via SEC: Facebook, Inc. Form S-1, February 1, 2012

• "We had 845 million MAUs as of December 31, 2011, an increase of 39% as compared to 608 million MAUs as of December 31, 2010.
  
• We had 483 million daily active users (DAUs) on average in December 2011, an increase of 48% as compared to 327 million DAUs in December 2010.
  
• We had more than 425 million MAUs who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011.
  
• There were more than 100 billion friend connections on Facebook as of December 31, 2011.
  
• Our users generated an average of 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day during the three months ended December 31, 2011."
  
• Reuters: "It's the year's hottest initial public offering, but some wealth managers find themselves having a hard time recommending Facebook to their clients."

"EPIC has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Trade Commission for the Privacy Report that Google was recently required to submit to the agency. The Commission had previously investigated Google after EPIC filed a complaint regarding Google's Buzz product, which transformed private user contacts into publicly available social network data. Last fall the Commission reached a settlement with Google and, as a result, the company is subject to a consent order that requires it to file regular reports with the Commission. EPIC has requested that Google's first report, filed on January 26, 2012, be released to the public. Because of Google's plan to change its business practice on March 1, 2012, EPIC has asked the FTC to expedite the disclosure of the report. For more information see EPIC: In re Google Buzz."

Report: Social Networking, Web 2.0 - Why most Facebook users get more than they give by Keith Hampton, Lauren Sessions Goulet, Cameron Marlow, Lee Rainie. February 3, 2012

Open Access to Scientific Information, Published 25 January 2012 | POST Notes 397, by Chandrika Nath

"DMARC, which stands for "Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance", is a technical specification created by a group of organizations that want to help reduce the potential for email-based abuse by solving a couple of long-standing operational, deployment, and reporting issues related to email authentication protocols. DMARC standardizes how email receivers perform email authentication using the well-known SPF and DKIM mechanisms. This means that senders will experience consistent authentication results for their messages at AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! and any other email receiver implementing DMARC. We hope this will encourage senders to more broadly authenticate their outbound email which can make email a more reliable way to communicate."

World Press Freedom Index 2011-2012 - "Syria, Bahrain and Yemen get worst ever rankings - “This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world,” Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. “Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news." “Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them."

Jurors’ Use of Social Media During Trials and Deliberations - A Report to the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, Meghan Dunn, Federal Judicial Center November 22, 2011

EFF: "This January 28 marks International Privacy Day. Different countries around the world are celebrating this day with their own events. This year, we are honoring the day by calling attention to recent international privacy threats and interviewing data protection authorities, government officials, and activists to gain insight into various aspects of privacy rights and related legislation in their own respective countries. As part of International Privacy Day, the EFF asked data protection authorities, politicians, and activists about privacy related issues and concerns for 2012. In addition to the individuals highlighted in our previous posts, EFF heard back from the Council of Europe, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), and activists from Canada, France and Spain. In various ways, all of the responses focused on government surveillance or data protection laws. For the Council of Europe and European Data Protection Supervisor, the focus was on data protection agreements, while the activists were mindful of the ever-increasing power of government authorities to surveil their citizens."

Via CDT: "Earlier this week, Twitter announced that it will begin making certain Tweets inaccessible to users in countries where the content of those Tweets is illegal. In announcing its new policy, Twitter was acknowledging the challenge that all global social media sites face: governments ask tech companies to comply with local content laws and if these companies refuse to comply, they risk being blocked from the country entirely, further limiting information that citizens can access. If the company has employees on the ground, refusal also risks legal charges against employees. This, of course, raises a well-worn question: are human rights better served when a platform restricts some content in order to remain in a country, or when it resigns itself to a nationwide block of its service?"

News release: The European Commission has today [January 24, 2012] a comprehensive reform of the EU's 1995 data protection rules to strengthen online privacy rights and boost Europe's digital economy. Technological progress and globalisation have profoundly changed the way our data is collected, accessed and used. In addition, the 27 EU Member States have implemented the 1995 rules differently, resulting in divergences in enforcement. A single law will do away with the current fragmentation and costly administrative burdens, leading to savings for businesses of around €2.3 billion a year. The initiative will help reinforce consumer confidence in online services, providing a much needed boost to growth, jobs and innovation in Europe."

National Archives Office of Inspector General Management Letter No. 12-01, Network Outage

How College Students Manage Technology While in the Library during Crunch Time, Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, Project Information Literacy Research Report, University of Washington's Information School, October 12, 2011

"Fat paychecks, sweet perks, fun colleagues, and over 70,000 jobs ready to be filled -- these employers offer dream workplaces. Like Google, which reclaims the top spot this year to become a three-time champion. Meet this year's top 100."

Made in heaven or marriage from hell? Social media and the financial sector, Cicero Consulting, January 2012

Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period, Lee Rainie Director, Pew Internet Project

Via LLRX - Deep Web Research 2012: Marcus P. Zillman's extensive research over the years into the "invisible" or "deep" web indicates that it covers somewhere in the vicinity of 1 trillion plus pages of information located throughout the Internet in various files and formats that current search engines either cannot locate, or have difficulty accessing. The current search engines find hundreds of billions of pages at the time of this publication. His guide provides extensive and targeted resources to facilitate both a better understanding of the history of deep web research as well to effectively and productively search for and locate these often undiscovered but critical documents.

Real Time Charitable Giving - Why mobile phone users texted millions of dollars in aid to Haiti earthquake relief and how they got their friends to do the same - Aaron Smith, Pew Internet Project, Senior Research Specialist

Programmable Web Services Directory of over 100 government [local, state and federal] APIs released in 2011.

• Over 2,000 APIs Added in 2011: Social, Telephony, Open Government
  
• See also How the Internet of Things Is Turning Cities Into Living Organisms - "When city services can autonomously go online and digest information from the cloud, they can reach a level of performance never before seen." December 6, 2011

News release: "Were you ever about to sign a contract for a personal loan, credit card, or other consumer credit and discovered that it was all working out more expensive than you had first expected? An EU-wide investigation of websites offering consumer credit took place to check whether consumers are receiving the information to which they are entitled under EU consumer law1 before signing a consumer credit contract. National enforcement authorities checked more than 500 websites across the 27 Member States plus Norway and Iceland. They flagged 70% (393) of sites for further investigation in relation to the following main problems: the advertising did not include the required standard information; the offers omitted key information that is essential for making a decision; the costs were presented in a misleading way. National enforcement authorities will now contact financial institutions and credit intermediaries about suspected irregularities and ask them to clarify or take corrective action. The sweep operation checked in particular how business is applying the Consumer Credit Directive (recently transposed in Member States), which aims to make it easier for consumers to understand and compare credit offers."

The Gov Doc Kids Group and Free Government Information - Tom Adamich, Martha Childers, Katy Davis, John H. Faria and Antoinette W. Satterfield. The IFLA World Library and Information Congress

News release: "Almost one in three U.S. TV households – 35.9 million – owns four or more televisions, according to Nielsen’s State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report. Across the ever-changing U.S. media landscape, TV maintains its stronghold as the most popular device, with 290 million Americans and 114.7 households owning at least one. In contrast, 211 million Americans are online and 116 million (ages 13+) access the mobile Web. For more insights on usage and trends across TV, mobile, online, and social media download Nielsen’s State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report."

comScore Reports November 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share: "For the three-month average period ending in November, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices. Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers (up 0.3 percentage points), followed by LG with 20.5 percent share and Motorola with 13.7 percent share. Apple strengthened its position at #4 with 11.2 percent share of total mobile subscribers (up 1.4 percentage points), while RIM rounded out the top five with 6.5 percent share...In November, 72.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 2.1 percentage points. Downloaded applications were used by 44.9 percent of subscribers (up 3.3 percentage points), while browsers were used by 44.4 percent (up 2.3 percentage points). Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 2.1 percentage points to 33.0 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 29.7 percent of the mobile audience (up 1.2 percentage points), while 21.7 percent listened to music on their phones (up 1.0 percentage points)."

Revolution in the Arab World: "In the first article, Dr. Laleh Khalili compares the Arab Spring with other revolutions in the twentieth century, pointing out how difficult it is to ascertain what the effects of revolutions might be. Next, Dr. Jillian Schwedler also takes a historical approach to the study of revolution by looking systematically at protests in Jordan over several decades with a focus on law, urban space, and spectacle. Third, Dr. William Zartman focuses particularly on the events in Tunisia, commenting particularly on different groups vying for leadership. Fourth, Gamal Eid writes about how youth have used social media to rally support and organize protests in Egypt." The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)

It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed, December 21, 2011

The civic and community engagement of religiously active Americans - "Those who are active in church, religious, or spiritual organizations are often more deeply involved in their communities than those who are not members of such groups. And their tech use helps them tie to all kinds of groups" by Jim Jansen Senior Fellow, Pew Internet

State of the Federal Web Report, December 16, 2011. Produced by the .gov Reform Task Force

"Have you ever wondered why some online ads you see are targeted to your tastes and interests, or how websites remember your preferences from visit to visit? The answer may be in the “cookies." A cookie is information saved by your web browser, the software program you use to visit the web. Cookies can be used by companies that collect, store and share bits of information about your online activities to track your behavior across sites. Cookies also can be used to customize your browsing experience, or to deliver ads targeted to you. OnGuardOnline.gov wants you to know how cookies are used and how you can control information about your browsing activities. Here are answers to some commonly asked questions about cookies – what they are, what they do, and how you can control them."

EPIC: "Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Mike Lee (R-UT), Chairman and Ranking member of the Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, have sent a letter to FTC Chairman John Liebowitz, expressing concern about Google's business practices and the company's impact on competition in Internet search and commerce. In September, EPIC wrote to the FTC and described how Google biased YouTube search rankings to give preferential treatment to its own content following the acquisition of the Internet's largest video service provider. The EPIC letter preceded a Senate hearing on The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition? EPIC testified before the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee in 2009 on Google's growing dominance of essential Internet services."

