Research

Millions of United Kingdom broadband customers who do not get the connection speeds they pay for should receive compensation. A new report calls on Ofcom, the UK media and telecommunications regulator, to get tough on broadband providers that promise fast speeds but fail to deliver. The British infrastructure group of Members of Parliament (MPs), led by former Tory party chairman Grant Shapps, estimates that as many as 6.7 million UK broadband connections may not hit the 10Mb minimum that the government wants to be the UK standard for a basic decent service. The Broadband 2.0 report, which is backed by 57 MPs, calls for automatic compensation for customers who do not get the level of speed promised from the internet packages they buy. “Although broadband is increasingly considered to be an essential utility, the quality of customer services has simply not caught up with demand,” said Shapps. “It is unacceptable that there are still no minimum standards in the UK telecoms sector to protect customers from protracted complaints procedures, and ensure that broadband providers are fully accountable to their customers.”

This report introduces students to the field of civic technology and the possibility that it could help to amplify citizen engagement. Rather than providing an exhaustive academic study of this topic or an in-depth exploration of a single organization, the case begins with a broad overview of the field (and several of the debates affecting it) and then contains a series of vignettes about three organizations in this space: the City of Chicago, Neighborly, and the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics. It aims to stimulate discussion around three core questions.

• First, what is civic technology, and what are some of the core forces, tensions, and debates shaping the field?
• Second, what are some of the most important considerations for civic technology organizations that are aiming to engage citizens in the democratic process and governmental decision-making?
• Third, where does civic technology—and, along with it, our conceptions of citizenship and engagement—go from here?

A poll from The Economist/YouGov asked Americans whether they would support “permitting the courts to shut down news media outlets for publishing or broadcasting stories that are biased or inaccurate.” The results were scary for anyone concerned about the future of American democracy.

According to the poll, Americans are roughly evenly divided on whether the US government should have the power to shut down unfriendly media outlets: 28 percent favor, 29 percent oppose, and 43 percent are unsure. But the results become really striking when you break them down by partisan identification: A fairly large plurality of Republicans — 45 percent — support allowing media organizations to be shuttered. A scant 20 percent oppose the idea; that’s less than half the number who support it. The remaining 35 percent of Republicans have not made up their minds.

FiveThirtyEight analyzed every county’s broadband usage using data from researchers at the University of Iowa and Arizona State University and found that Saguache (CO) was at the bottom.

Only 5.6 percent of adults were estimated to have broadband. But Saguache isn’t alone in lacking broadband. According to the Federal Communications Commission, 39 percent of rural Americans — 23 million people — don’t have access. In Pew surveys, those who live in rural areas were about twice as likely not to use the internet as urban or suburban Americans....Unforeseen serendipitous opportunities — summer jobs that become careers — are what motivate the county’s small internet providers to continue to pursue broadband as a public good. For now, no one in Saguache County is counting on a deus ex machina of funding from the federal government that turns universal broadband service from fantasy to reality. In real life, the practicalities wear.

Free Basics, Facebook’s free, limited internet service for developing markets, is neither serving local needs nor achieving its objective of bringing people online for the first time. That’s according to research by citizen media and activist group Global Voices which examined the Free Basics service in six different markets – Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan and Philippines – to see whether it was serving the intended audience. Free Basics is a Facebook-developed mobile app that gives users access to a small selection of data-light websites and services. The websites are stripped of photos and videos and can be browsed without paying for mobile data. The Global Voices report identifies a number of weaknesses in the service, including not adequately serving the linguistic needs of local populations; featuring a glut of third-party services from private companies in the US; harvesting huge amounts of metadata about users and violating the principles of net neutrality.

Louisville (KY) has garnered much praise for an award-winning data map that visualizes the modern day effects of redlining — a practice that dates back to the 1930s, and involves racial and socioeconomic discrimination in certain neighborhoods through the systematic denial of services or refusal to grant loans and insurance.

