October 2013

Districts Upgrade Tech Ahead of Common-Core Testing

Hoping to avoid the widespread technical failures that caused online testing breakdowns in a number of states last spring, education officials are communicating regularly with testing providers and planning dress rehearsals far ahead of the next rounds of online tests in 2013-14.

"Districts need to have a punch list and make sure they have everything they need to be ready,” said Keith R. Krueger, the CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, a professional association for school district technology leaders. Though more breakdowns likely are inevitable given online testing's relatively new place in schools, the ability to protect the validity, integrity, and security of the process is increasingly crucial as districts in 46 states -- those that have adopted the Common Core State Standards -- gear up for mandatory online assessments starting in 2014-15. In the meantime, states that dealt with disruptions in online testing are going through checklists: Do districts have enough bandwidth? A strong infrastructure? Are testing providers doing all they can to prevent a repeat performance? Bandwidth is a critical concern for many districts. In a fall 2013 national survey of school district leaders conducted by COSN and Market Data Retrieval, 99 percent of respondents indicated a need for more Internet bandwidth and connectivity in the next 36 months.

Quora’s Search for What the Internet Doesn’t Know

A Q&A with former Facebook chief technology officer Adam D’Angelo, founder of Quora.

When Quora launched in 2010, it seemed like there was little space for a major new source of information on the Internet. Social networks and news sites took care of current affairs, from personal lives up to worldwide events; Wikipedia rounded up reference information from online and offline sources. Three years later, Quora has made a good case that the Web was missing out on a valuable knowledge source. By encouraging people to write down their personal experiences, expertise, and advice, the site has compiled some arresting content of the kind that marks the most memorable of face-to-face conversations. Examples range from an astronaut trainer explaining prelaunch rituals to an inside account of Apple’s culture of secrecy. D’Angelo talks about how Quora differs from other web offerings. “There have been a lot of algorithmic attempts to organize the world’s knowledge: there’s Google, there’s IBM’s Watson. But there’s all this information in people’s heads that’s not written down on the Internet. We want to get to the state where if there’s someone in the world that knows something, we can tell you that.” Asked about whether letting people ask questions and write answers leads to a lot of bad content, D’Angelo said: “That’s why we are more of a tech company than a lot of Internet companies. We can predict which content is good and only show you that.” D’Angelo added that Quora’s recommendations are more reliable than other sites like Netflix and Amazon, because the software knows something about the person who wrote it, their previous answers and who liked them and who didn’t. If the answer meets a certain quality threshold, “then we surface it on the site and notify people following that topic or question.”

Net neutrality: A one-sided outcome in a two-sided market

[Commentary] Verizon’s basic argument here is almost certainly correct: figuring out the best price structure in two-sided markets is complicated, and there is little reason to believe a priori that the Open Internet rules’ prohibition on charging content providers is optimal.

To the contrary, the economic literature suggests that the Open Internet rules can have a negative effect on the value created by the Internet, and that allowing broadband ISPs to charge content providers can benefit consumers and increase infrastructure investment. … The takeaway is that today’s broadband Internet market is precisely the sort of market in which the [Federal Communications Commission]’s ‘prophylactic’ approach is inappropriate. It is, instead, one in which we should seek out opportunities to experiment with multi-sided price structure — and even reward firms for taking the risk of experimenting — in order to maximize the value of the Internet to consumers.

Surveillance reform bill outlined

An outline circulated to House Judiciary staff provides a sneak preview of a comprehensive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform bill that ends bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, installs a special advocate at the country’s surveillance court and boosts transparency for both government agencies and online service providers.

The bill is set to be co-sponsored in the House by PATRIOT Act author and current House Judiciary oversight leader Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and House Judiciary ranking member John Conyers (D-MI). Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will co-sponsor the measure in the Senate. The omnibus measure would tie in several reforms that have been floated in the wake of Edward Snowden’s disclosures in early June, according to a rundown of provisions attached to the letter. The portion seeking to end so-called "bulk collection" appears certain to face resistance from some Republicans and some Democrats, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Tech companies will be pleased to see that the bill aims to pour sunlight on federal surveillance activities by allowing online services providers, many of whom are already suing the government, to divulge the number of orders they receive. Additionally, the measure would require new reports from the government on the number of people subject to FISA orders each year as well as the disclosure of significant FISA Court opinions made after July 10, 2003. The comprehensive bill would install an “Office of the Special Advocate” at the FISA Court. Lastly, the measure would grant subpoena authority to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a group that some privacy hawks have said lacks sufficient power to do its job.

