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January 2016

The US Must No Longer Accept China's Denial of Government-Sponsored Hack Attacks

[Commentary] China's bitter battle to rewrite the rules of the Internet persisted in December in the historic town of Wuzhen. There, China held its second World Internet Conference. The theme was identical to 2014's -- "an interconnected world shared and governed by all" -- but the context surrounding this WIC was quite different. 2015's World Internet Conference fell against the backdrop of many notable developments in US-China cyber relations over the past year, including continued government and non-government reporting on China's persistent malicious cyber espionage; the Obama Administration's threats to impose sanctions against China for cyber-enabled economic espionage; an agreement between the United States and China that "neither country's government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors"; and the first China-US ministerial dialogue to discuss cybercrime cooperation. These incidents are all indicative of a fragile foundation for US-China cyber relations, one built on competing interpretations of what is and what is not acceptable in cyberspace.

While I welcome the consistent, high-level interaction between our two countries, we are neither closer to converging on agreed norms of behavior or the level of state involvement in cybersecurity, nor are we closer to doing anything about it. I encourage the Chinese leadership to consider whether the imbalance between maintaining domestic stability and stifling free speech and limiting free access to information will eventually impair Chinese citizens, as well as China's true national potential.

Can YouTube, Snapchat and Amazon amplify President Obama’s message? The White House hopes so.

An engineer who breaks wine glasses in front of audiences to demonstrate scientific principles. A 26-year old fashion expert who came out as lesbian in 2015. A former professional gamer who uses his own animations to illustrate videos that tackle the issue of race. All three are YouTube celebrities with major followings who will interview President Barack Obama on Jan 15 about his last State of the Union address.

Getting many Americans to focus on a formal speech the president is delivering to Congress — especially in a fractured media landscape — can be hard, and administration officials are constantly looking for ways to bypass the mainstream media to connect with the audiences most open to their message. While these novel approaches have inherent risks — see YouTube star GloZell's 2015 interview with President Obama, where she used an expletive to describe Fidel Castro and referred to Michelle Obama as "your first wife" — they can also pay significant dividends. Online celebrities lay claim to millions of loyal viewers, are often more sympathetic than traditional interviewers and are particularly popular with young Americans.

When can the FBI use National Security Letters to spy on journalists? That’s classified.

[Commentary] Remember one year ago when then-Attorney General Eric Holder supposedly tightened restrictions on the Justice Department so it could not easily conduct surveillance on journalists’ e-mails and phone calls? Well it turns out the Justice Department inserted a large loophole in its internal rules that allows the FBI to completely circumvent those restrictions and spy on journalists in secrecy—and with absolutely no court oversight—using National Security Letters. And what, exactly, are the Justice Department’s rules for when they can target a journalist with a National Security Letter (NSL)? Well, according the government, that’s classified.

For those unfamiliar with NSLs, they are a particularly pernicious and controversial surveillance order that the FBI can serve on Internet and communications providers to demand all sorts of digital information without any oversight from judges or courts. Worse, NSLs almost always have a gag order attached to them, preventing the phone or e-mail companies not only from telling the target of the NSL that he or she is under surveillance but from publicly acknowledging they received an NSL at all. Various aspects of NSLs have been ruled unconstitutional in the past (including in a case still ongoing), but because of slight changes by Congress and the courts, they still persist.

[Trevor Timm is the executive director of Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports and defends journalism dedicated to transparency and accountability]

Analysis

Research Shows Cost is Biggest Barrier to Broadband Adoption

House poised to approve FOIA reform bill

The House is slated to approve a bill that could expand the public’s access to government records. Similar legislation to update the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has gotten close to the President’s desk in recent years, even though some federal agencies and the banking industry have raised concerns about access to sensitive financial information. The current proposal, sponsored by Reps Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD), is expected to pass the House easily.

The most high-profile portion of the legislation would codify a so-called presumption of openness, which requires federal agencies and other parts of the government to adopt a policy that leans toward the public release of documents. Agencies would have to point to a specific identifiable harm when withholding documents unless disclosing them is specifically barred by law. President Barack Obama instructed agencies to adopt this model when he first entered office. But critics say agencies have not lived up to that promise. The legislation would do a number of other things, including creating a single FOIA request portal for all agencies and limiting the amount of time that certain documents are exempt from disclosure. The bill would also make more documents available online.

Why Internet Platforms Don't Need Special Regulation

[Commentary] From city halls around the country to Washington (DC) and other world capitals, lawmakers and regulators lately have come under intense pressure to regulate upstart Internet market platforms such as Uber, Airbnb, UpCounsel, and Heal, as they rapidly transform entire sectors of the economy by providing simple and elegant new ways for buyers and sellers to connect and do business online. But if lawmakers take time to carefully sort through the facts, they will find that existing statutes give regulators all the power they need to oversee the new generation of companies powering the so-called "gig economy" -- and piling on would do more harm than good.

The first thing to understand about these new Internet platforms is that they create enormous value for buyers and sellers of all sorts. Critics variously contend the newcomers exercise monopoly powers, take undue liberties with consumers' data, and take advantage of workers by making them independent contractors rather than employees. But to the extent any of this is true (and much of it isn't), the circumstances have little to do with the fact that the companies in question are Internet market platforms, so singling them out would be unjustified and unwise as a policy matter. Existing laws also give regulators power to protect workers on Internet market platforms from obvious problems such as nonpayment, dangerous work conditions, discrimination, or abusive practices. The last thing policymakers should do is stand in the way or impose regulatory burdens that would make the new players operate more like the old ones.

[Robert Atkinson is the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation]

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