Washington Post

[Commentary] The interconnection market might be complicated and opaque to most of us, but it's a vital part of our Internet experience. A Cloudflare analysis shows that in North America (which basically means the United States, because Cloudflare operates only one Canadian data center and none in Mexico) companies engage in much more paid transit than free peering than in other regions of the world.

Cloudflare's data offers more insight on the bigger picture, which is that paid transit is very common. That's a talking point often advanced by people who say Netflix is complaining a lot about nothing, or that efforts to ban "Internet fast lanes" overlook the fact that the Internet is already non-neutral thanks to paid transit. If there's already an existing market where companies pay each other to carry traffic, the argument goes, then what's the big deal about paid peering or, in the last-mile Internet, paid prioritization?

From New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to cable advertising firms to state public service commissions, there are those who believe that the Federal Communications Commission should impose stronger merger conditions on Comcast and Time Warner.

Here are a few of those ideas.

• Make sure Internet Essentials actually works for more people.
• Extend Comcast's previous commitments by another two years.
• Limit Comcast's control over the cable advertising market.

Makers of surveillance systems are offering governments across the world the ability to track the movements of almost anybody who carries a cellphone, whether they are blocks away or on another continent.

The technology works by exploiting an essential fact of all cellular networks: They must keep detailed, up-to-the-minute records on the locations of their customers to deliver calls and other services to them. Surveillance systems are secretly collecting these records to map people’s travels over days, weeks or longer, according to company marketing documents and experts in surveillance technology.

While the world’s most powerful intelligence services, such as the National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ, long have used cellphone data to track targets around the globe, experts say these new systems allow less technically advanced governments to track people in any nation -- including the United States -- with relative ease and precision.

The story on surveillance technology that can track cell phone users anywhere in the world left some readers with a question: What can they do, short of tossing their phones into the sea, to keep their locations private?

The answer is, individually, not much if you are an ordinary cell phone user. As long as your phone connects to a carrier’s cellular network, the carrier must keep records of your location. Sophisticated users can opt for personal solutions: Encrypted e-mail or apps that use the Internet, rather than cell phone networks, to carry calls.

Todd Park, who took over the job of US Chief Technology Officer nearly two and a half years ago, is returning home to California at by the end of August. He will, according to those familiar with the situation, remain part of the White House team, helping to recruit technologists to government service and keeping an eye on how the evolution of tech might impact the creation of public policy.

And Park's departure reopens the debate over what the nature of the US CTO role should be. One read of the job suggests that, in ideal times, the CTO post should be far more focused on developing public policy than rebooting botched IT projects. Also renewed by Park's decision to head west is the question of what sort of person should fill the US Chief Technology Officer’s slot.

[Commentary] Leading network neutrality proponent Barbara van Schewick, a Stanford University law scholar, pointed out three tiny words that threaten to undermine Mozilla's proposal to heavily regulate the relationship between Internet service providers (ISPs) and digital content companies as telecommunications services.

"The definition of 'telecommunications service' requires that telecommunications is offered 'for a fee,'" van Schewick wrote. That's problematic, van Schewick argued, for a couple of reasons. If the FCC adopts Mozilla's proposal, then the FCC's net neutrality regulations wouldn't cover Internet providers that don't charge content companies an access fee.

More troubling to van Schewick, though, is how the phrase "for a fee" would complicate efforts to ban fee-based content prioritization. At a basic level, what Mozilla is asking the FCC to do is to single out fee-charging ISPs (because non-fee-charging ISPs would be exempted under the definition of "telecommunications service") and then turn around and tell them, based on that very same part of the Communications Act, that they can't charge those fees.

The recently-launched United States Digital Service (USDS) is modeled on the UK Cabinet Office's Government Digital Service which helps deploy new citizen-centric technologies throughout British government.

Since its launch in 2010, GDS has emerged as the gold-standard in the global world of digital government.

DirecTV and Dish Network customers may notice something a little different this election season: Your television ads know who you are.

The satellite television providers have partnered with Democratic and Republican data shops to harness information about their 20 million customers and deliver television ads tailored to the viewer.

The technology, known as "addressable advertising," is the latest front in a growing battle to reach voters.

The television providers will take over a customer's digital video recorder, or DVR, when it's not in use -- likely in the middle of the night. The targeted ads are downloaded. When a cue is sent by an advertiser of the perfect moment to run, one of those ads are picked off the box and run on the television screen, appearing just like any ol' television commercial.

Here are a few tips to choose the smartphone plan that's best for you.

Figure out your priorities: how much data do you really need?

Location, location, location: Consider how the coverage is in the area you're going to be using the phone the most.

Think about commitment: If you're not the kind of person who needs to get a new phone every year, you might prefer a contract plan in order to subsidize the price of your device.

Just adding a line? For families, the options get a little more interesting, because you'll be sharing pools of data and talk time among multiple lines.

Jumping ship: Keep an eye out for deals like these, particularly if you're unhappy with your current network, to get the most out of a new plan.

[Commentary] Like Hollywood, Silicon Valley has an idea of how politics works. And that idea is generally wrong. But some tech startups are finding that they can't get ahead without grappling with bureaucrats and lobbyists -- a dirty, petty business that reminds us more of the fading 20th century than the sleek, futuristic promise of the 21st.

Most of the time, tech companies would simply rather disengage from the squabbling that's characteristic of Congress and city hall. George Mason University researcher Adam Thierer calls this the principle of "permissionless innovation": When businesses don't have to justify their experiments to anyone, they can simply focus on building the next great tool or platform. This is the bedrock of startup culture, in which low barriers to entry allow the best ideas to bubble to the top whether you're a college dropout or have a Ph.D hanging on your wall.

A belief in permissionless innovation is what gives the tech industry its libertarian streak. Silicon Valley is in the throes of another tech bubble. Only this time, instead of ballooning stock prices, the bubble is one of political culture. Insulated from the challenges facing more established companies, the Bay Area's youngest have been socialized to believe that most problems can be fixed with enough money and engineering. As some companies are discovering, the reality is less straightforward.