Reading Digits in Natural Images with Unsupervised Feature Learning, Yuval Netzer, Tao Wang, Adam Coates, Alessandro Bissacco, Bo Wu1, Andrew Y. Ng

News release: "Researchers have set a new world record for data transfer, helping to usher in the next generation of high-speed network technology. At the SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) conference in Seattle during mid-November, the international team transferred data in opposite directions at a combined rate of 186 gigabits per second (Gbps) in a wide-area network circuit. The rate is equivalent to moving two million gigabytes per day, fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray disks—each with a complete movie and all the extras—in a day."

News release: "TRUSTe, the leading online privacy solutions provider, released its first privacy index as part of its new "Privacy Pulse" information series tracking changes and trends in online privacy. In the 2011 Website Edition of its Privacy Index, TRUSTe analyzed the privacy policies of the top 100 U.S. websites (as ranked by Alexa Sept. 2011) to evaluate privacy practices by measuring key policy attributes, as well as the type of disclosures contained in them. TRUSTe found that while nearly 100 percent of websites today include a privacy policy, existing policies are highly complex, lengthy and written in language that is confusing for the average person to understand. Additionally, the vast majority of privacy policies are not readily transparent regarding third-party usage of data or consumer choices."

"The Blueprint for a Secure Cyber Future builds on the Department of Homeland Security Quadrennial Homeland Security Review Report’s strategic framework by providing a clear path to create a safe, secure, and resilient cyber environment for the homeland security enterprise. With this guide, stakeholders at all levels of government, the private sector, and our international partners can work together to develop the cybersecurity capabilities that are key to our economy, national security, and public health and safety. The Blueprint describes two areas of action: Protecting our Critical Information Infrastructure Today and Building a Stronger Cyber Ecosystem for Tomorrow. The Blueprint is designed to protect our most vital systems and assets and, over time, drive fundamental change in the way people and devices work together to secure cyberspace. The integration of privacy and civil liberties protections into the Department’s cybersecurity activities is fundamental to safeguarding and securing cyberspace."

How SOPA Affects Students, Educators, and Libraries: "...Libraries represent another educational group that could face fallout from SOPA. The Library Copyright Alliance, a group whose members include the American Library Association and two other major library organizations, has also written a letter to the House of Representatives raising major issues with the bill. Alarmingly, the librarians point to “three pending copyright infringement lawsuits against universities and their libraries relating to their use of digital technology,” reflecting “a growing tension between rights holders and libraries, and some rights holders’ increasingly belligerent enforcement mentality.” That same enforcement mentality, under SOPA, could lead to criminal prosecutions of libraries, even for activities that are a fair use and conducted without the intention of commercial gain."

The Protester, by Kurt Andersen: "It's remarkable how much the protest vanguards share. Everywhere they are disproportionately young, middle class and educated. Almost all the protests this year began as independent affairs, without much encouragement from or endorsement by existing political parties or opposition bigwigs. All over the world, the protesters of 2011 share a belief that their countries' political systems and economies have grown dysfunctional and corrupt — sham democracies rigged to favor the rich and powerful and prevent significant change. They are fervent small-d democrats. Two decades after the final failure and abandonment of communism, they believe they're experiencing the failure of hell-bent megascaled crony hypercapitalism and pine for some third way, a new social contract."

Ten Facts about Mobile Broadband, Darrell M. West, Vice President and Director, Governance Studies - December 08, 2011. The Brookings Institution

Predicting the Future of Computing: "Since no supercomputer can yet predict the future, we need your help. Readers are invited to make predictions and collaboratively edit this timeline, which is divided into three sections: a sampling of past advances, future predictions that you can push forward or backward in time (but not, of course, into the past), and a form for making and voting on predictions. The most prescient prophet might receive an iPad 2 in 2050. But if the past is any guide, this prediction will almost surely be wrong."

The 2011 Fortune 500 and Social Media Adoption: Have America's Largest Companies Reached a Social Media Plateau? Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D. and Justina Andonian - Center for Marketing Research, Charlton College of Business, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Americans and Mobile Computing: Key Trends in Consumer Research, by Aaron Smith. December 7, 2011 at the Government Mobility Forum

"Independent research firm TNS surveyed more than 3,500 cloud computing users in eight countries around the world to find answers to these and other timely questions. The survey focused on capturing user information about outcomes and experiences rather than predictions and intentions. While much remains to be discovered about how cloud can transform enterprises, the findings of the CSC commissioned Cloud Usage Index are nonetheless informative — and often surprising."

"It’s that time of year, again, when news organizations are scrambling to determine which stories and screaming headlines attracted the most attention from its readers. As a way to get the ball rolling, I contacted some leading news organizations and asked them to provide the online story that generated the most page views on their Web Sites over the last year. Here, then [are several of the] responses that came back from those organizations considerate enough to return my emails.

• "The New York Times: The story with the most page views on NYTimes.com between January 1 through Dec 5, 2011 was Sustainable Love By Tara Parker-Pope, an essay on what makes a happy marriage. The article appeared in the Times' print edition on January 2, 2011.
  
• The Wall Street Journal: The most popular story at WSJ.com for 2011 was an essay entitled: Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior which were excerpts from author Amy Chua’s new book: "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", a book that caused a great deal of controversy earlier this year.
  
• ABC: According a company spokesperson, the top story for 2011 on ABCNews.com was a story about the 50 most popular women on the Internet. The article was originally published on May 6, 2010. The two other top stories for 2011 at ABCNews.com was the killing of Osama bin Laden published on May 1, 2011; and the obituary of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, published on October 5, 2011.

"The OECD broadband portal provides access to a range of broadband-related statistics gathered by the OECD. Policy makers must examine a range of indicators which reflect the status of individual broadband markets in the OECD. The OECD has indentified five main categories which are important for assessing broadband markets."

"Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics (On-demand self-service, Broad network access, Resource pooling, Rapid elasticity, Measured Service); three service models (Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)); and, four deployment models (Private cloud, Community cloud, Public cloud, Hybrid cloud). Key enabling technologies include: (1) fast wide-area networks, (2) powerful, inexpensive server computers, and (3) high-performance virtualization for commodity hardware." Draft Documents as follows:

• NIST Special Publication 500-293, US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Release 1.0 (Draft), Volume I High-Priority Requirements to Further USG Agency Cloud Computing Adoption
  
• NIST Special Publication 500-293, US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Release 1.0 (Draft), Volume II Useful Information for Cloud Adopters

"The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain appeared in the Nov. 30 edition of the Technology Review - The PC is dead. Rising numbers of mobile, lightweight, cloud-centric devices don't merely represent a change in form factor. Rather, we're seeing an unprecedented shift of power from end users and software developers on the one hand, to operating system vendors on the other—and even those who keep their PCs are being swept along. This is a little for the better, and much for the worse. The transformation is one from product to service. The platforms we used to purchase every few years—like operating systems—have become ongoing relationships with vendors, both for end users and software developers. I wrote about this impending shift, driven by a desire for better security and more convenience, in my 2008 book The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It."

The internet as a diversion and destination - On a typical day, 53% of young adults go online just for fun and to pass the time, by Lee Rainie. December 2, 2011

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today issued the National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2011. The FTC's National Do Not Call Registry provides consumers with an easy way to stop unwanted telemarketing calls...According to the Data Book, at the end of FY 2011 (September 30, 2011), the Do Not Call Registry contained 209,722,924 actively registered phone numbers, up from 201,542,535 at the end of FY 2010. In addition, the number of consumer complaints about unwanted telemarketing calls increased from 1,633,819 at the end of FY 2010 to 2,272,662 at the end of FY 2011. In its third year of publication, the Data Book contains a wealth of information about the Registry for FY 2011, including:

• The number of active registrations and consumer complaint figures since the Registry began in 2003;
  
• FY 2011 complaint figures by month and complaint type;
  
• FY 2011 registration and complaint figures for all 50 states and the District of Columbia by population;
  
• The number of entities accessing the Registry by fiscal year; and
  
• An appendix on registration and complaint data by consumer state and area code."

News release: "Our analysis of The Consumer Benefits of Expanding Shared Use of the Public Airwaves, which we are releasing today demonstrates that spectrum made available for shared use without a license (unlicensed spectrum), has played a central and critical role in growth of wireless broadband data service. In fact, the shared use model has performed as well as, if not better than, the exclusive licensed model, even though unlicensed spectrum was considered to be “junk” by commercial operators. Using unlicensed technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, consumers receive higher quality service at lower prices.

• Consumers “extend” broadband service to their mobile devices at home and directly access hundreds of thousands of public and private hot spots across the U.S. This adds over $25 billion per year in value to broadband service.
  
• The efficient use of shared spectrum allows cellular wireless providers to “offload” more than one-third of their data traffic, dramatically reducing the number of cell sites they have to build and operate. This lowers the cost of service by at least another $25 billion per year.
  
• Intensive intra-firm communications, remote metering and monitoring, tagging of assets and goods, pay and go billing, and a host of others machine-to-machine applications, all of which rely on shared use spectrum, save businesses tens of billions of dollars per year."

The UK Cyber Security Strategy - Protecting and promoting the UK in a digital world, November 2011

News release: "The social networking service Facebook has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The proposed settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining consumers' express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established. The FTC's eight-count complaint against Facebook is part of the agency's ongoing effort to make sure companies live up to the privacy promises they make to American consumers. It charges that the claims that Facebook made were unfair and deceptive, and violated federal law."

