Links on DPI and network operators
For an essay for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, I spent some time over the last few days looking at deep packet inspection materials.
CDT has an excellent Policy Post on this subject this month, collecting links to their testimony and legal analysis. Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge testified on this subject recently, pulling together the evidentiary record before the Senate Commerce Committee here. Verizon’s testimony at the same hearing points to increased disclosure and self-regulated “best practices” as the solution (and softly conflates network access with Web services generally).
Chris Hoofnagle of Berkeley pointed out online recently that consumers simply don’t read or understand disclosures:
Joe Turow at Annenberg has written a series of reports suggesting that even clear disclosures will not help in the information privacy context, because consumers believe that the phrase “privacy policy” implies a baseline set of protections. Therefore, even if we were to improve disclosures, the effect would be limited, because consumers never take time to read them–they assume that many common market practices are illegal. See: http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/NewsDetails.aspx?myId=31. [ed.: here’s another link: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/samuelsonclinic/privacy/48]
When my essay comes out I’ll link to it here. I’m not convinced that disclosures are the answer to the question; in fact, I’m not sure we’re even asking the right question.
For me, the key question is: What should the providers of general-purpose network access be permitted to do as a social and economic policy matter?
Remarkable: white spaces
The news today in Washington is astounding. I’m here at Reagan National and I just heard two plane-bound congressmen promise one another that they’d be back on Wednesday to go at it again.
Some people would like to auction off the television white spaces (sample filing here). They’re claiming that the US Treasury would get another $10 to $24 billion from such an auction.
That assertion is based on some completely wild (and counter-factual) assumptions - the high power levels that anyone would need in order to be interested in buying these licenses would mean that most of the white spaces would be off-limits because of interference caused to existing broadcast operations. And the white spaces aren’t contiguous, so who would want to invest in them?
There’s a very strong and well-worth-reading paper from the New America Foundation making these points: There Is No Windfall in the White Spaces.
On the other hand, making the white spaces available on an unlicensed basis could have real benefits for rural broadband connectivity and innovation generally. According to a New America Foundation paper, “Unlicensed use of the DTV white space would increase broadband subscribership by 15 percent over ten years, particularly in rural and inner city areas which are currently under-serviced and which would benefit from mesh network technology facilitated by unlicensed spectrum.” So let’s hope the current financial crisis doesn’t get used as an excuse to sell off the white spaces - that would be as shortsighted as refusing to rescue the financial system as a whole.
Remember the wireless microphone people, and the Very Large Houses of Worship that use wireless mics and don’t want to be interfered with by other devices using the white spaces? Well, it may be that most of this wireless mic use is itself unlicensed and therefore currently unauthorized. A petition filed this past summer said that there were at least 400 times more illegal wireless microphone services in use than there were licenses on file with the Commission That’s remarkable.
Guessing at data
Markets without trustworthy information can’t function, and reliable data about highspeed internet access pricing and and speeds doesn’t seem to exist in this country. Solving that problem was the focus of some interesting talks this morning at a conference convened by BroadbandCensus.com.
There are several voluntary efforts going on right now, based on mashing together speed tests and mapping functions (Virginia Tech, BroadbandCensus, SpeedMatters) but these are just first steps towards reliable data. It’s an amazing situation, actually - carriers providing this basic internet access service get to say “I have something in my pocket, what color is it?” They say that this data is expensive to get and reveals proprietary information. When state authorities want the data, sometimes the carriers make them sign non-disclosure agreements.
(Meanwhile, Ken Flamm of UT Austin points out, the US expends more effort gathering cheese prices than internet access infrastructure data.)
I was particularly impressed by Jane Smith Patterson of the e-North Carolina Authority (funded by the legislature), who said bluntly that she thinks highspeed internet access is a utility, and that people in North Carolina want (and deserve) 30 Mbps symmetrical access. She thinks the carriers have all the data needed, that it’s easily available, and that states should be the entities working on this issue - they have the economic development imperative that isn’t as acutely felt at the federal level.
Eamonn Confrey of Broadband.gov (Ireland) made the point that Ireland felt it was going to lose multinationals if it didn’t improve its highspeed internet access infrastructure. So they’re working not only on data gathering but also on investing in urban dark fiber (open access) installations.
The state-federal divide on responsibility for gathering data is interesting. The state authorities are more vitally interested in the welfare of their citizens (arguably), and the partisanship that surrounds access issues may be more muted in the state context. Plus the pressure that states can exert on federal policy is useful.
More tomorrow from TPRC.
Leadership
I’m staying at an FDIC hotel - the FDIC Seidman Center. (This is the conference hotel for TPRC 2008.) A while ago I went down to the fitness center on the first floor and a security guard waved me in. It’s a shiny, well-cared-for facility. The gym is huge, freezing cold, and has every possible machine. There was only one other guy in there when I arrived, and he told me that the place clears out by about 7:30pm.
