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The Defense Department organization charged with cyber combat is reinforcing military networks by moving much of DoD's computing to a space many civilian agencies view as insecure - the cloud.
Cloud computing is the practice of storing and accessing applications in a shared online environment, instead of on in-house servers. US Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander told lawmakers on March 16 the following:
"The idea is to reduce vulnerabilities inherent in the current architecture and to exploit the advantages of cloud computing and thin-client networks, moving the programs and the data that users need away from the thousands of desktops we now use--up to a centralized configuration that will give us wider availability of applications and data combined with tighter control over accesses and vulnerabilities and more timely mitigation of the latter."
He was testifying before a House Armed Services subcommittee on the $159 million fiscal 2012 budget request for the command, which became fully operational in October.
Cyber Command Chief: DoD Moving to the Cloud
The European Union is to enshrine a “right to be forgotten online” to ensure that, among other things, prospective employers cannot find old Facebook party photos of someone wearing nothing but a lampshade.
In a speech to the European parliament, the EU justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, warned companies such as Facebook that: “A U.S.-based social network company that has millions of active users in Europe needs to comply with EU rules.” In a package of proposals to be unveiled before the summer, the commissioner intends to force Facebook and other social networking sites to make high standards of data privacy the default setting and give control over data back to the user. “I want to explicitly clarify that people shall have the right – and not only the possibility – to withdraw their consent to data processing,” Reding said. “The burden of proof should be on data controllers – those who process your personal data. They must prove that they need to keep the data, rather than individuals having to prove that collecting their data is not necessary.”
EU To Let Consumers Erase Embarrassing Photos From Social-Networking Sites
German magazine publishers aim to lobby the G8 nations to defend them against Apple’s subscription policy, while an editors group has spun off in to a new body aimed at fighting their corner.
Germany’s FAEP and VDZ periodical associations have penned their so-called “Berlin Declaration”, in which they say they are “at risk from both onerous business conditions and legislative threats”, “are faced with technological giants that may want to control the various dimensions of content distribution” and could lose “core competencies such as price setting, as well as their valued, direct relationships with readers (notably via subscription management).”
They have penned “five key conditions for success” which they want the G8 to acknowledge, in its upcoming May meeting:
1. Maintenance of existing press freedoms is the minimum prerequisite for any reasonable media policy.
2. Freedom to experiment and manage innovative business models.
3. Strong copyright protection is essential for a vibrant press.
4. Reduced VAT rates for digital as well as printed press.
5. Fair competition and transparency in the digital world
Publishers Lobby And Re-Group On Digital Policy
For too long, the Federal Government has failed to effectively harness the power and potential of information technology (IT) -- despite spending approximately $80 billion dollars on IT each year, and more than $600 billion over the past decade. As a result, it has lagged far behind the private sector in the reaping the gains in productivity and enhancements in service from IT. To get a better return on this investment for the American people, we have fundamentally altered the way we manage the federal government's IT projects -- using transparency to shed light on government operations and to hold government managers accountable for results. Just months after President Obama took office, we launched the IT Dashboard (June, 2009) – which provides a clear window into Federal IT projects, bolstering transparency and accountability. The IT Dashboard shines a light on these projects, including if they are on schedule and within budget -- and posting the photo and name of the official responsible -- and agencies continue to increase transparency and improve data quality. Using this important tool, we identified underperforming high priority IT projects and began an intensive review of these programs, eliminating ineffective projects, reconfiguring others, and targeting IT expenditures more carefully.
These actions have on average:
- cut the time in half to deliver meaningful functionality and critical services (like faster adoption of new biometric technologies for law enforcement investigations and IT systems that effectively manage the delivery of food to 30 million Americans);
- reduced total budgeted costs by over $3 billion.
Sunshine, Savings, and Service
The White House launched a new section on WhiteHouse.gov that is dedicated to good government. WhiteHouse.gov/GoodGovernment is your central portal to tools and data that connect citizens to their government and improve their everyday lives, as well as Presidential Actions that promote open, transparent and accountable government. You'll find useful tools and data from across the administration all in one place.
Here, you can:
- Browse the names of everyone who visits the White House: Having released over 1,000,000 names to date, the White House provides records of visitors on an ongoing basis online.
- Report suspected incidents of improper spending: PaymentAccuracy.gov gives taxpayers a way to join the fight against improper spending by reporting suspected incidents of fraud, waste, and abuse.
- See what’s on the President’s and Vice President’s calendar: Check out the President’s and Vice President’s daily public schedules, subscribe to updates, and even add their events to your own calendar.
- Review each agency’s Open Government Plan: Following the President’s Open Government Directive, agencies implemented ambitious Open Government Plans, utilizing new technologies to connect citizens to their government.
Good Government on WhiteHouse.gov
The world premiere of Paramount Pictures The Tunnel will happen in a few months, but not in a theater--it's going to be released on BitTorrent, for peer-to-peer distribution.
Yup, that's the same tech video pirates utilize. The movie is set in a network of abandoned rail tunnels that really exist underneath Sydney, Australia, and from the teaser trailer the film proceeds as a real-life feeling horror/thriller with a nod to the Blair Witch Project. Much like that film, this movie seems a little unconventional, and this fits with the MO of the film's producers, Distracted Media--the team tried to raise money for the project by selling individual frames of it. Simultaneously with its release on BitTorrent, there will be a DVD release through Paramount Pictures, and this is where the clever monetizing bit of the plan occurs: The DVD includes hours of extra footage behind the scenes and an alternative ending, intended to entice fans to buy a physical copy.
Paramount Movie World Premiere on BitTorrent: PR Stunt or the Future?