"The University of Pittsburgh is fortunate to own one of the rare, complete sets of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. It is considered to be the single most valuable set of volumes in the collections of the University Library System (ULS). Indeed, only 120 complete sets are known to exist. While Audubon was creating Birds of America, he was also working on a companion publication, namely, his Ornithological Biography. Both of these sets were acquired by William M. Darlington in the mid-nineteenth century and later donated, as part of his extensive library, to the University of Pittsburgh. Recognizing that the Darlington Library includes significant historical materials, such as rare books, maps, atlases, illustrations, and manuscripts, the ULS charted an ambitious course to digitize a large portion of Mr. Darlington’s collection, including the Birds of America. We are pleased to present our complete double elephant folio set of Audubon’s Birds of America, accompanied by his Ornithological Biography, through this Web site. Together these sets constitute an unprecedented online combination."

Why Americans use social media - Social networking sites are appealing as a way to maintain contact with close ties and reconnect with old friends, by Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, 11/14/2011

"Consumer Reports' Guide to online security outlines some of the most common Net threats—such as phishing, online scams, and computer viruses. (See: Best ways to stay safe online.) But our latest security report also notes that mobile phones and social media sites can also present a rising amount of ID theft risks since more consumers are using their smart phones to shop and sharing news of online bargains on Facebook. (See: Mobile phones: The new risk and Concerns about Facebook.) The Consumer Federation of America, a non-profit association of almost 300 consumer organizations, has compiled a list of 10 tips for having an ID theft-free holiday season (PDF) on its website, IDTheftInfo.org."

Mapping the Mal Web - The world’s riskiest domains, by Barbara Kay, CISSP, Secure by Design Group and Paula Greve, Director of Research, McAfee Labs

News release: "The FCC is launching the Small Biz Cyber Planner, an online resource to help small businesses create customized cybersecurity plans. This is the result of an unprecedented public-private partnership between government experts and private IT and security companies, including DHS, NCSA, NIST, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Chertoff Group, Symantec, Sophos, Visa, Microsoft, HP, McAfee, The Identity Theft Council, ADP and others. The online tool is available at FCC.gov/cyberplanner. By almost any measure small businesses have an outsized impact on our economy and it is critically important that small businesses, a vibrant engine for job and idea creation, are secure using the many broadband enabled tools they need to efficiently run their businesses. According to a survey released in October, 2011 by Symantec and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), two-thirds of U.S. small businesses rely on broadband Internet for their day-to-day operations...This effort is part of an ongoing program to raise awareness about the cybersecurity risks to small businesses and to help these businesses become cyber-secure. Earlier this year, the FCC and a coalition of public and private-sector partners developed a cybersecurity tip sheet, which includes tips to educate business owners about basic steps they can take immediately to protect their companies. The tip sheet is available at FCC.gov/cyberforsmallbiz".

The Top 25 US Public Libraries' Collective Collection, as Represented in WorldCat "characterizes the combined collections of the top 25 US public libraries, as represented in the WorldCat database. These libraries account for more than 34 million holdings in WorldCat across 13.5 million distinct publications. The report considers overlap vs. uniqueness of holdings for these libraries, and compares their collective collection with the collective holdings of the rest of the US public libraries whose holdings are represented in WorldCat. It also compares their collective collection to the collective WorldCat holdings of ARL member libraries, and to all US academic libraries represented in WorldCat.">The Top 25 US Public Libraries' Collective Collection, as Represented in WorldCat characterizes the combined collections of the top 25 US public libraries, as represented in the WorldCat database. These libraries account for more than 34 million holdings in WorldCat across 13.5 million distinct publications. The report considers overlap vs. uniqueness of holdings for these libraries, and compares their collective collection with the collective holdings of the rest of the US public libraries whose holdings are represented in WorldCat. It also compares their collective collection to the collective WorldCat holdings of ARL member libraries, and to all US academic libraries represented in WorldCat."

"Just under half (46%) of cell phone and tablet users who have downloaded apps say they have paid for an app at some point, according to a survey conducted July 25-Aug. 26, 2011 by the Pew Internet & American Life project. That number is statistically equivalent to the 47% who reported doing so in May 2010. However, the number of people who have downloaded an application has grown, so only 16% of all U.S. adults have ever paid for an app -- this compares with 13% who said so in May 2010. This is a small but statistically significant increase."

News release: "Demonstrating the increasing role of the network in people's lives, an international workforce study announced today by Cisco revealed that one in three college students and young professionals considers the Internet to be as important as fundamental human resources like air, water, food and shelter. The 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report also found that more than half of the study's respondents say they could not live without the Internet and cite it as an "integral part of their lives" – in some cases more integral than cars, dating, and partying. These and numerous other findings provide insight into the mindset, expectations, and behavior of the world's next generation of workers and how they will influence everything from business communications and mobile lifestyles to hiring, corporate security, and companies' abilities to compete."

"This webinar featured innovative ways to increase access to special collectons. The report, Rapid Capture: Faster Throughput in Digitization of Special Collections, focused on the actual moment of digitization of non-book materials and on innovative ways to speed things up. But speeding things up in one part of the process often uncovers bottlenecks in other parts. In this webinar, experts from special collections and archives offered up creative ways to speed up other parts of the process to provide greater access to special collections..."

How Mainstream Media Outlets Use Twitter Content Analysis Shows an Evolving Relationship - November 14, 2011

"Building, operating and securing the Global Information Grid (GIG) for the Department of Defense is a complex and ongoing challenge. The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for Cyber Identity and Information Assurance has developed a strategy for meeting this challenge, which is available here: Build and Operate a Trusted GIG - Identity & Information Assurance Related Policies and Issuances - Developed by the DoD CIO, IIA Deputate. Last Updated: October 18, 2011. In the CIIA Strategy, the primary goal areas are as listed as follows:

• Organize for unity of purpose and speed of action (shortened to "Organize" in the chart).
  
• Enable secure mission driven access to information and services (shortened to "Enable" in the chart).
  
• Anticipate and prevent successful attacks on data and networks (shortened to "Anticipate" in the chart).
  
• Prepare for and operate through cyber degradation or attack (shortened to "Prepare" in the chart)."
  
• The Information Assurance Technology Analysis Center (IATAC) is a U.S. Department of Defense Information Analysis Center (IAC) sponsored by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), and Assistant Secretary of Defense Research and Engineering (ASDR&E). IATAC is hosted by Booz Allen Hamilton."

• To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications, November 11, 2011 via European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) - "European Union (EU) agency which acts as a centre of expertise for the EU Member States and European institutions. It gives advice and recommendations on good practice, and acts as a “switchboard” for exchanging knowledge and information. The agency also facilitates contacts between the European institutions, the Member States, and private business and industry."
• "Recording aspects of one’s life, or life-logging, has a long established history in human society, but it is undergoing transformational change in terms of depth, volume and type of data. Before the 20th century, life-logging was restricted to recordings on paper media and involved written accounts, such as books, diaries, or collections of letters between people as well as person-constructed images such as drawings or paintings. By the 20th century, the media had broadened to include still photographic images, sound and moving images and most families kept at least an image life-log in the form of a photo album. By the end of the 20th century, most of these life-log data were digitally recorded with both the resolution and frequency of recording dramatically increasing year on year. Paper diaries and letters gave way to blogs, e-mail, and social networking status updates with the significant difference that the latter were potentially recorded forever and with a vastly more complete history than the episodic fragments of days gone by."
• Appendix I Scenario Building and Analysis Template, accompanying the deliverable "To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications". File To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications [Appendix II]
• Appendix II Risk Assessment Spreadsheet, accompanying the deliverable "To log or not to log? - Risks and benefits of emerging life-logging applications"

"The Veterans Job Bank powered by NRD.gov provides Veterans with a central source for identifying Veteran-committed employment opportunities and assists America’s employers in identifying qualified Veterans. A key part of the White House’s ongoing commitment to improve access to employment opportunities for transitioning Service Members and Veterans, it facilitates access to hundreds of thousands of private-sector job openings specifically targeted at Veterans. The Veterans Job Bank returns job opportunities based on search criteria entered by the user. Powered by a Google search, jobs are drawn from various job boards that have posted or specifically tagged jobs for Veterans."

Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites by Amanda Lenhart, Mary Madden, Aaron Smith, Kristen Purcell, Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie. Nov 9, 2011

The Socialbot Network: When Bots Socialize for Fame and Money -
Yazan Boshmaf, Ildar Muslukhov, Konstantin Beznosov, Matei Ripeanu -
University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada

"The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to share a new paper published in First Monday, Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,’ authored by Berkman community members danah boyd, Eszter Hargittai, Jason Schultz, and John Palfrey.

Half of adult cell phone owners have apps on their phones - The percent who download apps nearly doubles in two years, but just 46% of downloaders have paid for an app...The growth in apps downloading is a reflection of the broader trend toward mobile devices the Pew Internet Project has identified over the past decade. Americans have embraced mobile connectivity in the form of laptops, smartphones, tablet computers, and e-readers, while desktop computers have become less popular over time." Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research, Pew Internet Project, November 2, 2011

Judicial Ethics and Social Networking Sites: "Michael Crowell
UNC School of Government, September 2011 (Revised)

Information Security Continuous Monitoring (ISCM) for Information Systems and Organizations (NIST Special Publication [SP] 800-137)

DOE IG Evaluation Report - The Department's Unclassified Cyber Security Program – 2011, DOE/IG-0856 October 2011

All Your Clouds are Be­long to us – Se­cu­ri­ty Ana­ly­sis of Cloud Ma­nage­ment In­ter­faces - Juraj So­mo­rovs­ky, Mario Hei­de­rich, Meiko Jen­sen, Jörg Schwenk, Nils Grusch­ka, Luigi Lo Ia­co­no. In Pro­cee­dings of the ACM Cloud Com­pu­ting Se­cu­ri­ty Work­shop (CCSW), 2011.

