Public policy

Iran cuts off Internet access

Iran has cut off access to the Internet, leaving millions of people without access to e-mail and social networks.

An individual inside the country confirmed this morning that Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo email are no longer available. Ditto for Facebook. So far, the government has not made any announcement about the service interruption.

But cyber-sophisticated Iranians are still able to circumvent the government by using proxy servers over VPN connections.

"The interesting thing is that when asked, they deny the fact that all these services are all blocked," an Iranian contacted by CNET said. This individual asked to … Read more

Report: Obama to meet with Zuckerberg, Jobs

President Obama is expected to meet with some of Silicon Valley's highest-profile executives tomorrow in San Francisco, including Apple's Steve Jobs, Google's Eric Schmidt, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, according to an ABC News report.

The San Francisco Chronicle and CNET cousin KCBS (part of CBS Corp.) reported earlier this week that Obama would make an appearance somewhere in the area on Thursday for meetings with "business leaders in technology and innovation," but it's unclear whether any of the meetings or appearances will be open to the public or media.

Obama has paid visits … Read more

Facebook's privacy policies hit a language barrier

McDonald's. Blockbuster. And now Facebook? The social network and its controversial privacy policies are teeming with new complications as regulators overseas increasingly start to regard them as a suspicious, Americanizing import.

This week, data protection officials in Hamburg, Germany, sent a menacing missive in Facebook's direction, accusing the social network of partaking in illegal activities by retaining data about people who aren't members of the site but whose contact information may have come into its possession through members' e-mail importer tools. Last year, the privacy commissioner in Canada put significant pressure on Facebook to simplify its privacy … Read more

White House unveils cloud computing initiative

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a far-reaching and long-term cloud computing policy intended to cut costs on infrastructure and reduce the environmental impact of government computing systems.

Speaking at NASA's Ames Research Center here, federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled the administration's first formal efforts to roll out a broad system designed to leverage existing infrastructure and in the process, slash federal spending on information technology, especially expensive data centers.

According to Kundra, the federal government today has an IT budget of $76 billion, of which more than $19 billion is spent on infrastructure alone. … Read more

Open Access to New Wireless Spectrum?

The Federal Communications Commission in January will auction off perhaps the most lucrative wireless radio space in history. It's like Superman for mobile applications, able to see through buildings better and travel farther than others before it.

First, though, the FCC must write the rules dictating how that spectrum will be used by the auction winner. That means (as things historically go at the Commission) mediating between several powerhouse companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Google who really want to get their paws on this money-making resource. If they're lucky, a little start-up or even consumers will … Read more

New Web site proposes creating congressional legislation online

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate leadership, has opened the virtual doors of law writing to Internet citizens. This is a compelling idea as the Internet continues to find ways to democratize information and support the flattening of the political process in our country.

The senator writes in OpenLeft.com, the new project hosting this:

"Today I'm writing to invite you to participate in an experiment--an interactive approach to drafting legislation on one of the most significant public policy questions today: What should be America's national broadband strategy?"… Read more

FCC wireless auction for police and fire departments too

There's a tremendous amount of attention focused on whether the Federal Communication Commission's September auction of new wireless spectrum in the 700 MHz band will be "open access," available to many mobile providers and applications, or be limited to whatever the auction winner wants to do with it.

There is also an important public safety issue in this debate that is not getting as much attention. That is whether some of this valuable wireless real estate should be reserved by the FCC for our first responders--the people who drive our ambulances, show up for fires, and … Read more

Blogger Civility? One Leading Blogger Offers Standards

Personal and public civility matters everywhere. It's why you don't burp at the dinner table or take showers in public. It's why you say "please" and "thank you" and, if you're Southern-born like I am, you say "yes, sir" and "yes, ma'am" when spoken to by your elders.

The blogosphere is still the wild, wild west, and sometimes personal and public civility don't seem to be part of the new culture. But it's increasingly becoming a part of the self-policing that bloggers are getting better … Read more

Are stem cells Republicans or Democrats?

It's hard to tell sometimes whether the debate over stem cell research is about politics, religion, ideology, or science. Many folks might believe that this is a Democratic-Republican thing because of the fight that went on in Congress and the White House. It ended with Bush issuing his second veto of federal funding for such research. It's not entirely clear, however, based on polling among the American people and votes taken in Congress that stem cell research is a Republican-Democratic thing.

What's the answer then? Are those little stem cells, who promise to give us some help … Read more