January 2011

TV Crews Struggle in Egyptian Chaos

Television crews in Cairo fought to stay on the air as protests enveloped major cities in Egypt. Egyptian authorities adopted various tactics to halt live broadcasts from the capital city, but for the most part networks like CNN and NBC were able to send signals out. The sometimes shaky and grainy television pictures showed that the curfew imposed by the Egyptian government had little effect on its citizens. For a time, Al Jazeera and other networks broadcast startling images of a group of protesters who tried to push a police vehicle off a bridge into the Nile River. The protesters later set the vehicle on fire. Journalists on the scene have been impeded by blockages of the Internet and of wireless phones in Egypt. “We went to our backup systems,” said Tony Maddox, the executive vice president and managing director of CNN International.

How Egypt Switched Off the Internet

But how did the government shut off Internet access in the country? Is there a big kill switch inside Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s office? Do physical cables have to be destroyed? Can a lockdown like this work? Plenty of nations place limitations on communications, sometimes very severe ones. But there are only a few examples of regimes shutting down communications entirely — Burma’s military leaders notably cut connectivity during the protests of 2007, and Nepal did a similar thing after the king took control of the government in 2005 as part of his battle against insurgents. Local Chinese authorities have also conducted similar, short-lived blockades. The OpenNet Initiative has outlined two methods by which most nations could enact such shutdowns. Essentially, officials can either close down the routers which direct traffic over the border — hermetically sealing the country from outsiders — or go further down the chain and switch off routers at individual ISPs to prevent access for most users inside. In its report on the Burmese crackdown, ONI suggests the junta used the second option, something made easier because it owns the only two Internet service providers in the country. While things aren't clear yet, this doesn't look like the pattern seen in Egypt.

One U.S. Corporation's Role in Egypt's Brutal Crackdown

[Commentary] The open Internet's role in popular uprising is now undisputed. Look no further than Egypt, where the Mubarak regime reportedly shut down Internet and cell phone communications -- a troubling predictor of the fierce crackdown that has followed. What's even more troubling is news that one American company is aiding Egypt's harsh response through sales of technology that makes this repression possible.

Telecom Egypt, the nation's dominant phone and Internet service provider, is a state-run enterprise, which made it easy on Friday morning for authorities to pull the plug and plunge much of the nation into digital darkness. Moreover, Egypt also has the ability to spy on Internet and cell phone users, by opening their communication packets and reading their contents. Iran used similar methods during the 2009 unrest to track, imprison and in some cases, "disappear" truckloads of cyber-dissidents. The companies that profit from sales of this technology need to be held to a higher standard. One in particular is an American firm, Narus of Sunnyvale, Calif., which has sold Telecom Egypt "real-time traffic intelligence" equipment. Narus, now owned by Boeing, was founded in 1997 by Israeli security experts to create and sell mass surveillance systems for governments and large corporate clients. The company is best known for creating NarusInsight, a supercomputer system which is allegedly used by the National Security Agency and other entities to perform mass surveillance and monitoring of public and corporate Internet communications in real time. Narus provides Egypt Telecom with Deep Packet Inspection equipment (DPI), a content-filtering technology that allows network managers to inspect, track and target content from users of the Internet and mobile phones, as it passes through routers on the information superhighway.

Could Egypt Happen Here? Obama's Internet "Kill Switch"

Egypt's flagrant violation of communications is possible only in the less free corners of the world, right? But since last summer, when a Senate bill was introduced by Sen Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the US has been considering an Internet "kill switch" of its own.

CNET reported on a "renewed push" to implement the bill. Plenty of people criticized the first version of the bill, but the latest version has raised even more red flags. The revision bans judicial review over executive decrees. "The country we're seeking to protect is a country that respects the right of any individual to have their day in court," Steve DelBianco of the NetChoice coalition told CNET. "Yet this bill would deny that day in court to the owner of infrastructure." Now, the purpose of the bill is not, of course, to allow the president to undermine the freedom of speech, or to limit the ability of people to protest. The bill (which doesn't use the term "kill switch" itself) is in the name of cybersecurity, and allows the president to declare a state of national cyberemergency. The legislation calls for the establishment of a "list of systems or assets that constitute critical infrastructure." Homeland Security would only add systems to the list if 1) disruption of the system could cause "severe economic consequences," 2) the system is "a component of the national information infrastructure," and 3) the "national information infrastructure is essential to the reliable operation of the system."

Twitter co-founder: Freedom of expression is a human right

Twitter's Biz Stone argued that freedom of expression is a human right in a post on the company's blog, coinciding with Egypt's blackout of the Internet and cellphone service.