"Protesters of all political persuasions are increasingly documenting their protests -- and encounters with the police -- using electronic devices like cameras and cell phones. The following tips apply to protesters in the United States who are concerned about protecting their electronic devices when questioned, detained, or arrested by police. These are general guidelines; individuals with specific concerns should talk to an attorney."

"Social media not only connects consumers with each other, but also with just about every place they go and everything they watch and buy. Nielsen’s new Social Media Report looks at trends and consumption patterns across social media platforms in the U.S. and other major markets, exploring the rising influence of social media on consumer behavior. Highlights of Nielsen’s “State of the Media: The Social Media Report”

• Social networks and blogs continue to dominate Americans’ time online, now accounting for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the Internet
  
• At over 53 billion total minutes during May 2011, Americans spend more time on Facebook than they do on any other website
  
• Tumblr is an emerging player in social media, nearly tripling its audience from a year ago
  
• Nearly 40 percent of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone
  
• Internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social networking through the Mobile Internet
  
• 70 percent of active online adult social networkers shop online, 12 percent more likely than the average adult Internet user
  
• Across a sample of 10 global markets, social networks and blogs are the top online destination in each country, accounting for the majority of time spent online and reaching at least 60 percent of active Internet users."

Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and Connected Devices are Changing U.S. Digital Media Consumption Habits, comScore, October 2011.

News release: "Concerned that the pairing of the new Kindle Fire tablet with its must-use Silk browser means Amazon could track each Web click of Kindle Fire users Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) [October 14, 2011] sent a letter to Amazon’s CEO asking for responses to questions about tablets users’ privacy and security...In May 2011, Reps. Markey and Joe Barton (R-Texas) introduced the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011, bipartisan legislation that amends the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 to extend, enhance and update the provisions relating to the collection, use and disclosure of children’s personal information. The legislation also establishes new protections for the personal information of children and teens."

Tracking the Trackers: Where Everybody Knows Your Username by Jonathan Mayer, posted on October 11, 2011

Six Provocations for Big Data, Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford

Governors Highway Safety Administration, Cell Phone Laws and Texting, October 2011 - "This chart outlines all state cell phone and text messaging laws. Some local jurisdictions may have additional regulations. Enforcement type is shown in parenthesis.

• Handheld Cell Phones: 9 states, D.C. and the Virgin Islands prohibit all drivers from using handheld cell phones while driving. Except for Maryland, all laws are primary enforcement—an officer may cite a driver for using a handheld cell phone without any other traffic offense taking place.
  
• All Cell Phone Use: No state bans all cell phone use (handheld and hands-free) for all drivers, but many prohibit all cell phone use by certain drivers - Novice Drivers: 30 states and D.C. ban all cell phone use by novice drivers. School Bus Drivers: Bus drivers in 19 states and D.C. may not use a cell phone when passengers are present.
  
• Text Messaging: 34 states, D.C. and Guam ban text messaging for all drivers. 31 states, D.C., and Guam have primary enforcement; the others, secondary. Novice Drivers: An additional 7 states prohibit text messaging by novice drivers. School Bus Drivers: 3 states restrict school bus drivers from texting while driving.
  
• Some states such as Maine, N.H. and Utah treat cell phone use and texting as part of a larger distracted driving issue. In Utah, cellphone use is an offense only if a driver is also committing some other moving violation (other than speeding)."

Account Deactivation and Content Removal: Guiding Principles and Practices for Companies and Users, Erica Newland, Caroline Nolan, Cynthia Wong, and Jillian York. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society and. The Center for Democracy & Technology, September 2011

Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums Part 1: Site Reviews - Karen Smith-Yoshimura, Program Officer OCLC Research; Cyndi Shein, Assistant Archivist Getty Research Institute

Federal Reserve Bank of New York - Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution. Request for Proposal (Event-6994)

News release: "What do you think about when choosing a cell phone provider? Their prices? Their coverage area? Whether they have spiffy, high-tech phones? Whether their phones work overseas or in the subway? What about how long they retain information about you and under what circumstances they turn it over to law enforcement? All of the nation's major mobile carriers are retaining their customers' location data for at least a year, according to a chart the Department of Justice (DOJ) developed in 2010 — and that the ACLU of North Carolina received in response to our public records request about local law enforcement's use of cell phone location information. And location info's not all they hang onto. We gave a copy of this document to Wired.com, which has written about it here."

How people learn about their local community: "Contrary to much of the conventional understanding of how people learn about their communities, Americans turn to a wide range of platforms to get local news and information, and where they turn varies considerably depending on the subject matter and their age, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project, produced in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation that asks about local information in a new way. Most Americans, including more tech-savvy adults under age 40, also use a blend of both new and traditional sources to get their information. Overall, the picture revealed by the data is that of a richer and more nuanced ecosystem of community news and information than researchers have previously identified...local TV draws a mass audience largely around a few popular subjects; local newspapers attract a smaller cohort of citizens but for a wider range of civically oriented subjects."

News release: "Representatives Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Co-Chairmen of the House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking the agency to investigate so-called “supercookies”, files that can be installed on computers without a user's knowledge. Supercookies allow websites to collect detailed personal data about users, including websites previously visited. Even when consumers choose to delete regular cookies from their computers, supercookies persist. According to a report last month in The Wall Street Journal (“Latest in Web Tracking: Stealthy ‘Supercookies’, August 18, 2011), it was discovered that companies have been installing supercookies on users’ computers without their knowledge. Even technical experts at the websites in the report stated they had no knowledge that the secret files were being installed."

News release: "Last week, the FCC published its final Open Internet rules in the Federal Register, which means they will formally go into effect later this fall. The publication caps off a two-year process at the Commission to get the rules in place. While the rules won’t change much in terms of day-to-day use of the Internet, it is good news for consumers and innovators that they will at long last be enforceable. The rules essentially preserve the status quo online. They prevent cable, DSL, and fiber carriers from favoring or disfavoring certain sites or applications over others and prevent mobile carriers from blocking websites or competing voice and video applications – leaving consumers to decide which services they might prefer. The only significant change will be that now, if carriers engage in discriminatory routing or network management practices, those whose traffic is affected will have a place to go to demand recourse. The rules themselves reflect a light-touch and flexible approach to preserving the competitive environment that currently exists on the Internet. The rules do not, as some critics declare, amount to “regulating the Internet,” and there is ample evidence that in the absence of rules carriers might discriminate (as a few have done already) against some lawful traffic."

Intelligence Issues for Congress, Richard A. Best Jr., Specialist in National Defense, September 14, 2011

Marine Corp Social Media Principles

Microsoft Becomes First Corporate User of Standard XML-Based Bank Statements

News release: "Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. announced the results of a new report revealing 48 percent of enterprises surveyed have been victims of social engineering, experiencing 25 or more attacks in the past two years, costing businesses anywhere from $25,000 to over $100,000 per security incident. The report, The Risk of Social Engineering on Information Security, shows phishing and social networking tools as the most common sources of socially-engineering threats – encouraging businesses to implement a strong combination of technology and user awareness to minimize the frequency and cost of attacks. Socially-engineered attacks traditionally target people with an implied knowledge or access to sensitive information. Hackers today leverage a variety of techniques and social networking applications to gather personal and professional information about an individual in order to find the weakest link in the organization. According to the global survey of over 850 IT and security professionals, 86 percent of businesses recognize social engineering as a growing concern, with the majority of respondents (51%) citing financial gain as the primary motivation of attacks, followed by competitive advantage and revenge."

"A report released today by the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society highlights the dilemmas companies and users face when enforcement of a website's Terms of Use policy results in deactivation of user accounts or removal of user-generated content. The report recommends principles, strategies, and tools that both companies and users can adopt to lessen the negative effects of account deactivation and content removal. The report, Account Deactivation and Content Removal: Guiding Principles and Practices for Companies and Users, outlines select examples of good company practices. Such practices feature rules and enforcement policies that are sensitive to users' free expression and privacy rights and to the potential risks faced by human rights activists, who are increasingly using social media tools in their work."

News release: "Want to know more about Internet safety and security? Visit the new and improved OnGuardOnline.gov for practical tips and resources on how to be safe, secure and responsible online. Created through a partnership of 16 federal agencies led by the Federal Trade Commission, it’s a great source of free information for your home, school, community group, or workplace. OnGuardOnline’s new features include a cybersecurity blog and information updates via e-mail. Also, the FTC has partnered with the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies in the Stop.Think.Connect Campaign™ to raise awareness of the need for stronger cybersecurity with new approaches to help increase online safety and security. The new OnGuardOnline blog offers cybersecurity news from around the government, how-to articles and videos, and insights from federal officials. Check back regularly for updates, or sign up to get an e-mail when a new post is up. You can copy information from the site, adapt it, post it, or link to it, and you can share your thoughts on the blog. Updating your website or blog? Link to OnGuardOnline. Editing a newsletter? Use our articles. Need hand-outs for a talk you’re giving? Print publications from the website, or order free materials from the FTC."

CRS - Illegal Internet Streaming of Copyrighted Content: Legislation in the 112th Congress, Brian T. Yeh, Legislative Attorney, August 29, 2011

Americans and Text Messaging by Aaron Smith, September 19, 2011

CRS: Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options, and Policy Considerations, Bruce R. Lindsay, Analyst in American National Goverment, September 6, 2011

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission is seeking public comment on proposed amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, which gives parents control over what personal information websites may collect from children under 13. The FTC proposes these amendments to ensure that the Rule continues to protect children’s privacy, as mandated by Congress, as online technologies evolve. The Commission proposes modifications to the Rule in five areas: definitions, including the definitions of “personal information” and “collection,” parental notice, parental consent mechanisms, confidentiality and security of children’s personal information, and the role of self-regulatory “safe harbor” programs."

