February 2010

Survey Calls For More Cyber Education

A new poll released Thursday of elementary and high school teachers, administrators and technology coordinators shows they lack the professional skills to adequately train students about cyber safety, security and ethics.

"The study illuminates that there is no cohesive effort to provide young people the education they need to safely and securely navigate the digital age and prepare them as digital citizens and employees," Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, said.

The poll, conducted by Zogby International of more than 1,000 teachers, 400 school administrators and 200 technology coordinators, was released by Kaiser's group, along with Microsoft and the University of Maryland's Educational Technology Policy, Research and Outreach. The survey found that four out of every 10 teachers have not taught any topics related to cyber safety or cybersecurity in the past year. And while more than 90 percent of technology coordinators, school administrators and teachers said they favor teaching cyber ethics, safety and security in schools, only 35 percent of teachers and half of administrators require that these subjects be included in their curriculum. The poll also found that schools tend to focus more on shielding students from inappropriate Internet content - with more than 90 percent using filtering and blocking software - instead of teaching children ways to safely and securely surf the Internet.

Cisco & Google: Enemies Now & Forever

Cisco, it seems, is trying to counter the unease caused by Google's recent announcement that it will build Google Fiber, a fiber-based network that would connect homes at speeds of 1 Gbps.

That's despite the fact that Google executives dismiss the idea that the company would become a service provider, and characterize their proposed network as an experiment. Regardless, the carriers are scared. Just like they were scared when Google said that it would start investing in wireless broadband by participating in wireless spectrum auctions. Earlier today we held our most recent Bunker Series Event where we discussed the broadband buildout, and I was pretty explicit in making the point that Google Fiber is a good thing, because incumbent carriers have been dragging their feet for too long.

Online TV Viewing For Catch-Up

According to Nielsen's online panel data of U.S. visitors to online TV sites in the last 30 days, when it comes to viewing behavior, demographics, and ad effectiveness, those watching online TV Network video are closer demographically to DVR users by gender breaks, but closer to the general online population relative to age, reports Jon Gibs, VP for Insights, Online and Cross Media. Americans are consuming more and more video on TV, Web and Mobile according to the recent Nielsen A2/M2 Three Screen Report, but the broader usage patterns suggest that online video is a replacement of DVR use, or used by those who do not have immediate access to TV. TV network content online is used to catch up with programming, and not typically as a replacement for TV viewing, as results from the email survey showed.

Public Knowledge Asks FCC To Protect Consumers In Underlying Telecom Service Market

The Federal Communications Commission is trying to figure out how to examine the market for some of the most popular telecom services used by big business - so-called "special access" services. Public Knowledge late Feb. 24 called on the Federal Communications Commission to make certain that consumer interests are taken into account into as it examines the structure of a market that sells its services to big business.

In comments to the FCC, PK argued that the so-called "special access" service prices have an impact on consumers: "This technical and obscure proceeding, that not one in a million Americans has ever even heard of, ultimately has more impact on everyone's pocketbook and bottom line than billion dollar stimulus and job creation measures debated in the Congress today."

The PK filing compared special access services used by big business to crude oil: "Consumers do not buy special access services directly anymore than they buy barrels of oil directly from the tanker. But when the price of crude oil goes up, consumers pay more for gas in their cars, more for groceries brought by truck to supermarkets, more to heat their homes, and so forth."

Electronic Personal Health Information Exchange

The Government Accountability Office more than 60 operational health information exchanges and a selection of each of the exchanges' participating providers to describe 1) the practices implemented for disclosing personal health information for purposes of treatment, including the use of electronic means for obtaining consent, as reported by selected health information exchange organizations, their participating providers, and other entities; and 2) the effects of the electronic sharing of health information on the quality of care for patients as reported by these organizations.