"Our goal is to instantly connect people everywhere to what is most meaningful to them. For this to happen, freedom of expression is essential," the company co-founder said in the post, titled The Tweets Must Flow. "Some Tweets may facilitate positive change in a repressed country, some make us laugh, some make us think, some downright anger a vast majority of users," Stone said. "The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact. This is both a practical and ethical belief." And, on a practical level, he said, the social media website doesn't have the resources to review each of the more than 100 million Tweets delivered on its site every day. "From an ethical perspective, almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits," Stone said.

Obama's call for innovation follows slowdown in most sectors, scholars say

Google and the iPhone are American inventions. But the first mass-produced gas-electric hybrid car was made in Japan. And although the United States now fosters a nascent commercial space industry, if you want to speed from city to city on a smooth, fast train, you have to head to Europe. As for the world's largest solar energy generator, you won't find it in the American Southwest. It's planned for Morocco. Over the past decade or longer, US innovation stalled in almost every sector except information technology and agriculture, say scholars who study innovation. Federal figures and industry surveys support their assessment.

FairPoint meets broadband commitment in Maine

FairPoint Communications has met its commitment of making broadband available to more than 83 percent of homes and businesses in its Maine service area, the company announced.

The telecommunications company said high-speed Internet is now available to 83.4 percent of those homes and businesses. As a condition of its 2008 acquisition of Verizon's northern New England operations, FairPoint was required to reach an 83-percent bench mark by the end of 2010. The company has also reached its regulatory commitments for broadband access elsewhere in northern New England by reaching an 85-percent bench mark in New Hampshire and 80 percent in Vermont by the end of 2010. When FairPoint bought Verizon's operations, only 68.9 percent of Maine customers had broadband access. The company has since made it available to another 44,000 homes and businesses in nearly 100 communities, said Michael Reed, Fairpoint's Maine president.

Biden To Head Piracy Protection Update

Vice President Joe Biden will be meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel and industry and public interest stakeholders to provide an update on administration efforts to protect intellectual property. Also on the guest list for the Friday meeting are Verizon Chairman Ivan Seidenberg, Thomas Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, and Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn.

White House
Friday, January 28, 2011
1:15 pm

The Vice President holds a meeting to discuss the steps the Administration is taking to protect intellectual property rights, combat piracy, and prevent the proliferation of counterfeit goods

Attorney General Eric Holder
Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke
Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President
Jack Lew, Director, Office of Management and Budget
Victoria Espinel, U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator
John Morton, Director, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Ambassador Phil Verveer, Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, U.S. Department of State
Carl Bass, President and CEO, Autodesk
John Lechleiter, President and CEO, Eli Lilly
Thomas Rothman, Co-Chairman and CEO, Fox Filmed Entertainment
Ajay Banga, President and CEO, Mastercard
Glen Barros, President and CEO, Concord Records
Paul Almeida, President, Department of Professional Employees, AFL-CIO
Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon
Gigi Sohn, President, Public Knowledge
Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer of the United States
Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner of Food and Drugs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
David Kappos, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Alan Hoffman, Deputy Chief of Staff, Office of the Vice President
Jason Furman, Deputy Director, National Economic Council

Read more about Protecting intellectual property rights

The Commerce Department’s Latest Privacy Initiative on Data Privacy Day

Jan 28 was Data Privacy Day, an annual international celebration to raise awareness and generate discussion about information privacy designated by both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives in 2009. In honor of Data Privacy Day, here’s an update on the latest Commerce Department initiative to protect the privacy of the American people.

On Jan. 7 at a discussion forum with business and academic leaders at Stanford University, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard A. Schmidt unveiled plans to establish a National Program Office at the Commerce Department to help implement the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, an administration initiative that aims to foster private-sector development of new technologies that can improve both the privacy and the security of sensitive online transactions. Cybercrime and identity theft cost U.S. consumers hundreds of millions of dollars annually. So the idea is that the private sector would lead the development of better technologies for consumers and businesses to establish their identities before they conduct sensitive transactions like banking, shopping or downloading health care records. The Commerce Department would facilitate the process by building consensus on standards and managing collaborative efforts with other federal agencies. These technologies could be devices like a smart card or fob that generate one-time passwords. They could be software or devices on your smart phone or personal computer that match a digital certificate issued by your computer or phone with a personal pin number. Because these technologies would require both something you have, like your cell phone, and something you know, like your pin number, an identify thief or hacker could not pretend to be you simply by guessing your password to your bank’s website.

Benton

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