Alex Campbell: "Incoming students at the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science this year are getting a new kind of welcome-to-campus perk: Free data storage, for keeps. The service, called LifeTime Library, works on students’ personal computers, allowing them to automatically archive files and folders. The data are preserved on the Web, where students can search for files by name or by date saved. Students can continue to use the online storage locker after they graduate, and the plan is for the program to remain free, said Gary Marchionini, the school’s dean. About 60 incoming students out of a total of 160 have signed up for the first year of the program, he said. The idea is to “help students learn to manage their digital lives,” Mr. Marchionini said. Dealing with large amounts of online data is a big part of what students learn at the School of Information and Library Science, and the LifeTime Library can serve as a teaching tool for students to figure out the best ways to organize reams of their own digital information."

Radical change is certainly producing some alarming symptoms: "According to Nielsen BookScan, the publishing industry standard for book sales data, book sales are pretty healthy, with one significant proviso which I'll come to. Ten years ago in 2001, 162m books were sold in Britain. Ten years later – a decade in which the internet bloomed, online gaming exploded, television channels proliferated, digital piracy rampaged and, latterly, recession gloomed – 229m books sold. So, a 42% increase in the number of books sold over the last 10 years...For one thing, people are buying more and more books in Amazonia, and more and more of them are on Amazon's ebook platform the Kindle. In May this year, Amazon announced that, for the first time, it was selling more Kindle versions of books than paperback and hardbacks combined, and (here's the thing that doesn't get quoted so often) sales of print books were still increasing."

"The World Wide Web Foundation is very pleased to announce an exciting new initiative: the World Wide Web Index. We thank Google for a generous grant of US $1 million to the Foundation, which we are using to seed the creation of the Index...What is the Web Index? The Web Index will be the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the Web and its impact on people in a large number of countries. It will be a composite index, incorporating political, economic, social, and developmental indicators, as well as indicators of Web connectivity and infrastructure."

"The Tracking Protection Working Group is chartered to improve user privacy and user control by defining mechanisms for expressing user preferences around Web tracking and for blocking or allowing Web tracking elements. The group seeks to standardize the technology and meaning of Do Not Track, and of Tracking Selection Lists." See in Input Documents as follows

• The FTC staff report that calls on industry to create a Do Not Track mechanism
  
• FTC guidelines for behavioral targeting
  
• IAB Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising
  
• Neelie Kroes, EU Commission, Online privacy - reinforcing trust and confidence
  
• Do Not Track Cookbook: approaches to data collection in DNT-friendly ways
  
• IETF proposal for Do Not Track
  
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) discussion of Do Not Track
  
• The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) DNT proposal
  
• Mozilla Do Not Track Field Guide
  
• Microsoft Web Tracking Protection, member submission to W3C

Via Rich McCue: UVic Law Student Technology Survey 2011 - "In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic Law students over the past nine years, we decided for the second year in a row to ask some extra questions about the mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with. This survey was completed by 139 incoming and transferring law students, which is a strong 90% plus response rate. Executive Summary:

• 84% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up dramatically from 50% last year), with 42% of the total being iPhones, 13% Android and 27% Blackberry’s.
  
• 19% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers.
  
• 98% of students own laptops, and 16% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
  
• 50% of student laptops are Mac’s, up from 44% last year.
  
• The average laptop price stayed basically the same as last year at $1,186, which is down from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
  
• The students’ average typing speed was was 60 wpm.
  
• 72% of all students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
  
• 55% of students use Gmail as their primary email account (up from 49% last year), 9% use UVic email and 22% Hotmail.
  
• 60% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing (down from 67%). 30% favor Google Docs (up from 27%) and 2% OpenOffice.
  
• 58% of students report backing up their primary computer on a regular basis. 60% of those backing up do so to an external hard drive and 25% to a cloud storage solution.
  
• 97% of students use Facebook (up from 91%) and 92% (up from 80%) would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar

28% of American adults use mobile and social location-based services: "55% of smartphone owners use their phones to get location-based directions or recommendations, while geosocial services and location-tagging features are less popular," by Kathryn Zickuhr, Research Specialist and Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, 9/6/2011

Internet Access - Households and Individuals, 2011. Key Points:

• 45 per cent of Internet users used a mobile phone to connect to the Internet
  
• 6 million people accessed the Internet over their mobile phone for the first time in the previous 12 months
  
• The use of wireless hotspots almost doubled in the last 12 months to 4.9 million users
  
• 21 per cent of Internet users did not believe their skills were sufficient to protect their personal data
  
• 77 per cent of households had Internet access
  
• Get all the tables for this publication in the data section of this publication.

Weak typing - the lost art of the keyboard. by Janet Swift

"The Global Internet Speedup is the name for our collaborative effort to make the Internet faster through cooperation between recursive DNS services and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). This collaboration is being done through an open IETF proposed standard called "edns-client-subnet" which helps better direct content to users thereby decreasing latency, decreasing congestion, increasing transfer speeds and helping the Internet to scale faster and further. Find out about how it works or who is involved."

Triposo - "We build free, interactive travel guides for mobile devices. To make our guides we use the content that is freely available from seven different sources, including Wikitravel, Wikipedia, World66 and Openstreetmap. Our mission is to make that content relevant for you. So we mix and mash and annotate - and we distill great, relevant travel guides out of it. We currently have over fifty different free travel guides for Android covering all major destinations. We also have a world guide: one app in which you can download all the travel guides you need. We have thirty travel guides for iPhone and the same number of travel guides optimized for iPad."

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media: "Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways. An extension to the popular open-source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways. Zotero integrates tightly with online resources; it can sense when users are viewing a book, article, or other object on the web, and—on many major research and library sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for the item in the correct fields. Since it lives in the web browser, it can effortlessly transmit information to, and receive information from, other web services and applications; since it runs on one’s personal computer, it can also communicate with software running there (such as Microsoft Word). And it can be used offline as well (e.g., on a plane, in an archive without WiFi)."

65% of online adults use social networking sites - Women maintain their foothold on SNS use and older Americans are still coming aboard. Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist, Kathryn Zickuhr, Research Specialist, 8/26/2011

The PII Problem: Privacy and a New Concept of Personally Identifiable Information (July 8, 2011). New York University Law Review, Vol. 86, 2011. Paul M. Schwartz and Daniel J. Solove.

Inside Higher Ed: "The ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) project -- a series of studies conducted at Illinois Wesleyan, DePaul University, and Northeastern Illinois University, and the University of Illinois’s Chicago and Springfield campuses -- was a meta-exercise for the librarians in practicing the sort of deep research they champion. Instead of relying on surveys, the libraries enlisted two anthropologists, along with their own staff members, to collect data using open-ended interviews and direct observation, among other methods. The goal was to generate data that, rather than being statistically significant yet shallow, would provide deep, subjective accounts of what students, librarians and professors think of the library and each other at those five institutions. The resulting papers are scheduled to be published by the American Library Association this fall, under the title: “Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know.” One thing the librarians now know is that their students' research habits are worse than they thought."

"August 25, 2011 - Facebook is rolling out a series of changes to its privacy controls. We reviewed the changes in detail on Tuesday; now here’s how you can take advantage of these changes.

"Symantec Corp. announced the results of the August 2011 Symantec Intelligence Report, now combining the best research and analysis from the Symantec.cloud MessageLabs Intelligence Report and the Symantec State of Spam & Phishing Report. This month’s analysis reveals that once more spammers are seeking to benefit from fluctuations in the turbulent financial markets, most notably by sending large volumes of spam relating to certain “pink sheets” stocks in an attempt to “pump” the value of these stocks before “dumping” them at a profit. In a pump-and-dump stock scam, spammers promote certain stocks in order to inflate the price as much as possible so that they may then be sold before their valuation crashes back to reality. The spam for these scams tries to convince the prospective mark that the penny stock is actually worth more than its valuation, or that it will soon skyrocket. Most of these claims are either misleading or false. A successful pump-and-dump spam campaign will artificially drive up the price of the stock to a point where the scammers decide to sell their shares. This usually coincides with them ending the spam campaign, which in turn reduces the interest in the stock, helping to drive its valuation back to the original low price."

Accessibility vs. access: How the rhetoric of “rare” is changing in the age of information abundance by Maria Popova.

International Bloggers and Internet Control, Hal Roberts, Ethan Zuckerman, Jillian York, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey. Berkman Center for Internet & Society, August 2011

Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, Improvements in Patch and Configuration Management Controls Can Better Protect TSA’s Wireless Network and Devices (Redacted) OIG-11-99 July 2011

News release: "The National Music Publishers Association announced it has reached a resolution with YouTube in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed in 2007. As a result of this resolution, music publishers will have the opportunity to enter into a License Agreement with YouTube and receive royalties from YouTube for musical works in videos posted on the site. HFA's licensing and rights administration expertise was instrumental in making this opportunity possible. HFA will administer the license agreements which will be available to all music publishers regardless of affiliation."

Update, November 30, 2011: Seeking Synchronicity Webinar Recording Now Available
OCLC - "A new membership report from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Seeking Synchronicity distills more than five years of virtual reference (VR) research into a readable summary that features memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multi-phase research project that included focus group interviews, surveys, transcript analysis, and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users, and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems. The report asserts that the "R" in "VR" needs to emphasize virtual "Relationships" as well as "Reference". Among the topics addressed are:

• The exaggerated death of ready reference
  
• The importance of query clarification in VR
  
• Ways to boost accuracy and build better interpersonal relationships in VR
  
• What can be learned from VR transcripts
  
• How convenience is the "hook" that draws users into VR services
  
• Generational differences in how people perceive reference interactions and determine success
  
• The need for more and better marketing"

"The government apps and mobile sites allow you to access official information on various topics from the palm of your hand. Learn more about apps."

