September 2014

From #Ferguson to #OfficerFriendly

[Commentary] In the age of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner's in New York, when police abuses can be easily documented by citizens wielding smartphones, relationships between police departments and the communities they serve can quickly become strained. And social media use by the police runs the risk of being initially dismissed as a publicity stunt. But after decades of losing the trust of important New York City communities, this step may help the department gain civic support. To build the citizen support that they need -- and to get the information they need to be effective -- local governments will have to give their employees the discretion to question and to respond with their own voices online.

[Crawford is the John A. Reilly Visiting Professor in Intellectual Property at Harvard Law School]

Comcast Extends 'Internet Essentials' Promotion 'til Sept. 30

Comcast's David Cohen said that the company will be extending its Internet Essentials promotion through Sept. 30.

Comcast had been looking to recruit more homes with a six-months-free promotion for new sign-ups that was to have ended Sept 21. Comcast announced the promotion August 4, in addition to an "amnesty" installment payment plan for overdue payments from Comcast customers who could otherwise qualify for the subsidy program.

New rules push Internet retailers to make quick deliveries

Internet retailers are facing new rules from the Federal Trade Commission requiring them to ship customers' orders on time and promptly offer refunds for some items that are late. The FTC said that online sellers will be required to ship merchandise within 30 days of purchase, or else give customers the option for a refund.

Congress Is About to Decide Whether to Tax Your Internet

Uncle Sam may start charging you for the right to access the Internet. Or you might soon find yourself paying a sales tax on purchases made at online retailers like Amazon and eBay.

Depending on whom you ask, the two issues are either completely unrelated or close cousins. The first is a sort of doomsday scenario that would come to pass if a long-standing federal ban on charging a tax for Internet access isn't renewed by Congress. The second will become reality if an online-sales-tax bill, supported by brick-and-mortar retailers, gets passed as a piggyback measure to the ban. Before Congress flees Washington to begin its final burst of election-season campaigning, it must address the ban on federal, state, and local taxes on Internet access due to expire on Nov. 1. This ban prevents localities and all but seven states from charging you a sales tax for your Internet hookup in your monthly bill. Few in Congress want that ban to expire, but in the face of the looming deadline, lawmakers have decided to do what they do best: Punt.

This is Why we don’t have Meaningful Cybersecurity Legislation Yet

[Commentary] Why is it so difficult for governments to establish proper legislation about security and privacy? Physical laws are created for a particular territory, like a town or country. This is an iterative process that has taken us over 300 years to establish a set of laws by which we live today. The issue of governing the multidimensional virtual world is rather complex, as it is not easy to define the territory.

Territory boundaries in the cyber realm are naturally based on a large network boundaries on which citizens interact daily -- making purchases, doing taxes, renewing insurance, communicating with friends and family -- all online. These boundaries generally do not line up with state lines or country borders. Governments have only been working to establish laws for the cyber realm in the past five to 10 years, which means they are not very experienced yet, and there’s a lot more work to be done. The starting point here should be to identify the parameters of the situation.

[Dr. Vincent Berk is CEO of network security company FlowTraq]

Request for Information -- National Privacy Research Strategy

Agencies of the Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program are planning to develop a joint National Privacy Research Strategy.

On behalf of the agencies, the Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research and Development Senior Steering Group seeks public input on the vital privacy objectives that should be considered for the goals of the strategy. The National Privacy Research Strategy will be used to guide federally-funded privacy research and provide a framework for coordinating research and development in privacy-enhancing technologies.

To be considered, submissions must be received no later than October 17, 2014.

Healthcare.gov: Information Security and Privacy Controls Should Be Enhanced to Address Weaknesses

The specific objectives of this work were to (1) describe the planned exchanges of information between the Healthcare.gov website and other organizations and (2) assess the effectiveness of programs and controls implemented by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to protect the security and privacy of the information and IT systems supporting Healthcare.gov.

While CMS has security and privacy-related protections in place for Healthcare.gov and related systems, weaknesses exist that put these systems and the sensitive personal information they contain at risk. Specifically, CMS established security-related policies and procedures for Healthcare.gov, including interconnection security agreements with the federal agencies with which it exchanges information. It also instituted certain required privacy protections, such as notifying the public of the types of information that will be maintained in the system. However, weaknesses remained in the security and privacy protections applied to Healthcare.gov and its supporting systems.

Healthcare.gov: Actions Needed to Address Weaknesses in Information Security and Privacy Controls

The Government Accountability Office is making six recommendations to implement security and privacy management controls to help ensure that the systems and information related to Healthcare.gov are protected. The Department of Health and Human Services concurred but disagreed in part with GAO’s assessment of the facts for three recommendations. However, GAO continues to believe its recommendations are valid, as discussed in the report.

Ensure that the system security plans for the Federally Facilitated Marketplace and data hub contain all the information recommended by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Ensure that all privacy risks associated with Healthcare.gov are analyzed and documented in their privacy impact assessments.
Develop separate computer matching agreements with the Office of Personnel Management and the Peace Corps to govern the data that is being compared with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data for the purposes of verifying eligibility for the advance premium tax credit and cost-sharing reductions.
Perform a comprehensive security assessment of the FFM, including the infrastructure, platform and all deployed software elements.
Ensure that the planned alternate processing site for the systems supporting Healthcare.gov is established and made operational in a timely fashion.
Establish detailed security roles and responsibilities for contractors, including participation in security controls reviews, to better ensure that communications between individuals and entities with responsibility for the security of the FFM and its supporting infrastructure are effective.

Disclosure Requirements for Broadcasted Content

The Government Accountability Office was asked to assess disclosure requirements and practices of television and radio broadcast stations that air content intended to influence Congress.

This report (1) describes the disclosure requirements for broadcasters that air advertisements or programming that affect their interests and may be intended to influence Congress, and any requirements to air opposing views, and (2) assesses what is known about the number and fair market value of these advertisements, and those of opposing views, aired from 2007 through 2012. To conduct the work, GAO reviewed relevant statutes, regulations, and Federal Communications Commission orders and interviewed agency officials and stakeholders, such as industry associations. GAO also procured and analyzed private data on television and radio advertisements on selected issues affecting broadcasters. Data from 2012 were the most current data available when we conducted our review.

What happens to literacy when the Internet turns into a giant TV station?

While the text-based Craigslist may still look the way it did in the late ’90s, the rest of the web now relies on images, both moving and still, to convey much of its information.

MIT social scientist Sherry Turkle worries, however, that this is coming at the cost of literary fiction and conversations, which "deepen our empathic skills, the ability to identify with characters, and put yourself in the place of others." The web of today is full of stories, both fictional and real, but moving from reading "to a world where we share memes does not guarantee the same results. A life of visual memes is not enough."

Benton

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