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  2. February 2016

February 2016

Digital Literacy and Inclusion: “We Are All In It Together”

All of the organizations I studied for my recent Benton Foundation report recognize that digital literacy, the ability to navigate the Internet, is key to meaningful broadband adoption. But they took different approaches to ensuring their clients have the skills needed to make use of broadband. Computer classes have traditionally been a popular way to provide digital literacy training. More recently, digital inclusion organizations have embraced one-on-one, personalized training approaches for community members in order to be relevant to each person’s everyday life experiences. In addition, several organizations noted that digital literacy is needed and requested by all, regardless of income.

Perhaps I should stress one point in particular: these organizations I visited provided digital literacy training to people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. Having a low income is not a requirement for participating in many of the digital literacy training programs that digital inclusion organizations provide. As Susan Corbett of Axiom Education and Training Center explained, “Digital literacy is needed and requested by all, regardless of income. I think this is important as technology has evolved around us and we are all in the same place—the need to learn. This is the message we have tried very hard to convey to communities, business leaders, and the adult learners that we work with. It’s okay to admit that you need help; we are all in this together.”

Google Fiber to Huntsville (AL)

Huntsville (AL) city leaders and Google representatives announced that Google Fiber will bring its service to Huntsville. The announcement ends years of searching for an Internet provider to help the city accomplish Mayor Tommy Battle’s goal of ensuring all citizens have access to gigabit Internet. Huntsville's unique approach to partnership may have sealed the deal. In every other established Google Fiber market, Google owns the fiber network. In Atlanta (GA), Google built out a portion of the infrastructure and shared with a municipal network to expand their reach. In Huntsville, Huntsville Utilities will build out the entire fiber backbone. It will then lease space on the network to Google, who will connect it to individual addresses. Huntsville Utilities already planned on building out a fiber network to monitor their own systems. Now, it'll speed that process up, so they can lease space to Google. Of course, that requires a big spend up front for the utility company. Huntsville Utilities President and CEO Jay Stowe says its current plan is estimated at $57 million. It sees it as a low-risk investment, as compared to administering the gigabit Internet themselves, which would require a massive increase in personnel in an arena where they have limited expertise.

Joanne Hovis, president of communications and IT engineering consulting firm CTC Technology & Energy, who advised Huntsville on the project, said, "With today’s news that Huntsville, Alabama will build fiber optics throughout its community, and that Google Fiber will lease much of that fiber in order to provide gigabit services to residences and small businesses, communities throughout the United States have entered into a new era of possibility — that of robust, sustainable broadband public-private partnerships."

Bridging a Digital Divide That Keeps Schoolchildren Behind

With many educators pushing for students to use resources on the Internet with class work, the federal government is now grappling with a stark disparity in access to technology, between students who have high-speed Internet at home and an estimated five million families who are without it and who are struggling to keep up. The divide is driving action at the federal level. Members of the Federal Communications Commission are expected to vote in March on repurposing a roughly $2 billion-a-year phone subsidy program, known as Lifeline, to include subsidies for broadband services in low-income homes. “This is what I call the homework gap, and it is the cruelest part of the digital divide,” said Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic member of the FCC who has pushed to overhaul the Lifeline program.

The Lifeline plan has drawn strong criticism from the two Republicans among the five FCC commissioners, and from some lawmakers, who say the program, which was introduced in 1985 to bring phone services to low-income families, has been wasteful and was abused. In 2008, when the commission added subsidies for mobile-phone services to discounts for landlines, some homes started double-billing the program, and the budget for the fund ballooned. Various investigations, including a government review in early 2015, questioned the effectiveness of the phone program and whether the commission had done enough to monitor for abuse. But advocacy groups for children and minorities have backed the FCC plan, saying it will be important in preventing students from falling further behind their peers.

Apple Showdown Heightens Challenge of Encrypted Data

The clash between the Justice Department and Apple over the court order requiring the company to weaken the security functions on the iPhone of one of the attackers in the San Bernardino (CA) shootings is only the latest instance of the government’s effort to deal with encrypted data. The real challenge is how the courts will apply constitutional protections drafted in the 18th century to deal with the rapidly changing world of digital technology. A stumbling block for the government in obtaining encrypted data is the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, which can be used to thwart efforts to get passwords required to unlock encrypted files.