CTIA, the lobbying organization for the wireless industry, believes the federal universal service system should be modernized to provide efficient levels of support for the services that consumers demand, namely mobile and broadband services. The existing universal service system, with its emphasis on legacy wireline voice technology, is in danger of becoming more of a hindrance than a help if it is not modernized soon.
Reform of the universal service system should be competitively neutral and ensure the ubiquitous deployment of mobile broadband services, which provide the benefits of broadband to the home and to the person. At the same time, the Universal Service Fund (USF) should be no bigger than necessary to achieve the goals outlined by Congress.
CTIA believes that policymakers should rely on private investment and competition to the greatest extent possible for the widespread deployment of modern communications services, but recognizes that universal service support will be required to deliver services to certain consumers and areas. The federal universal service fund – which will make outlays of $8.7 billion in 2010 – is paid for by consumers and is intended to ensure that consumers in rural areas, low-income consumers, schools, libraries and rural healthcare providers have access to affordable and high-quality telecommunications and information services. In implementing the universal service provisions of the Communications Act, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should continue to be guided by the principle of “competitive neutrality” which ensures that consumers will be able to access the services of their choosing.
CTIA Positions on Universal Service Reform
[Commentary] As federal funding for public broadcasting is being debated in Congress and on countless news outlets and blogs, the lesser-known contributions PBS makes to the nation deserve a bit more attention.
For instance, PBS is the home to media access technologies many people now take for granted. PBS, through WGBH, its Boston affiliate, pioneered captioning for television in the early ’70s with the encouragement and support of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (precursor to the U.S. Department of Education). Prior to that, television simply wasn't accessible to people who were deaf or hard of hearing. HEW may have contacted the commercial networks to ask them to take this on; they may not have. What we know is that they found in PBS an organization that considered serving the entire audience part of its core mission.
PBS, through its member station WGBH, continues to develop technologies and solutions to make media accessible. These include: Discrete captioning and description technologies for movie theaters; do-it-yourself software to create captions and descriptions for digital media; a tool that grabs the captions from analog media and reinserts them in versions for the Web; expanded description for educational programs; guidelines for creating accessible Web-based educational materials; guidelines for creating accessible iTunes U media; captioning of Netflix streaming media; descriptions on mainstream movie DVDs and streaming services such as iTunes; access considerations for disabled users of emergency communications; a tool to measure the accuracy of live captioning; and development of guidelines for distributing and displaying captions on mobile devices.
For All the Public Broadcasting
Economic analysis shows that the benefits of online information collection, such as ad-supported applications and content, greatly outweigh any costs or risks.
Current arguments for increased privacy regulation are not based on economic theory or evidence and instead rely on anecdotes or a perceived inherent "right" to privacy online. As a result, policymakers should be leery of making radical changes to the current privacy regime without carefully considering the economic consequences. Rubin, TPI Senior Fellow and Professor of Economics at Emory University, and Hammock, Adjunct Professor of Economics at Middle Tennessee State University, advise that "arguments for increased online privacy are based on rights (rather than efficiency) and anecdotes (rather than data)." Moreover, advocates for stricter privacy regulation do not acknowledge the benefits created by the current system of information collection, where more available information leads to more targeting and so more valuable advertising and, as a result, more free applications and content. The authors also argue that some concerns voiced by advocates, such as data breaches and identity theft, are information security problems, not privacy issues, so restricting information collection is not an appropriate solution. "This is like arguing that doing away with privately owned cars would be a means to reduce automobile accidents – the cure would be worse than the disease."
Rubin and Hammock specifically address whether a default opt-in system for data collection would be superior to the current "opt-out" system, where consent is implied unless consumers act to prevent information being collected. Consumer surplus from web services, estimated by some to be $100 billion in the U.S and Europe, is significantly larger than the value of avoiding information collection, estimated to be $28 billion. The authors conclude that "the fact that the collection of personal information has generated such a huge surplus of benefits in excess of costs suggests that we should be reluctant to impose fundamental changes." The authors also warn against basing policy decisions on surveys that suggest consumers dislike targeted advertising and information collection, arguing that the opinions are not evidence that consumers are being harmed. Rubin and Hammock conclude that the current system of information collection and free online services works well in the United States and urge policymakers to view the issue in economic terms.
Applications Want to be Free: Privacy Against Information
Ernst & Young’s Global Media and Entertainment department has found that cable operators were the most profitable out of a group of ten media sectors, and cable networks weren't far behind in third place, with interactive media breaking the pair up by claiming second place.
E&Y ranked 10 sectors three different ways, by profitability over the five-years running from 2006-2010, by profitability for 2010 alone, and in terms of five-year EBITDA performance. Publishing, broadcast television and music all suffered negative results in the third study. The 2006-2010 profitability ranking is: “cable operators had the highest average profitability at 38%, followed by interactive media 35%; cable networks 31%; satellite television 27%; publishing 20%; conglomerates 19%; television broadcast 18% and film and television production, electronic games and music, all at 11%.” Next, the 2010 profitability ranker: “cable operators placing first at 39%; interactive media, 36%; cable networks, 33%; satellite TV, 27%; publishing, 20%; conglomerates, 18%; TV broadcast, 16%; electronic games and film and television production, both at 12%; and music, 9%.” Finally, the 2006-2010 EBITDA pecking order: “interactive media is the fastest growing media and entertainment sector at 15%, followed by electronic games, 14%; cable networks, 10%; cable operators, 10%; satellite TV, 9%; film and television production, 7%; conglomerates, 3%; publishing, -1%; television broadcast, -4%; and music, -5%.”
Study finds cable most profitable media sector over five-year period