Trends in Circumventing Web-Malware Detection. Moheeb Abu Rajab, Lucas Ballard, Nav Jagpal, Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Daisuke Nojiri, Niels Provos, Ludwig Schmidt. Google Technical Report rajab-2011a, July 2011

A Guide to Facebook Security For Young Adults, Parents, and Educators, Linda McCarthy, Keith Watson, and Denise Weldon-Siviy, August 2011. "This online guide explains how you can:

• Protect your Facebook account
  
• Avoid the scammers
  
• Use advanced security settings
  
• Recover a hacked Facebook account
  
• Stop imposters

Federal Computer Week: "Although Google+ has attracted more than 10 million users since its recent debut, many people in government are wondering what it is and how it ought to be used. Thanks to the Navy, now there is an overview of the new site. The Navy recently published a 13-page online guide titled What’s the deal with Google+? on the SlideShare website, providing a basic introduction to the new social networking site and how it could be used by individuals. The Navy’s presentation had been viewed by 606 people as of Aug. 16."

Revealed: Operation Shady RAT by Dmitri Alperovitch, Vice President, Threat Research, McAfee: "An investigation of targeted intrusions into more than 70 global companies, governments, and non-profit organizations during the last five years."

Americans and their cell phones - Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, 8/15/2011. "Mobile phones have become a near-ubiquitous tool for information-seeking and communicating: 83% of American adults own some kind of cell phone. These devices have an impact on many aspects of their owners’ daily lives. In a telephone survey conducted from April 26 to May 22, 2011 among a nationally representative sample of Americans, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that, during the 30 days preceding the interview:

• Cell phones are useful for quick information retrieval (so much so that their absence can cause problems) – Half of all adult cell owners (51%) had used their phone at least once to get information they needed right away. One quarter (27%) said that they experienced a situation in the previous month in which they had trouble doing something because they did not have their phone at hand.
  
• Cell phones are an important tool in emergency situations – 40% of cell owners said they found themselves in an emergency situation in which having their phone with them helped.
  
• Cell phones can help stave off boredom – 42% of cell owners used their phone for entertainment when they were bored."

TeleNav survey examines Americans' attachment to mobile phones; finds iPhone users are least willing to let go of their devices

Search and email still top the list of most popular online activities - Two activities nearly universal among adult internet users, by Kristen Purcell

Haystack Logo...and how well hidden is YOUR needle?

"Data (in)security is rapidly gaining consumer attention in major media. In 2011 major breaches at Sony, Epsilon and others have highlighted the risk consumers face from their data being compromised. Major corporations are now recognizing the urgency to implement strong and innovative security measures to ensure the security of their customers’ data. At the same time, both Apple and Google have seen stunning growth in the past few years and now dominate the smartphone market. Companies and app developers have leveraged these platforms to provide new mobile services, often bringing them to market very quickly. But what steps have the smartphone OS providers and app developers taken to secure the data on their customers’ smartphones? At viaForensics we believe in proactive forensics – applying the power of forensic methods proactively to improve digital security. With appWatchdog we utilize forensic techniques to investigate consumer mobile apps and understand what user data is stored and could be at risk. This white paper summarizes our findings for the first 100 tests, from November 2010 through June 2011."

Measuring Broadband America - A Report on Consumer Wireline Broadband Performance in the U.S., FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau

Critical Infrastructures: Background, Policy, and Implementation -
John D. Moteff, Specialist in Science and Technology Policy, July 11, 2011: "This report discusses in more detail the evolution of a national critical infrastructure policy and the institutional structures established to implement it. The report highlights five issues of Congressional concern: identifying critical assets; assessing vulnerabilities and risks; allocating resources; information sharing; and regulation."

Dr. Kari Kraus, University of Maryland, via NYT: "..if we’re going to save even a fraction of the trillions of bits of data churned out every year, we can’t think of digital preservation in the same way we do paper preservation. We have to stop thinking about how to save data only after it’s no longer needed, as when an author donates her papers to an archive. Instead, we must look for ways to continuously maintain and improve it. In other words, we must stop preserving digital material and start curating it."

Flash Cookies and Privacy II: Now with HTML5 and ETag Respawning (July 29, 2011), Ayenson, Mika, Wambach, Dietrich James, Soltani, Ashkan, Good, Nathan and Hoofnagle, Chris Jay, Available at SSRN

"The Berkman Center is pleased to release Online Security in the Middle East and North Africa: A Survey of Perceptions, Knowledge, and Practice. This report describes the results of a survey of 98 bloggers in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) carried out in May 2011 in order to study bloggers’ perceptions of online risk and the actions they take to address digital communications security, including both Internet and cell phone use. Digital communication has become a more perilous activity, particularly for activists, political dissidents, and independent media. The recent surge in digital activism that has helped to shape the Arab spring has been met with stiff resistance by governments in the region intent on reducing the impact of digital organizing and independent media. No longer content with Internet filtering, many governments in the Middle East and around the world are using a variety of technological and offline strategies to go after online media and digital activists. The survey was implemented in the wake of the Arab spring and documents a proliferation of online security problems among the respondents. In the survey, we address the respondents’ perceptions of online risk, their knowledge of digital security practices, and their reported online security practices. The survey results indicate that there is much room for improving online security practices, even among this sample of respondents who are likely to have relatively high technical knowledge and experience."

Poynter: "Writing in the newsletter of the International News Marketing Association, Dow Jones senior vice president of circulation Lynne Brennen proposes five attributes to measure “a consumer’s willingness to pay.” She also assigned a percentage weighting to each. Keep in mind this is a measure not of what people would like to have as they consume news, but what they will actually pay for. What advertisers want is outside the scope of this particular exercise. Brennen’s big five and the weighting she assigned are:

• Broad reliability of content — 30 percent
  
• Vertical nature of content — 30 percent
  
• Longevity of content — 30 percent
  
• Immediacy of information — 8 percent
  
• Social “trustworthiness” — 2 percent

“The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?” - Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. DATE: September 21, 2011

News release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in collaboration with the Tor Project, has launched an official 1.0 version of HTTPS Everywhere, a tool for the Firefox web browser that helps secure web browsing by encrypting connections to more than 1,000 websites. HTTPS Everywhere was first released as a beta test version in June of 2010. Today's 1.0 version includes support for hundreds of additional websites, using carefully crafted rules to switch from HTTP to HTTPS. HTTPS protects against numerous Internet security and privacy problems, including the search hijacking on U.S. networks that was revealed by an article published today in New Scientist magazine. The article, entitled US internet providers hijacking users' search queries, documents how a company called Paxfire has been intercepting and altering search traffic on a number of ISPs' networks. HTTPS can prevent such attacks."

Forum Guide to Ensuring Equal Access to Education Websites - Introduction to Electronic Information Accessibility Standards, July 2011

EPIC: "The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted to approve a bill that will require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to retain data on every customer to allow the government to identify and track their online activity for one year. EPIC Director Marc Rotenberg testified against the bill at the subcommittee hearing, and his arguments were cited by committee members including Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). After two days of deliberation, the bill was passed with an amendment to require ISPs to retain even more information: not only internet protocol addresses, but also customer names, addresses, phone records, type and length of service, and credit card numbers. This retention is a radical contradiction of the core American value that we are innocent until proven guilty, said Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)."

Faces of Facebook: Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality - FAQ only - See also slides here. Alessandro Acquisti (Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University), Ralph Gross (Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University) Fred Stutzman (Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University), August 2011

"Marketers are spying on Internet users -- observing and remembering people's clicks, and building and selling detailed dossiers of their activities and interests. The Wall Street Journal's What They Know series documents the new, cutting-edge uses of this Internet-tracking technology. The Journal analyzed the tracking files installed on people's computers by the 50 most popular U.S. websites, plus WSJ.com. The Journal also built an "exposure index" -- to determine the degree to which each site exposes visitors to monitoring -- by studying the tracking technologies they install and the privacy policies that guide their use."

"The WorldCat Identities Network gives users the opportunity to visually explore the interconnectivity and relationships between WorldCat Identities. The WorldCat Identities Network uses the WorldCat Identities Web Service and the WorldCat Search API to create an interactive Related Identity Network Map for each Identity in the WorldCat Identities database. The Identity Maps can be used to explore the interconnectivity between WorldCat Identities. WorldCat Identities creates a summary page for every name in WorldCat, including people, things (e.g., the Titanic), fictitious characters (e.g., Harry Potter), and corporations (e.g., IBM). This application was developed primarily by JD Shipengrover, Senior Web & User Interface Designer, and Senior Software Engineer Jeremy Browning. The prototype is available from the WorldCat Identities Network activity page."

Video, Web 2.0 - 71% of online adults now use video-sharing sites by Kathleen Moore, July 26, 2011

NARA Bulletin 2011-04, July 18, 2011. TO: Heads of Federal Agencies; SUBJECT: Guidance on Managing Mixed-Media Files; EXPIRATION DATE: July 31, 2014

CNET: "Google's Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns, CNET has confirmed. The cars were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points. But Google also recorded the street addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly available through Google.com until a few weeks ago."

News release: "A ground-breaking membership report from OCLC Research suggests that by transforming virtual reference (VR) service encounters into relationship-building opportunities, librarians can better leverage the positive feelings people have for libraries. This is critically important in a crowded online space where the biggest players often don’t have the unique experience and specific strengths offered by librarians. The report — Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference — demonstrates that today’s students, scholars and citizens are not just looking to libraries for answers to specific questions—they want partners and guides in a lifelong information-seeking journey. Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference, from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and additionally funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), distills more than five years of VR research into a readable summary featuring memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multiphase research project that included focus group interviews, online surveys, transcript analysis and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems. The report asserts that the “R” in “VR” needs to emphasize virtual “Relationships” as well as “Reference.”

