Challenges in Using the National Broadband Map’s Data George S. Ford, PhD Phoenix Center March 2011 Ford takes a look at the information gathered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration after the goals set by 2009′s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Ford says that the data gathered will allow for the quantification of socio-economic [...]

Glassman hosts Downes and Manne who discuss the Internet over the next decade. Both have contributed to the book The Next Digital Decade, published by Tech Freedom. A major point of conversation is whether or not the Internet needs government regulation and oversight, or should the Internet continue to evolve on its own.

Conversations With America: A Discussion on the State Department’s Internet Freedom Strategy DipNote Bloggers Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Domcracy, Human Rights, and Labor Leslie Harris, President and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology Moderated by P.J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P.J. Crowley moderates a discussion between [...]

The authors assess the costs and benefits of the possibilities of either assigning D Block spectrum to public safety or auctioning the spectrum for commercial use. They suggest that analysis purports that the 10 MHz spectrum, if used for public safety, would provide somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.4 billion in “social benefits”. Social benefits being any positive outcome for a community in the case of an emergency.

Wallsten examines the state of the Universal Service Fund. The USF is a program that collects taxes for telecommunications services in the neighborhood of about $7.5 billion a year. The funds are intended to be used to provide telephone lines and subsidize telephone service in rural areas to low-income individuals.

Harris and Wong comment on “Internet Freedom” and believe the government should be doing more to promote solutions to ongoing issues that threaten the existing state of the Net. The two comment that circumvention tools that were used in Egypt to get around blocking attempts and censorship were not enough and were not a solution to Internet blackouts.

Facts of Life: The Citizen’s Guide to Network Engineering The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation Richard Bennett February 2011 In Bennett’s latest white paper, he focuses his attention on the notion in which many believe the Internet has always worked at a “dumb pipe” system, or a network consisting of no management.  This is a [...]

Spiwak contemplates the notion of States Rights as applied to the Open Internet order in his latest Perspectives piece for the Phoenix Center.

Schulz comments on the implementation of Net Neutrality rules and the appointment of Tim Wu to the FTC as further evidence that Washington does not understand technology. He believes these two gentlemen see the “health and vigor” of the tech sector and destructive.

Harris takes questions about mobile apps privacy and provides answers based on the CDT privacy perspective. Some of the questions are ones that are important to ask and will likely be discussed in the tech community for some time.