The health care entities GAO studied reported that they implement disclosure practices that reflect widely accepted practices for safeguarding personal information-the Fair Information Practices-to help ensure the appropriate use and disclosure of electronic personal health information for treatment purposes. For example, providers in the study described various implementations of practices that require direct interaction with patients, such as informing patients of the use and disclosure of personal health information and providing patients access to their own records. Some of them inform patients that their electronic personal health information may be shared through health information exchanges-entities that were formed to facilitate the electronic sharing of patients' health information among providers. Both the providers and exchanges in the study described practices that limit disclosure of information, secure electronic information that they store and transmit, and help ensure accountability for safeguarding electronic personal health information.

"Climate-gate" Debate Online

The blogosphere last week once again fixated on one of its most popular topics, global warming, following a BBC interview with Phil Jones, the scientist at the center of the so-called "Climate-gate" controversy last year.

Jones, the director of the British research unit whose emails were uncovered, answered detailed questions about the science behind global warming and said he was "100% confident that the climate has warmed." The response to his answers highlighted the divide between those who support the theory of global warming and those who question it. In the blogosphere from February 15-19, the global warming debate received more than a third (34%) of the week's links according to the New Media Index produced by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. This is the first time the subject has made the list of top five subjects among blogs since last December when global warming was a significant subject for three weeks in a row.

The One-Way-Mirror Society: Privacy Implications of the New Digital Signage Networks

New forms of sophisticated digital signage networks are being deployed widely by retailers and others in both public and private spaces. From simple people-counting sensors mounted on doorways to sophisticated facial recognition cameras mounted in flat video screens and end-cap displays, digital signage technologies are gathering increasing amounts of detailed information about consumers, their behaviors, and their characteristics, like age, gender, and ethnicity.

These technologies are quickly becoming ubiquitous in the offline world, and there is little if any disclosure to consumers that information about behavioral and personal characteristics is being collected and analyzed to create highly targeted advertisements, among other things. Few if any consumers expect that the video screen they are watching, the kiosk they are typing on, or the game billboard they are interacting with is watching them back while gathering images of them and behavioral information. This is creating a one-way-mirror society with no notice or opportunity for consumers to consent to being monitored in retail, public, and other spaces or to consent to having their behavior analyzed for marketing and profit.

The privacy problems inherent in digital networks are profound, and to date these issues have not been adequately addressed by anyone. This report by the World Privacy Forum seeks to shed light in a dark area and to start a more robust public debate. In addition to the report, the WPF has released with a group of the nation's leading consumer groups a set of privacy principles to be used in digital signage networks.

Google fires back at Europe

Google aggressively fired back at European regulators' charges of anti-competitive behavior on Thursday.

The company defended its search algorithm as the best way to curate content on the Web in the wake of an investigation by the European Commission. "After nearly two decades, I've lost count of how many times I've been asked why Google chooses to generate its search results algorithmically," Google fellow Amit Singhal wrote in blog post Thursday that dismissed concerns about its searches damaging competition. "Here's how we see it: the web is built by people. You are the ones creating pages and linking to pages. We are utilizing all this human contribution through our algorithms to order and rank our results. We think that's a much better solution than a hand-arranged one," Singhal continued.

Broadband tax condemned as 'unfair' by MPs

An UK government proposal to charge people with fixed phone lines 50 pence per month to help fund ultra-fast broadband has been condemned as "unfair" by Members of Parliament. The cross-party Business Innovation and Skills Committee said most of those who would pay the tax would not benefit from the faster broadband service. The focus should be on providing basic broadband for all and allowing markets to deliver higher speeds, it said.

EU privacy chief calls for public ACTA debate

The European Union's privacy chief has called for transparency in the creation of a global intellectual property trade agreement, which is being negotiated in secret by countries including the US, Australia and the EU.

In an official opinion published on Monday, Peter Hustinx warned that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations raise "significant issues as to the impact of the measures taken to combat counterfeiting and piracy on individuals' fundamental rights, and in particular their right to privacy and data protection".

Benton

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