"While the Internet can be a safe and convenient place to do business, scammers are out there in "cyber world" targeting unsuspecting consumers. The Looks Too Good To Be True.com website was built to educate you, the consumer, and help prevent you from becoming a victim of an Internet fraud scheme. The website was developed and is maintained by a joint federal law enforcement and industry task force. Funding for the site has been provided by the United States Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Key partners include the National White Collar Crime Center, Monster.com, Target and members of the Merchants Risk Council."

News release: "The social media market is primed for a new player that allows users to connect with friends, according to the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report, produced in partnership with customer experience analytics firm ForeSee Results. Despite a small improvement this year, Facebook (+3% to 66) is the lowest-scoring site, not only in the social media category, but of all measured companies in this report. The survey was conducted last month, before the widespread introduction of Facebook’s biggest competitor, Google+, but Facebook’s low score indicates that Google+ could easily pounce and gain market share if they can provide a superior customer experience."

Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips - Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745, Published Online 14 July 2011. See also Google's Effects on Memory, PBS NewsHour via YouTube.

College students and technology by Aaron Smith, Lee Rainie, Kathryn Zickuhr - July 19, 2011

"The .gov reform effort is part of President Obama's Campaign to Cut Waste, identifying unnecessary websites that can be consolidated into other websites to reduce costs and improve the quality of service to the American public. The President signed Executive Order 13571, "Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service," April 27, 2011, which requires federal agencies to take specific steps to strengthen customer service, including how they deliver services and information on federal ".gov" websites."

Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips. Betsy Sparrow1, Jenny Liu, Daniel M. Wegner. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1207745

Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace, July 2011

35% of American adults own a smartphone - One quarter of smartphone owners use their phone for most of their online browsing. Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, 7/11/2011. "Several groups have higher than average levels of smartphone adoption, including:

• The financially well-off and well-educated – 59% of adults living in a household earning income of $75,000 or more are smartphone owners; 48% of those with a college degree own smartphones.
  
• Those under the age of 45 – 58% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 now own a smartphone as do 49% of those ages 18-24 and 44% of those ages 35-44. Even among those with a household income of $30,000 or less, smartphone ownership rates for those ages 18-29 are equal to the national average.
  
• African-Americans and Latinos – 44% of blacks and Latinos are smartphone users.

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal court in Colorado today to block the government's attempt to force a woman to enter a password into an encrypted laptop, arguing in an amicus brief that it would violate her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. A defendant in this case, Ramona Fricosu, is accused of fraudulent real estate transactions. During the investigation, the government seized an encrypted laptop from the home she shares with her family, and then asked the court to compel Fricosu to type the password into the computer or turn over a decrypted version of her data. But EFF told the court today that the demand is contrary to the Constitution, forcing Fricosu to become a witness against herself. "Decrypting the data on the laptop can be, in and of itself, a testimonial act -- revealing control over a computer and the files on it," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Ordering the defendant to enter an encryption password puts her in the situation the Fifth Amendment was designed to prevent: having to choose between incriminating herself, lying under oath, or risking contempt of court."

Jamie S. Gorelick and Michael Traynor, Co-Chairs - ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 - Re: For Comment: Initial Draft Proposals on Lawyers' Use of Technology and Client Development. Date: June 29, 2011

Benjamin Rossi - analyst at Basex: "For students, doing research is the bread and butter of their academic life. Conducting research doesn’t just mean searching for information effectively; it means being able to judge the reliability of sources, place information within various contexts, and synthesize different information sources while developing one’s thesis. Encompassing a wide variety of competencies, research is one of the most important skills that students learn in preparation for participation in the knowledge economy. Increasingly, however, students find that the overwhelming abundance of easily accessible but undifferentiated information on the Web hinders their ability to do the kind of deep, exploratory research that broadens their education and hones critical thinking."

Federal Register Volume 76, Number 125 (Wednesday, June 29, 2011)]

Follow up to previous postings on cell phones and radiation levels, a new study - Mobile Phones, Brain Tumours and the Interphone Study: Where Are We Now?

OECD draft Communiqué on Principles for Internet Policy-Making, June 29, 2011

"New technology can bring tremendous benefits to consumers, but it also can present new challenges. Mobile apps offered on cell phones and other portable devices such as tablets and music players can perform a range of consumer services such as locating the nearest retail stores, managing shopping lists, tracking family budgets, and allowing consumers to read news articles, play interactive games, and connect with family and friends. The FTC is making a concerted effort to ensure that consumers have the information they need about mobile apps, and is offering new information on OnGuardOnline, the federal government’s website to help you be safe, secure and responsible on the Internet."

E-reader Ownership Doubles in Six Months - Adoption rate of e-readers surges ahead of tablet computers, Kristen Purcell, Associate Director for Research, Pew Internet Project, June 27, 2011

"In the summer of 2010, Peter Mosinskis from California State University Channel Islands assembled a team of approximately fifteen volunteers from seven different CSU campuses and one from the UC system to evaluate the accessibility of Google Apps. The team also recruited student volunteers and screen reader users to assist with the testing. Automated, manual, and screen reader testing began the first week of January 2011 and was completed February 4th. The report has been completed and posted here for your review. The CSU Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) Staff, ATI Leadership Council, and Google have reviewed the Google Apps Accessibility Evaluation report. We discovered a number of accessibility issues during our testing. These issues are outlined in the report as well as "workarounds" that can be used to improve the user experience for persons with disabilities. When campuses choose to use Google Apps, they are required to provide an equally effective service for people with disabilities and it is critical for campuses to ensure that the "workarounds" meet the educational needs of the student and/or faculty. The March 15, 2011 USA TODAY online news article Complaint: Google programs hard for blind students illustrates possible legal problems that may result from adopting the Google Apps for Education suite."

Follow up to posting, WSJ: FTC Plans to Serve Google With Subpoenas, from the Official Google Blog: "At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first. We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible—and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away. Still, we recognize that our success has led to greater scrutiny. Yesterday, we received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it has begun a review of our business. We respect the FTC’s process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services. It’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are, but we’re clear about where we stand...To learn more about our business, please visit google.com/press/competition."

News release: "ICANN’s Board of Directors has approved a plan to usher in one of the biggest changes ever to the Internet’s Domain Name System. During a special meeting, the Board approved a plan to allow an increase in the number of Internet address endings - called generic top-level domains (gTLDs) - from the current 22, which includes such familiar domains as .com, .org and .net. “ICANN has opened the Internet’s naming system to unleash the global human imagination. Today’s decision respects the rights of groups to create new Top Level Domains in any language or script. We hope this allows the domain name system to better serve all of mankind,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN. New gTLDs will change the way people find information on the Internet and how businesses plan and structure their online presence. Virtually every organization with an online presence could be affected in some way. Internet address names will be able to end with almost any word in any language, offering organizations around the world the opportunity to market their brand, products, community or cause in new and innovative ways."

Hunting For A Job? Try the Internet: Acknowledging the economy in the past several years has made the job search process even more challenging, Rhonda Keaton and Barbara Fullerton provide strategic suggestions and a guide to a wide range of sources to support and leverage a multi-pronged search effort in response to the competitive job arena.

News release: "The mobile Data Tsunami initially described here is still growing at an astounding pace. According to Nielsen’s monthly analysis of cellphone bills for 65,000+ lines, smartphone owners – especially those with iPhones and Android devices — are consuming more data than ever before on a per-user basis. This has huge implications for carriers since the proportion of smartphone owners is also increasing dramatically. (Currently, 37% of all mobile subscribers in the United States have smartphones.) In just the last 12 months, the amount of data the average smartphone user consumes per month has grown by 89 percent from 230 Megabytes (MB) in Q1 2010 to 435 MB in Q1 2011. A look at the distribution of data consumption is even more shocking: data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users (90th percentile) is up 109 percent while the top 1 percent (99th percentile) has grown their usage by an astonishing 155 percent from 1.8GB in Q1 2010 to over 4.6GB in Q1 2011.

News release: "The mobile Data Tsunami initially described here is still growing at an astounding pace. According to Nielsen’s monthly analysis of cellphone bills for 65,000+ lines, smartphone owners – especially those with iPhones and Android devices — are consuming more data than ever before on a per-user basis. This has huge implications for carriers since the proportion of smartphone owners is also increasing dramatically. (Currently, 37% of all mobile subscribers in the United States have smartphones.) In just the last 12 months, the amount of data the average smartphone user consumes per month has grown by 89 percent from 230 Megabytes (MB) in Q1 2010 to 435 MB in Q1 2011. A look at the distribution of data consumption is even more shocking: data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users (90th percentile) is up 109 percent while the top 1 percent (99th percentile) has grown their usage by an astonishing 155 percent from 1.8GB in Q1 2010 to over 4.6GB in Q1 2011.

The FTC provides antitrust approval [link to notice here] - Microsoft news release: Microsoft Corp. and Skype Global announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Skype, the leading Internet communications company, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype. The acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise users and generating significant new business and revenue opportunities. The combination will extend Skype’s world-class brand and the reach of its networked platform, while enhancing Microsoft’s existing portfolio of real-time communications products and services. With 170 million connected users and over 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations in 2010, Skype has been a pioneer in creating rich, meaningful connections among friends, families and business colleagues globally."

Social networking sites and our lives How people’s trust, personal relationships, and civic and political involvement are connected to their use of social networking sites and other technologies, June 16, 2011

"In addition to the content of web pages, it's important to record how this digitized content is constructed and served. The HTTP Archive provides this record. It is a permanent repository of web performance information such as size of pages, failed requests, and technologies utilized. This performance information allows us to see trends in how the Web is built and provides a common data set from which to conduct web performance research."

