August 2013

A report released by the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) criticizes the Obama Administration’s recent effort to establish new privacy safeguards for the Digital Era.

The more than yearlong proceeding led by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to further the Administration’s proposed “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” failed to ensure that the public can be protected from the array of sophisticated mobile “app” data-gathering practices. The detailed, 34-page report, “Head in the Digital Sand,” argues that the lobbyist-dominated process failed to examine the actual operations of the mobile app industry and its impact on the ability of consumers to protect their privacy effectively.

Among the most disturbing revelations is the growing use of real-time tracking and surveillance of individual mobile app users. Industry practices requiring investigation by the Federal Trade Commission are identified, including apps that stealthily eavesdrop on consumers to ensure they spend more on virtual goods and other services—moving them up, in industry parlance, from “minnows” to “dolphins” and then to big cash-generating “whales.” The report examines other mobile and app-related data collection practices, including the ways users are being tracked from device to device; how app developers “acquire” and target users; the role of so-called “ad exchanges” that auction off mobile consumers to advertisers in milliseconds, through the use of data-rich profiles; so-called “monetization” practices relied on by developers; and industry research on the unique personal relationship users have with mobile devices and content.

[Commentary] August 29 will be the 8th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a storm that left a level of devastation and death in the Gulf Coast that horrified our nation. Soon after the storm in 2005 there was an open debate about whether it was smart to rebuild in cities such as New Orleans, where the cost to build back the city’s defenses against future storms was great due to the natural terrain and the level of technology needed to do the job. Residents had to choose if they would return to their homes and invest in making their communities whole again, or simply start over in a new town where the prospects were better. This decision is not unlike what communities faced following the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy along the New York and New Jersey coast in 2012. In both instances, residents decided that their community was “stronger than the storm” and that they would restore their communities back to a place that worked for all its people and businesses.

Now the Federal Communications Commission faces a similar decision. After all previous natural disasters, such as Katrina, telecom and communications companies worked with the FCC to establish an understanding that they would, given adequate time by the agency, build back the parts of their network that had been destroyed in the disaster. Building out communications networks is expensive, time-consuming work and so the FCC set up a system under section 214(a) of the Communications Act for phone companies to ask for that needed time and flexibility.

The take-down of the New York Times website for nearly two days this week exposed how easily computer hackers can exploit the Internet's Achilles' heel.

As the website was being restored, the tech industry scurried to assess the high-profile cyberattack and weigh what measures could be taken to prevent a similar breach. In the last two years, a growing number of companies with a significant presence on the Web have had to bolster their defenses to make up for security gaps that were not considered a problem when the Internet was created. But as online attacks escalate in severity and visibility, high-profile targets whose digital presences often span the globe have struggled to spot and repair every vulnerability. The latest cyberattack on the nation's second-largest newspaper highlighted two well-known problems: a reliance on user names and passwords that can be easily stolen; and reliance on an unsecure directory that's crucial to delivering the right content after a user enters a Web address in an Internet browser.

Two local elementary schools became the first to roll out tablet computers in a $1-billion effort to put iPads in the hands of every student in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

For Broadacres, in Carson, the tablets were an exhilarating upgrade for a campus that had no wireless Internet and few working computers. Technology was only marginally better at Cimarron, in Hawthorne, where the computer lab couldn't accommodate an entire class. LA schools Supt. John Deasy has pushed for the technology, which will cost about $1 billion — half of that for the Apple tablets and about half for other expenses, such as installing a wireless network on every campus. The vast majority of the cost will be covered by school construction bonds, a payment method that has sparked some concerns and legal and logistical hurdles. Not everyone is sold on whether the tablets will improve learning.