In the world of cryptology, a secret code known only to the user usually means that the information could be kept away from the government unless there is a means to compel the person to reveal it. Unlike an individual, companies cannot use the Fifth Amendment to encrypt their files to keep them away from the government because that constitutional protection does not apply to organizations. With the Justice Department’s recent emphasis on identifying individuals involved in corporate misconduct as the primary measure of cooperation, getting to the personal data of employees can be crucial to proving a case, especially if companies encourage them to encrypt files as a security measure. It may be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the privilege against self-incrimination protects individuals from having to turn over passwords to help the government obtain evidence that may well end up convicting them. The digital age is making it much more difficult to figure out how far the Constitution should go in dealing with forms of information that were largely unknown a generation ago, much less when the Fifth Amendment was adopted.

Political campaigns collect tons of data, but they’re terrible at protecting it

Over the last three months, more than 100 million US voters have had their data exposed online. These data breaches weren’t caused by a sophisticated hack or malware. Instead, political campaigns' abysmal cybersecurity practices are to blame. Although modern campaigns constantly acquire and purchase massive amounts of data, they often neglect to fully beef up security surrounding it, effectively turning the campaigns into sitting ducks — huge operations with databases left open and vulnerable. Most people understand that free online services monetize their business by collecting data. Users know the unspoken deal they’re agreeing to when they sign up for something. However, this isn’t the case when it comes to voter data. It’s typically a surprise to people — even those who work in the industry — how much data is collected on voters and how much of it is considered public. In addition to public data, campaigns purchase information from brokers, or companies that make their money selling information about people.

The amount of data obtained is troubling, but perhaps more troubling is the fact that political campaigns are terrible at cybersecurity. Not only do the organizations have access to more information than ever before, they’re not able to keep it safe. The incentives to do so just don't exist, and that's why we're seeing so much compromised voter data.

Sprint and T-Mobile in on Worldwide Google RCS Initiative

Google has assembled a broad-based international group of wireless carriers in a bid to develop a global open and interoperable messaging service for Android devices. The mobile industry initiative aims to speed up the availability of Rich Communications Services (RCS). Sprint and T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom are joining the Google-led initiative along with América Móvil, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Etisalat, Globe Telecom, KPN, Millicom, MTN, Orange, PLAY, Smart Communications, Telenor Group, TeliaSonera, Telstra, TIM, Turkcell, VimpelCom, Vodafone, and the GSMA.

All have agreed to carry out a transition to a common, universal profile based on GSMA’s RCS specifications and an Android RCS client provided by Google in collaboration with carriers. Adopting the expected universal RCS client will enable smartphone and mobile device users to read receipts and to access RCS services such as group chat and high-resolution photo sharing. That will enhance SMS, which is used by more than 4 billion people worldwide.

Univision Aims to Make Hispanic Voting Bloc Even More Formidable

Univision, including its top-rated Spanish-language network and many subsidiaries, is making an ambitious nationwide effort aimed at registering about three million new Latino voters in 2016, roughly the same number who have come of voting age since 2012. The initiative will entail an aggressive schedule of advertisements on all of Univision’s video and digital platforms, including 126 local television and radio stations and the sports channel Univision Deportes. Station managers will exhort their audiences in old-fashioned editorials, a comprehensive online voter guide will be updated throughout the election season, and the media company will use the kinds of grass-roots organizing events usually staged by candidates — town-hall-style forums and telephone banks — to try to turn its viewers into even more of a powerhouse voting bloc than it already is.

For Univision, the voter drive on all cylinders sums up what sets it apart from the nation’s biggest English-language television networks, whose ratings it has frequently surpassed in recent years. Its mission is not only to inform and entertain, but also to “empower the Hispanic community.” And as that community shares a language but not necessarily an ethnicity or national origin, empowerment means serving as a unifying voice and a mobilizing, galvanizing force.

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