple, companies about which he grumbled at the 2011 Mobile World Congress, “take all the upside while the mobile providers become dumb pipes.” Complaining that the industry is not competitive is a frequent ploy by the third or fourth competitor to compensate in sympathy for what it lacks in business practice. But AT&T and Verizon are not to blame for their competitors’ mistakes. Son knows that at the end of the day he has to make results, not rely on an imaginary bogeyman that America is allegedly falling behind.

[Layton is a fellow at the Internet, Economics and Policy think-tank and PhD student at Aalborg University in Copenhagen]

EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes gave an impassioned plea for Europe to use the Edward Snowden revelations as a wake-up call and to make offering a more secure Internet something of a competitive advantage.

She also said European regulators should find ways to guarantee more consumer protections while at the same time avoiding rules that would make Europe isolationist. Afterward, Re/code caught up with Kroes to get a few more details on how she imagines that taking shape.

“We are talking about an open Internet, and I am a great believer (in that),” Kroes said in an interview on the sidelines of the CeBit Global Conference. “We need to be absolutely certain that it is not ruled by other ones and in ways that are not fitting in our culture.” Trust, security and privacy are key European values that must be ensured, she said.