FDIC, my host tonight, knows how much the savings and loan bailout of the 1980s-90s cost - http://tinyurl.com/6zlskk is from the FDIC, and according to this post includes “spending by both the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, which ultimately became insolvent at the end of 1986, and the establishment of the Resolution Trust Corporation in 1989.” The bottom line:
From 1986-95, over 1,000 thrifts failed, forcing the government to take control of about half a trillion in assets, which were then repackaged and resold. As of 1999, losses to U.S. taxpayers totaled $124 billion (the thrift industry paid for another $30 billion, for a total of about $153 billion in total losses for the cleanup). Over the course of the crisis, the number of thrifts declined by about 50 percent, to 1645. . . . It’s worth noting that the initial estimate of the savings and loan bailout were woefully low, something on the order of 400 thrifts with about $200 billion in assets. Those number were waaaay off: 800 thrifts and $400 billion. In the first year.
I chatted with the guy next to me - we continued to be the only people in the vast, gleaming gym - and we watched MSNBC together. We both exclaimed over the nastiness of the political ads. He said, “I wouldn’t want to be a politician.” He left after a while, and then it was just me.
The multiple TVs overhead kept playing, showing Keith Olbermann fulminating about Sen. McCain “parachuting in” and wrecking a bipartisan bailout deal that had already been reached.
Tonight seemed quite dramatic - endless meetings on Capitol Hill capping off the photo-op weirdness of the President’s meeting today, punctuated by the (empty? bizarre? masterful?) gesture of Sen. McCain in “suspending” his campaign.
Somewhere, there must be smart people figuring this all out, backed up by the smooth gleaming functionality of a government that can produce an enormous unpeopled gym for the FDIC. All the drama of today was just business as usual in the context of that gym. It’s seen bailouts before, apparently.
Pitch
Both at OneWebDay on Monday (in person) and today (online), I’m hearing a strained-to-breaking tone in peoples’ voices. “Do something,” we tell each other. “Make sure this candidate is elected.” There seems to be no time to wait - for anything. The economy is crumbling, houses in Ann Arbor just aren’t selling, Galveston is wiped out, and yet another group led by prominent content and routing companies wants to make the Internet safe for Disney. Lessig says:
And .. at the center of this mess is a government — the product of a democracy — which too few of us respect. A president favorably thought of by less that a third of the Nation. A Congress favorably thought of by less than 10%. The only branch enjoying majority support is the one branch not elected by the people — the Court.
We should pause to think about just what this means. There were more who supported the British Crown at the [time of the] revolution than support the US Congress today.
It’s all quite dark, something my generation isn’t used to. We haven’t had much adversity - we had Nixon, sure, but we were quite small at the time. We have been dreaming our way along, stolidly marching towards retirement together. Now my generation (and Lessig’s, and Obama’s) is in charge, and we’re anxious. I hope we’re ready.
OneWebDay
The third annual OneWebDay was yesterday. Here are videos and other links. Thanks to everyone, everywhere, who got involved. Onward.
I was particularly moved by the email I got from New Zealand: “What on earth have you unleashed?“ I cheered when a Rio de Janeiro newspaper gave OneWebday full-page focus. I was delighted to see an interview from Ghana drawing attention to inadequate connectivity. In New York, we had a wonderful session with several terrific speakers, and Prof. Lawrence Lessig in particular gave a strong call for using the internet to get us out of the mess we’re in.
In San Francisco, the City extended wireless access to 1000 more people in lower-income housing, and built three tech centers using refurbished computers. In Portland and Milwaukee and Austin there were major meetings - see the video and press coverage. I was so delighted to see the professionalism and impact of the DC group’s meeting, which got Commr. Jonathan Adelstein involved as well as several other elected officials.
There’s more news to come from OneWebDay. It’s taking on a life of its own, but it needs fulltime staff and adequate resources. Please contribute. We’ll start planning for next year - right away.
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I’m digging out here, and working on understanding Comcast’s disclosures about its network management practices. (Attachment A. Attachment B. Compliance Plan.)
These disclosures deserve a level of attention similar to the reception given the 250 GB cap a little while ago.
For one thing, Comcast is certainly conceding that they have used reset packets in the past.
When the number of unidirectional upload sessions for any of the managed P2P protocols for a particular Sandvine PTS reaches the pre-determined session threshold, the Sandvine PTS issues instructions called “reset packets” that delay unidirectional uploads for that particular P2P protocol in the geographic area managed by that Sandvine PTS.
It’s also worth noting that Comcast is conceding that it is examining much more than header information. They’re using the (historic) OSI model to describe what they’re inspecting, and penetrating very deep into information about what users are looking at and what applications they’re using.
More importantly, though, it looks as if Comcast plans to use tiering quite actively. The company is saying that if its software decides that (1) a particular subscriber is using a “disproportionate” share of bandwidth, and (2) the relevant node is being used at 70% capacity (signalling approaching congestion), (3) that user will be dropped down to “lower priority” speeds. The company will decide when that user will be allowed back up to higher priority speeds.
So, if you were doing a video conference call provided by a non-Comcast vendor, and the call was using “too much” bandwidth, you could lose the call - it could become too jittery to be satisfactory. I understand that Comcast’s own voice product is not subject to this treatment. It’s not within Comcast’s defined term “Comcast High Speed Internet (HSI),” which it says is “[a] service/product offered by Comcast for delivering Internet service over a broadband connection.”