This map, dubbed Redlining Louisville: The History of Race, Class and Real Estate, takes historic data about redlining found in the national archives in Washington (DC) in 2013 and combines it with a timeline of historic events, data about current poverty levels, neighborhood boundaries and racial demographic info. With a host of tools including buttons and sliders, users can clearly see the correlation between the deliberate injustices of the past and the plight of struggling neighborhoods today. Jeana Dunlap, Louisville’s director of redevelopment strategies, said the value of this map is wide-reaching, and that it serves to foster awareness and spur discussion of many civic challenges, including digital equity, poverty, and access to basic needs such as full-service grocery stores and health-care services.

Communities are increasingly deploying IoT devices generally with a goal of improving livability, management, service delivery, or competitiveness. GAO was asked to examine federal support for IoT and the use of IoT in communities. This report describes: (1) the kinds of efforts that selected federal agencies have undertaken to support IoT in communities and (2) how selected communities are using federal funds to deploy IoT projects.

GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from 11 federal agencies identified as having a key role in supporting IoT in communities, including agencies that support research or community IoT efforts or that have direct authority over IoT issues. GAO interviewed a non-generalizeable sample of representatives from multiple stakeholder groups in four communities, selected to include a range of community sizes and locations and communities with projects that used federal support. GAO also reviewed relevant literature since 2013 and discussed federal efforts and community challenges with 11 stakeholders from academia and the private sector, selected to reflect a range of perspectives on IoT issues. GAO requested comments on a draft of this product from 11 federal agencies. Five agencies provided technical comments, which GAO incorporated as appropriate. Six agencies did not provide comments.

The Open Technology Institute team did a technical experiment at this Spring’s March for Science in Washington (DC) to try and answer these questions and explore new ways of detecting when your cell phone is being surveilled. The increasingly broad use of cell site simulators by law enforcement is controversial for many reasons. As a general matter, the devices themselves indiscriminately invade the privacy of everyone around them because they connect to, and can capture data from, all phones within their range. But the devices have also been used in controversial ways. In particular, they have been deployed disproportionately in areas made up predominantly of people of color.

We decided to conduct an experiment to see whether and how one might be able to detect the use of cell site simulators during a large protest. In particular, OTI conducted a spectrum survey at the March for Science in April 2017 to experiment with ways to identify these devices. Although our results were inconclusive, they gave us new insights into how best to tackle this problem, insights that we and others can apply to future experiments with the same goal: developing tools that give us the power to watch the watchers.

Some 14% of US adults say they have been targeted for online harassment or abuse because of their political views, according to a new report from Pew Research Center. And while Republicans and Democrats are about equally likely to have been harassed online because of their political views (15% vs. 13%), there are some notable partisan differences in their views of the issue. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they have heard a great deal about the topic of online harassment (38% vs. 25%). In addition, a larger share of Democrats than Republicans (69% vs. 54%) consider online harassment to be a major problem.

Regardless of political affiliation, women in both parties are more likely than their male counterparts to view online harassment as a major problem, to think offensive content online isn’t taken seriously enough and to prioritize safe spaces over people being able to express themselves freely online.

The US Government Accountability Office was asked to review FirstNet’s progress and efforts to ensure the network is reliable, secure, and interoperable. GAO (1) examined FirstNet’s efforts to establish the network; (2) obtained stakeholder views on network reliability, security, and interoperability challenges FirstNet faces and its efforts to address them; and (3) assessed FirstNet’s plans to oversee its network contractor. GAO reviewed FirstNet documentation, key contract oversight practices identified in federal regulations and other sources, tribal communication practices identified by federal agencies, and assessed FirstNet’s efforts and plans against these practices. GAO also interviewed FirstNet officials and a nongeneralizable selection of publicsafety, tribal, and other stakeholders selected to obtain a variety of viewpoints. GAO recommends that FirstNet fully explore tribal stakeholders’ concerns and assess its long-term staffing needs. FirstNet agreed with GAO’s recommendations.