October 2015

OTI and EveryoneOn Release Broadband Adoption Metrics Rubric and Instruments

In order to build a holistic understanding of the effectiveness of EveryoneOn’s programs, New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute has examined the factors that influence participants’ choices to engage (or not engage) with Internet service offers. Drawing on our experience evaluating efforts such as the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, as well as scholarly literature and instruments from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA), and the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project; state-level efforts such as the California Emerging Technologies Fund (CETF); and the Internet Use Survey at the University of Chicago, OTI has compiled a rubric of standard indicators pertaining to the choices that people make regarding whether or not to use, and/or to subscribe to, digital technologies and Internet services.

We have tailored this rubric to emphasize outcomes-oriented indicators related to “meaningful broadband adoption,” a framework developed by OTI that takes into account contextual and historical social factors impacting digital choices. Metrics designed to understand meaningful broadband adoption thus measure not only progress towards achieving broader subscription rates among traditionally underserved and demographically likely non-adopters, but also a more holistic picture of comfort with digital tools and the availability, effectiveness, and impact of support and training resources.

Merger Will Boost Competition, Cooperation

[Commentary] While the dust continues to settle over the announcement of the proposed merger between comScore and Rentrak, one consensus sentiment has risen above the rest -- competition is good. And competition, especially as it relates to the challenging field of crossplatform audience measurement, is very good. The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) is supportive of the proposed merger because the competition it will bring to the audience- measurement industry will fuel innovations and new approaches. That is what competition always helps spur.

For example, comScore has already launched a version 1.0 X-Media service, and now Nielsen is launching one of its own. Both will need improvements as users test them out, but competition will ensure that over time these improvements will take place.

[Jane Clarke is CEO and managing director of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM)]

Why local online sites died: a post-mortem with a possible silver lining

[Commentary] Hyperlocal online news startups can resemble the bloody wars convulsing the Middle East. “In the world of community news, you win or you die,” said David Boraks, founder of the Davidson News and Cornelius News in North Carolina. Boraks died, or at least his sites did a few months ago, he recounted to the Local Independent Online News (LION) annual gathering in Chicago. “I’m totally at peace with the decision to shut down,” Boraks said. The auditorium at Columbia College in Chicago’s downtown South Loop might have been draped in black for a gathering whose de facto predecessor was called Block by Block. There was, after all, a distinctly funereal air to a session titled, “Turning out the Lights.”

The local news journalists shared distinct commonalities. When they started, they saw a potential market. They were proud of their work. And, in hindsight, they weren’t especially good businessmen and wish they had given more disciplined forethought to that element of their enterprise. By the time they came to that realization, it was too late.

Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Is Reached

The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations agreed to the largest regional trade accord in history, a potentially precedent-setting model for global commerce and worker standards that would tie together 40 percent of the world’s economy, from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia. The Trans-Pacific Partnership still faces months of debate in Congress and will inject a new flash point into both parties’ presidential contests.

But the accord -- a product of nearly eight years of negotiations, including five days of round-the-clock sessions -- is a potentially legacy-making achievement for President Barack Obama, and the capstone for his foreign policy “pivot” toward closer relations with fast-growing eastern Asia, after years of American preoccupation with the Middle East and North Africa. The Pacific accord would phase out thousands of import tariffs as well as other barriers to international trade. It also would establish uniform rules on corporations’ intellectual property, open the Internet even in communist Vietnam and crack down on wildlife trafficking and environmental abuses.

How the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Boosts Made in America Exports, Supports Higher-Paying American Jobs, and Protects American Workers

The United States reached agreement with its eleven partner countries, concluding negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a new, high-standard trade agreement that levels the playing field for American workers and American businesses, supporting more Made in America exports and higher-paying American jobs.

TPP Eliminates over 18,000 Different Taxes on Made in America Exports
US information and communication technology products: TPP eliminates import taxes as high as 35 percent on US information and communication technology exports to TPP countries. In 2014, the US exported $36 billion in information and communication technology products to TPP countries.
TPP includes cutting-edge rules to promote Internet-based commerce: a central area of American leadership, and one of the world’s great opportunities for growth. The agreement also includes strong rules that make sure the best innovation, not trade barriers and censorship laws, shapes how digital markets grow. TPP helps preserve the single, global, digital marketplace. TPP does this by preserving free international movement of data, ensuring that individuals, small businesses, and families in all TPP countries can take advantage of online shopping, communicate efficiently at low cost, and access, move, and store data freely. TPP also bans “forced localization” -- the discriminatory requirement that certain governments impose on US businesses that they place their data, servers, research facilities, and other necessities overseas in order to access those markets.
TPP includes standards to protect digital freedom, including the free flow of information across borders -- ensuring that Internet users can store, access, and move their data freely, subject to public-interest regulation, for example to fight spamming and cybercrime.