That’s not great for voice or videoconference products that aren’t provided by Comcast. It makes things quite unpredictable for them.
Blog amnesty
Back after OneWebDay, Sept. 22.
The best of e-democracy - from you
Contributions needed for the DC OWD time capsule. Here’s the whole enchilada:
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OneWebDay is September 22, and you can get involved!
OneWebDay (OWD) is a global event, like an Earth Day for the Internet. It is a platform people can use to educate and activate others about issues that are important for the Internet’s future. As OWD grows, it will build a global constituency that will work to protect and develop the benefits that the Internet brings to society. Every year, OWD focuses on a key Internet value. In light of this year’s historic US election and the rise of a new online “public square” all over the world, we are focusing on online political participation.
To mark the third OWD in Washington, DC, the DC OWD planning committee launched the e-Democracy Time Capsule in beta on August 22. It is now ready for the public. Check it out by visiting timecapsule.onewebday.org
Anyone across the country and the world can contribute by adding text, images, and video that celebrates e-Democracy to an open blog. We invite you to add the following entries:
Best of the e-Democracy Web: Your favorite tools, citizen journalist site, etc. What empowers you to act online?
E-democracy heroes: Brag about your friends and colleagues- who is behind the best political technology, content, and critical policy fights today?
Legislation and Policy: What are the issues we face in delivering the best possible future for e-Democracy?
Letters to the future: How do you see the e-Democracy Web growing (or failing) in the future?
We have 10 full days to pack the Time Capsule with the great content YOU submit. Go to http://timecapsule.onewebday.org/how-to-contribute/ to help us make history. If you’ve already blogged about these issues, please cross post at the Time Capsule. And don’t forget to brag about your contribution to your friends on your blog, link over to the Time Capsule, and help us spread the word before OWD!
On One Web Day, September 22, we will hold a closing ceremony for the Time Capsule at the New America Foundation. Details here.
Why a Time Capsule? Both politics and technology move so fast, sometimes we forget to recognize that these new tools and the people who use them have opened a brand new chapter in the big social experiment we call “democracy.” We built a central hub to gather and document all of the amazing things that people are doing online to participate politically. Furthermore, the Internet of the future may be very different than the one we know today. As Internet gatekeepers strive to put fences around our new public squares, we will work in the coming weeks and months to find historians and archivists to help us create a physical, non-digital version of the Time Capsule that can be shared, studied, and used for discussion and debate for generations to come.
We hope you will join us in documenting the progress we have made in empower people online and in building a future that delivers on the fuller potential of the e-Democracy Web!
Visit timecapsule.onewebday.org
Cheers,
The DC OWD Planning Committee
Rebooting America
I’m pleased to announce the publication of Rebooting America, an anthology from the Personal Democracy Forum. Rebooting includes forty-four essays by political and digital luminaries including Craig Newmark, Esther Dyson, Joe Trippi, Newt Gingrich and many others — including me. Each essay has a unique central idea but they’re all about re-orienting our government for the internet age.
Rebooting America was an experiment in new media publishing underwritten by the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. Copies of the book are available as pdfs for download for free at Rebooting.Personal Democracy.com. Every essay has been posted online and can be commented on. The goal is to improve and expand on the ideas in the book.
Why not buy a paperback edition to support this open model? Rebooting America is available today. Thanks.
White spaces - recent comments
More than 25,000 comments have been filed with the FCC in the white spaces proceeding (search on 04-186 in the ECFS system on the FCC site). Here are some recent highlights:
1. The White Spaces Coalition ( Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, Intel, Philips, Earthlink, and Samsung Electro-Mechanics) is worried about 11th-hour calls to eliminate any unlicensed use of the white spaces. The Coalition points out that the only proposal for licensed use of the white spaces is coming in the form of “fixed point to point wireless backhaul” — the FiberTower Plan proposed by Sprint. The Coalition doesn’t think that proposed use of the white spaces makes sense:
Many of the communities that would benefit the most from unlicensed access to the white spaces reside in urban areas, where high power operations proposed by the FiberTower Plan are infeasible.
The bottleneck for wireless backhaul deployment is not spectrum availability, it is the need for infrastructure deployment, which would remain no matter what spectrum is used.
2. CTIA wants “licensed, flexible use” of the white spaces.
3. Motorola says sensing-only unlicensed devices are not ready for prime time, but some combination of geolocation, beacons (link to summary of Google position from March of this year on beacons), and databases for checking what spectrum is actually being used may allow for successful unlicensed use of the white spaces - and could accommodate authorized wireless mics. Motorola also points out that wireless transmissions will have to be powerful enough in rural areas to “realize rural broadband benefits.”
4. Google said back in July that allowing only fixed (not portable) uses of the white spaces in rural areas doesn’t make sense, because this approach will limit the marketplace for portable devices and will therefore drive up their price. The company is also arguing that adjacent channels must be made available in cities.
If you’ve made recent filings that you’d like us to read, please link to them in the comments.