September 2014

Seizing the opportunities of mobile innovation is one of the Federal Communications Commission’s highest priorities. Our mobile agenda rests on three pillars: making more spectrum available for broadband; using the market and technology to ensure more efficient and effective use of our spectrum; and promoting the deployment of mobile infrastructure. I’m circulating to my colleagues a series of proposals that would advance each of these goals.

When President Woodrow Wilson signed the FTC Act on September 26, 1914, he opened the first chapter in the ongoing story of the nation’s leading consumer agency. Today, on the Federal Trade Commission’s anniversary, it’s an opportunity for us to reflect on the agency’s long and successful history of fostering honest business practices and robust competition in the marketplace and take stock of the FTC’s bright future.

I’m proud that the FTC continues to be on the cutting edge of rapid economic and technological changes. No doubt the next century will bring even more transformation that will impact the American economy and consumers. I’m confident that the FTC is well-positioned to meet the challenges of the next 100 years, and that it will continue to carry out successfully its mission on behalf of consumers.

The organizers of the Web We Want festival at London’s Southbank Centre hope it will spark a movement that’s in some ways comparable to environmentalism.

That may be a tall order, but the Web We Want campaign, timed to run 25 years after the web was invented, is the brainchild of the World Wide Web Foundation itself. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor, is at the helm. And, refreshingly, the campaign is trying to avoid the grayness and (in my opinion) hot air of more formal efforts such as the Internet Governance Forum and Netmundial.

In the early 1990s, people travelled around the web at will, only having to show their ID when accessing something important and personal, such an e-mail accounts or while shopping, much as you would at the post office or in a shop. But soon the fetish for ID grew.

By the late 2000s, somebody was asking for your ID every block of the internet you travelled, every street you crossed, every building you entered. Worse, each one of them issued their own credentials. People eventually got sick of carrying a headful of IDs (usernames and passwords) around every time they want for a little stroll online; so in 2008 Facebook and Google said to the others, “Look, let us be your gatekeepers. We can check people’s credentials and let them in for you.” Your Facebook or Google accounts suddenly became passports, giving access to all territories. In return for their service, these identity providers note the details of your comings and goings. It’s like if your government monitored where your passport was and sent you restaurant recommendations. (That day will probably come.) Or, to mix metaphors entirely, Facebook and Google exert suzerainty over the smaller websites that use their service.