TPP Agreement Is a Mixed Bag, Says ITIF

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will prove pivotal for the future of global trade and innovation because its provisions both establish the terms of competition in innovation industries and set the bar for all other US trade negotiations going forward. When it comes to technology policy, we are happy to say that the agreement sets a high bar that will maximize the opportunity for innovation worldwide. Unfortunately, for the life science sectors, negotiators have settled on a low bar that will be detrimental to biotechnology innovation, and ultimately patient health outcomes, for years to come.

Insufficient protections for other types of intellectual property still remain -- particularly for clinical trial data for biologic medicines. US law, passed on a bipartisan basis, establishes 12 years of protection for this data, but unfortunately the TPP agreement settled for a five- to eight-year window. While we are pleased to see some other nations raising their standards closer to US law in recognition of the importance of protecting intellectual property, five to eight years is simply not sufficient. Europe grants at least 10 years of data protection, so this new agreement puts America behind the eight ball when it comes to competing with European nations. Moreover, weaker standards will slow the rate of global biomedical innovation. While the TPP agreement may include five to eight years of protection, we strongly urge Congress to retain 12 years as US.law. As Congress begins to review this new framework, we implore lawmakers to remember the importance of having a high-standard agreement that sets the bar for all future global trade agreements. Global economic growth and the innovation economy depend on it.

Europe’s justice court is wrong about US intelligence programme

[Commentary] In September, an advocate-general of the European Court of Justice issued an opinion in a case of exceptional significance for commercial relations between the US and the European Union. Washington is not a party to the proceedings and has no opportunity to make a direct submission to the court. We respect the EU’s legal process. However, the advocate-general’s judgment contains a number of inaccuracies, and before the court makes a final decision we want to set the record straight.

The lawsuit is based on press reports concerning a US foreign intelligence programme called PRISM, which, the complaint says, allows “unrestricted access to mass data stored on servers in the US”. The Irish High Court adopted this characterisation, as did the advocate-general, who said: “The evidence now available would admit of no other realistic conclusion.” Actually, the evidence demonstrates the contrary. PRISM is focused and reasonable. It does not involve “mass” and “unrestricted” collection of data, as the advocate-general says.

[Robert Litt is general counsel of the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence]

Don’t Strike Down the Safe Harbor Based on Inaccurate Views About US Intelligence Law

[Commentary] Important legal decisions should be based on an accurate understanding of the law and facts. Unfortunately, that is not the case for the Advocate General’s (AG’s) recent Opinion finding that the Safe Harbor agreement between the US and the European Union unlawful. As the US Mission to the EU has also noted, the Opinion suffers from particular inaccuracies concerning the law and practice of US foreign intelligence law, notably the PRISM program. It relies on these incorrect facts about PRISM to reach its conclusion, removing the factual basis for its overall findings.

My comments here focus on the Opinion’s incorrect description of US intelligence law and practice. In my experience as a scholar and practitioner in the field, the US has far more extensive legal rules, oversight and other checks and balances on intelligence agencies than is generally true in EU member states.

[Peter Swire is the Huang Professor of Law and Ethics at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business, and Senior Counsel with Alston & Bird LLP]

Stockton (CA) Mayor Has to Forfeit electronics and passwords to DHS Agents at San Francisco Airport

Stockton (CA) Mayor Anthony Silva attended a recent mayor's conference in China, but at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO), agents with the Department of Homeland Security detained Mayor Silva and confiscated his personal cell phone among other electronics. “Unfortunately, they were not willing or able to produce a search warrant or any court documents suggesting they had a legal right to take my property," Silva said. "In addition, they were persistent about requiring my passwords for all devices.”

The mayor's attorney, Mark Reichel, said that Mayor Silva was not allowed to leave the airport without forfeiting his passwords. Reichel was not present for Mayor Silva's interaction with the DHS agents, either. The mayor was told he had “no right for a lawyer to be present” and that being a US citizen did not “entitle me to rights that I probably thought.”

Cultivating Appropriate Privacy Risk

[Commentary] Landscaping a yard requires careful planning and site assessment. As the landscape matures, a gardener proactively assesses changes and addresses them. Privacy teams need a parallel approach -- assess an initiative when beginning to plant in the privacy landscape and continue to assess how change impacts the entire privacy landscape. Assessing privacy risk associated with change challenges privacy teams, but they can take steps to cultivate an appropriate risk landscape.

The risk management survey from the International Association fo Privacy Professionals and Bloomberg Law did not fully explore assessing risk associated with change. If privacy risk is solely viewed as non-compliance with stated legal or security policies, standards or procedures, this would be natural. Once an assessed initiative is planted in the privacy landscape, there may be an assumption that its compliance is evergreen and changes will not impact its risk profile. My experience indicates this is false hope.

[Brad Reimer is a principal privacy/risk management analyst at Deluxe Corporation]

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