January 2010

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will press China's foreign minister on the issue of Internet freedom, a growing irritant in ties between the two powers, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

Sec Clinton, in London for meetings on Yemen and Afghanistan, will meet Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on Thursday and is likely to raise the dispute, which has been brought into focus by search engine giant Google's threat to abandon the Chinese market over charges of government interference. "I think it is likely that they will end up discussing, maybe not the specific Google situation but the broader issue," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Sec Clinton has already publicly asked China to respond to Google's charges, which include censorship and a sophisticated hacking attack mounted from within the country. She has also laid out a broad U.S. policy calling for unfettered Internet access around the world and said that countries or individuals who engage in cyber attacks should face consequences.

The Supreme Court ruling that throws out limits on corporate political-endorsement spending is giving new hope to opponents of network neutrality regulation proposed by the Federal Communication Commission.

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court on Thursday reaffirmed earlier rulings granting corporations free-speech rights, by saying a limit on spending for endorsements for candidates violates those rights. While Citizens United has nothing to do with net neutrality rules, opponents of the FCC's proposal say the court appeared to strengthen corporate free-speech rights in a way that could apply to net neutrality.

Net neutrality backers, however, say that people looking to the Citizens United case for direction on net neutrality are stretching the definitions of free speech and exaggerating the role of broadband service providers. "It'd be kind of funny, if we didn't have to keep responding to some of these arguments," said Corie Wright, a lawyer for Free Press, a media reform group that supports net neutrality rules. She said those arguments confuse the role that ISPs have as Web site publishers with their role as network operators. She acknowledged that broadband providers have limited functions, such as publishing their own Web sites or blogs, that enjoy free-speech rights. But the net neutrality rules as proposed would create no limits on the ability of ISPs to publish their own Web sites, she said. The arguments that the ISPs' traffic-carrying role is speech is "so fundamentally at odds with the facts in the law," Wright said.

USTelecom filed a letter to recommend the National Broadband Plan support development of a test project to provide an academically rigorous evaluation of concepts that effectively increase broadband adoption by low-income households.

USTelecom said it is not aware of any uniform and comprehensive study comparing the impact and efficacy of these programs. USTelecom proposes a project that would gather information for the FCC regarding effective methods to increase adoption by low-income households. USTelecom said solid data on current initiatives, along with that developed from establishing test beds for new initiatives, should be used to inform forward movement on any nationwide program. The association indicated the data will be ready for review in early 2011.

With the United States facing threats of cyberattacks from foreign countries, criminal organizations and politically motivated hackers, questions linger about the federal government's approach to cybersecurity.

There are few "penalties for doing bad things" in cyberspace, said James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, during a briefing in Washington on Wednesday sponsored by Government Executive. He noted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech last week calling on Chinese authorities to investigate cyberattacks against Google marked the first time a U.S. leader has spoken out publicly about such an incident. Late last year, President Obama named Howard Schmidt to serve as the government's cyber coordinator, seven months after announcing the creation of the position.

"It would be very interesting to read [Schmidt's] job description," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Harry D. Raduege Jr., chairman of the Deloitte Center for Innovation, who spent 35 years in the military working on information systems issues. A lot of people in government, Raduege said, "have responsibility, but no authority." He said Schmidt, who also served as special adviser for cyberspace security for the White House during the George W. Bush administration, has the background and expertise necessary to succeed as cyber coordinator. But Schmidt "will have to use all of his network," Raduege said. "He will have to ask the people who do have authority to carry water for him."