February 2010

The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) today announced a $7.25 million Recovery Act investment to bridge the technological divide and increase economic opportunities in vulnerable and low-income communities in Los Angeles, the Central Valley, Orange County, San Diego, and the Inland Empire in California. The grant will fund digital literacy training for more than 675,000 individuals, enabling them to make use of key educational, employment, and health resources online.

With this investment, the California Emerging Technology Fund will coordinate a multifaceted outreach campaign using local partner organizations, trusted ambassadors, and grassroots mobilization, to disseminate information about broadband training and services to 5 million California residents. Among other benefits, this investment will upgrade California's One-e-App one-stop online screening and enrollment system that helps families apply for a range of health care and social service programs. The project expects to increase adoption of broadband Internet service among key vulnerable populations by more than 130,000 households.

"High-speed Internet access is the lifeblood of today's economy. While broadband usage rates have increased in recent years, a significant portion of the population is still not online and therefore deprived of access to many job and educational opportunities, employment training, health information, and other vital services that are available online," said Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling. "This investment will help close this gap and help create economic opportunities for more Americans."

The Broadband Awareness and Adoption project of the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) proposes to increase adoption of broadband in vulnerable and low-income communities in Los Angeles, the Central Valley, Orange County, San Diego, and the Inland Empire. CETF has identified key populations with low broadband adoption rates and developed partnerships with organizations uniquely qualified to reach out to each of these populations. Working with these partners, CETF plans to coordinate a targeted media campaign, bolstered by outreach from trusted ambassadors and grassroots mobilization, to reach 5 million multi-lingual residents. CETF intends to provide digital literacy training for more than 678,000 low-income individuals, including more than 300,000 youth. The project expects to increase household adoption of broadband in these high-priority, low-income communities by more than 133,000 households.

The Broadband Awareness and Adoption project also proposes to:

• Focus on the unemployed, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, other ethnic and rural residents, and people with disabilities, whose technology usage lags significantly behind the rest of the state.
• Expand the capacity of the United Way's 2-1-1 telephone line, which provides information about available community services. With this grant, the United Way will be able to help individuals seeking computer training or assistance finding broadband options, including referring callers to local public computer center resources.
• Upgrade the California's One-e-App one-stop online screening and enrollment system that helps families apply for a range of health care and social service programs.

CETF, a not-for-profit organization formed by the California Public Utilities Commission, has created numerous public-private partnerships statewide to help bring broadband access to all Californians. CETF has also partnered with other key California agencies to compile recent data regarding which areas are most in need of Internet and computer access. The organization has created an extensive statewide network of partner organizations that are actively engaged in sharing best practices and resources through CETF's strong learning community.

PROJECT PARTNERS

• Access Now
• Center of Accessible Technology
• The Center to Promote Healthcare Access, Inc.
• Chicana Latina Foundation
• Dewey Square Group
• Latino Community Foundation
• Radio Bilingue
• United Way of California

Microsoft launched a novel legal assault to take down a global network of PCs suspected of spreading spam and harmful computer code, adding what the company believes could become a potent weapon in the battle against cyber criminals.

But security experts say it isn't yet clear how effective Microsoft's approach will be, while online rights groups warn that the activities of innocent computer users could be inadvertently disrupted. On Monday, a federal judge in Alexandria (VA) granted Microsoft's request for an order to deactivate hundreds of Internet addresses that the company linked to an army of tens of thousands of PCs around the globe, infected with computer code that allows them to be harnessed to spread spam, malicious virus programs and mount mass attacks to disable Web sites. The court order was issued under seal—a rare move in civil cases of this nature—to allow the company to secretly sever communications channels among the computers before the network's operators could re-establish contact with the machines.