What the NSA Might Have Wanted to Learn From Tracking Your Phone

The National Security Agency’s experiments with gathering up location data it was intended to see how the location data would work with its existing systems. The question is, had the agency taken it operational, what did it expect to learn?

An MIT paper on the use of metadata said: “By continually logging and time-stamping information about a user’s activity, location, and proximity to other users, the large-scale dynamics of collective human behavior can be analyzed.” In short, tracking your phone is pretty good way to figure out who you know, where you’ve been, who you may have talked to. Such data could have been used to prevent epidemic outbreaks such as bird flu or malaria.

The shutdown is now clogging up the data economy. Thanks, Congress!

Thanks to the government shutdown, nearly a dozen federal Web sites are offline and 19 of them are no longer being updated. But a less obvious casualty of the widespread furloughs are the online tools that automatically relay government data to the public. Federal agencies maintain hundreds of application programming interfaces, or APIs. Whenever you see an interactive map that's based on Census statistics or pollution data or other official information, that's often the result of a government data feed. These days, however, when a map or a program phones in to the feed for updates, it's often met with a "sorry, we're closed" message.

The fact that the NSA collected cell-site data is a big deal. But so is the fact they admitted it.

Sen. Ron Wyden's (D-OR) strategy is working. Days after he asked whether the National Security Agency had ever collected geolocation information on US citizens, the agency's director, Gen. Keith Alexander, admitted that it had gathered data from cellular towers on a limited basis.

It wasn't an off-the-cuff disclosure or a slip of the tongue. The statement had been planned. Somebody within the government now seems to recognize that the longer it withholds the answer Sen. Wyden seeks, the worse off the NSA will be. Yes, it's significant that the NSA collected cell-site data, but it's arguably even more significant that we learned about it from the very agency that's now being scrutinized by the public. However opaque that institution is, something inside it is changing.

NYC’s “LEED for broadband” will help companies pick tech-friendly office locations

New York City is already home to tech companies like Spotify, Tumblr and Birchbox, and, under Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R), the city has made a major push to attract more startups as well as large companies, like Yahoo and Facebook, that are headquartered on the West Coast.

NYC announced two more initiatives to further that goal. It’s officially launching a certification program called “WiredNYC,” first announced in 2012, that aims to be a “LEED for broadband” by making information about broadband infrastructure available to landlords and businesses. The aim is to help businesses gauge connectivity when deciding where they should lease or buy office space. And it’s making free public Wi-Fi available in ten new areas, including poor neighborhoods far from “Silicon Alley,” the tech hub in Manhattan’s Flatiron district.

France moves to curb book discounts, cites Amazon’s “predatory behavior”

French lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill that will bar booksellers from offering five-percent discounts and free shipping at the same time — a move that appears aimed squarely at US retail giant Amazon. According to Le Monde, lawmakers from both the left and right have overwhelmingly passed an amendment to a 1981 law that regulates the book industry. The bill must also pass in the French Senate and be signed by the president. It has the support of the governing party, which has said the purpose of the proposed law is to “limit predatory behavior.”

Designing security into the Internet of things

[Commentary] What I and many others are suggesting would probably extend existing Consumer Protection and Data Protection Acts around the world, because they often assume a process of publishing that is straightforward: Data gets published or gets posted. Yet, in the internet of things, we might have lots of different directions, platforms and owners involved in any given interaction.

The firmware provided, the sensor manufacturer in charge of calibration, the app developers, the data centers, the API developers, social media sites, etc. all will play a role. Here are some ideas for a conversation about what can be done about data rights:

Consumers should have the right to know what data is being collected about them and why.
Reasonable efforts should be made to protect confidentiality and privacy of the consumer.
Explicit permission should be granted from the consumer if a third party or service provider receives requests to de-anonymize the data set

[Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is a product designer]

Benton

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