To Move or Not To Move: The Economics of Cloud Computing - Byung Chul, Tak Bhuvan Urgaonkar, Anand Sivasubramaniam, Computer Systems Laboratory Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

The Information Needs of Communities - The changing media landscape in a broadband age, Steven Waldman and the Working Group on Information Needs of Communities, June 2011

13% of online adults use Twitter Half of Twitter users access the service “on the go” via mobile phone, Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, 6/1/2011

Announcement by Eva Galperin: "Back in December of 2010, Facebook debuted its tag suggestion feature, which works by using facial recognition technology to examine photos in which you’ve already been tagged, and then creating what Facebook calls your “photo summary” or “photo comparison information,” or what we’ll call your “facial fingerprint.” Using this information, FB suggests your name to your friends when they upload a photo of you, and invites them to tag you in that photo. Over the last few months, Facebook has been slowly rolling this feature out to all of its users, which caught the attention of security firm Sophos, The New York Times, and the European Union, which has launched a probe to investigate the new feature."

News release: "The U.S. Department of Commerce today released a report that proposes voluntary codes of conduct to strengthen the cybersecurity of companies that increasingly rely on the Internet to do business, but are not part of the critical infrastructure sector. The report, Cybersecurity, Innovation and the Internet Economy, focuses on the “Internet and Information Innovation Sector” (I3S) – these are businesses that range from small and medium enterprises and bricks-and-mortar firms with online services, to social networking sites and Internet-only business, to cloud computing firms that are increasingly subject to cyber attacks."

EPIC: "The White House modified its privacy policy for WhiteHouse.gov on June 3, 2011. The new policy is more than twice as long as the old policy. The new policy states the White House web site now uses persistent Google Analytics cookies that track users for up to two years. Previously the site employed only single-session cookies, which were automatically deleted when users closed their browsers. The site does not provide a means for visitors to opt out of receiving cookies. The present policy reflects changes the administration made last year to allow for use of tracking cookies by federal websites. For more information, see EPIC: White House Adopts Weird Opt-Out Privacy Policy for Public Access to Government Web Sites."

HM Treasury Review of the Money Laundering Regulations 2007: the Government response, June 2011

Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, Timothy J. Dickey, and Marie L. Radford. 2011. "'If It is Too Inconvenient, I'm Not Going After It.:' Convenience as a Critical Factor in Information-seeking Behaviors." Library and Information Science Research, 33: 179-190. doi:10.1016/j.lisr.2010.12.002 Pre-print.

News release: "AVG Technologies, Inc. announced it will make its leading Family Safety software available for free in exchange for a 99 cent donation to the American Red Cross family relief efforts in Joplin, Mo. The move comes in response to research the company conducted and has released over the course of the year on early childhood technology usage trends, “Digital Diaries" and is complemented with the release of a first-of-its-kind e-book and mobile application for teaching very young children the basics of online safety, Little Bird’s Internet Security Adventure.” AVG CEO JR Smith is making appearances across the country today urging parents to consider introducing their child to Little Bird to help them learn about online safety....Roughly half of today’s children (ages 6-9) are regularly talking to their friends online and using social networks, yet 58 percent of their parents admit they are not well-informed about their children’s online social networks. The “Digital Playground,” the third stage of AVG’s year-long “Digital Diaries” research program, further reveals the increasingly digitally-literate group of 6- to 9-year-olds and their parents in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand to find that:

• More than half (51 percent) of 6- to 9-year-olds use some kind of children’s social network such as Club Penguin or WebKinz.
  
• Roughly one in five use email, and despite being underage, 14 percent are on Facebook, according to their parents.
  
• 47 percent of 6- to 9-year-olds talk to their friends on the Internet.
  
• Almost one in six 6- to 9-year-olds and one in five 8- to 9-year-olds have experienced what their parents consider objectionable or aggressive behavior online.
  
• American children average four hours online each week, slightly more than the worldwide average of 3.5 hours per week.
  
• 58 percent of parents admit they are neither well-informed nor understand their children’s online social networks.
  
• Only 56 percent of parents were certain their family computer has parental controls or safety programs in place."

Press Release and Highlights: "The annual study of the impact of the Internet on Americans conducted by the Center for the Digital Future found that almost half of Internet users age 16 and older -- 48 percent -- are worried about companies checking their actions on the Internet. By comparison, the new question for the Digital Future Study found that only 38 percent of Internet users age 16 and older are concerned about the government checking what they do online."

United Nations General Assembly: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, May 16, 2011

24% of internet users have made phone calls online, Lee Rainie, Director, May 30, 2011

WSJ: "The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force. The Pentagon's first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country's military. In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. "If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks," said a military official. Recent attacks on the Pentagon's own systems—as well as the sabotaging of Iran's nuclear program via the Stuxnet computer worm—have given new urgency to U.S. efforts to develop a more formalized approach to cyber attacks. A key moment occurred in 2008, when at least one U.S. military computer system was penetrated. This weekend Lockheed Martin, a major military contractor, acknowledged that it had been the victim of an infiltration, while playing down its impact."

G8 Summit of Deauville - May 26-27, 2011: "We discussed new issues such as the Internet which are essential to our societies, economies and growth. For citizens, the Internet is a unique information and education tool, and thus helps to promote freedom, democracy and human rights. The Internet facilitates new forms of business and promotes efficiency, competitiveness, and economic growth. Governments, the private sector, users, and other stakeholders all have a role to play in creating an environment in which the Internet can flourish in a balanced manner. In Deauville in 2011, for the first time at Leaders' level, we agreed, in the presence of some leaders of the Internet economy, on a number of key principles, including freedom, respect for privacy and intellectual property, multi-stakeholder governance, cyber-security, and protection from crime, that underpin a strong and flourishing Internet. The "e-G8" event held in Paris on 24 and 25 May was a useful contribution to these debates."

Federal Computer Week: "NASA is the first federal agency to venture into creating an aggregation network on the SlideShare Web platform, officials announced May 16. The NASA Universe network that started May 16 on SlideShare provides links to the agency’s videos, slide presentations and other documents shared from SlideShare channels sponsored by NASA headquarters and its 10 field centers. NASA Universe takes advantage of the new aggregation network technology, which SlideShare recently established and currently customizes for a handful of clients, including NASA, IBM and Dell. The SlideShare networks automatically and continuously aggregate content from many channels. NASA headquarters and the field centers each has its own channel on the site feeding documents into NASA Universe."

Via WSJ: "This year, the government will spend $80 billion on IT, at agencies as varied as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, and on non-classified sections of the US Department of Defense [see Federal Cloud Computing Strategy Published]. As slices of government spending go, this is not huge, amounting to about 2 percent of the federal budget, but not trivial either. As has usually been the case, the government spends more (about $3.8 trillion in 2011) than it brings in via tax revenue (about $2.2 trillion in 2011). With Congress and the President wrestling over extending the debt ceiling, every dollar spent becomes a politically-charged particle of a wider debate over the appropriate role of government in our society...A keystone of Vivek Kundra [Chief Information Officer of the United States], is to push federal agencies to embrace, where possible and appropriate, the cost-savings and efficiency that come from cloud computing. Today he’s released exclusively to AllThingsD a list of 78 different government projects and services that have been identified for a shift to the cloud. Requests for proposals–RFPs, the documents through which government agencies seek bids from the private sector–are either already written or soon to be released." The list is embedded in this article using Scribd.

Via PBS FRONTLINE: "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has become internationally recognized since the publication last year of thousands of secret U.S. documents. But Bradley Manning, the Army private alleged to have provided the documents, remains largely a mystery. Who is Bradley Manning? How did he come into contact with a trove of secrets and, allegedly, with WikiLeaks? And what might have motivated the largest leak of classified information in American history? Investigating those questions for the film WikiSecrets, FRONTLINE sought to understand Manning through extensive interviews with his father, friends and others he confided in during the months before his arrest. FRONTLINE also obtained access to Manning's Facebook account...The following presentation is an edited version of Manning's wall, annotated by FRONTLINE, beginning when he opened the account in July 2007 and concluding in June 2010 [edited and redacted]. It includes only posts authored by Manning (with the exception of the first, from his aunt) -- status updates, articles, pictures and "likes" -- and the responses of his Facebook friends."

News release: "The latest Broadband Progress Report to Congress from the Federal Communications Commission reveals that approximately 26 million Americans, mostly in rural communities located in every region of the country, are denied access to the jobs and economic opportunity made possible by broadband. While the infrastructure of high-speed Internet is unavailable to those Americans, the FCC report also finds that approximately one-third of Americans do not subscribe to broadband, even when it's available. This suggests that barriers to adoption such as cost, low digital literacy, and concerns about privacy remain too high. The Report also notes limited broadband capacity for schools and libraries as a further indicator that broadband is not being reasonably and timely deployed and is not available to all Americans. Without action by the FCC in partnership with the states and the private sector, prospects for broadband service in many of the areas cited in the Report will remain unacceptably low. The Report finds the problem especially acute among low-income Americans, African-Americans, Hispanics, seniors, and residents of Tribal areas. Congress recognized the importance of broadband in Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which directs the FCC to take immediate action to accelerate broadband deployment when it is not "reasonable and timely."

Via LLRX: "Link Rot" and Legal Resources on the Web: A 2011 Analysis by the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group - Sarah Rhodes describes and documents the work of the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group's fourth annual investigation of link rot among the original URLs for online law and policy-related materials archived though the group's efforts. Link rot" is used to describe a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL. The Chesapeake Group focuses primarily on the preservation of Web-published legal materials, which often disappear as Web site content is rearranged or deleted over time. In the four years since the program began, the Chesapeake Group has built a digital archive collection comprising more than 7,400 digital items and 3,200 titles, all of which were originally posted to the Web.

Roadmap for the Digital City - Achieving New York City's Digital Future - The City of New York, May 2011

"White House officials released an international cyberstrategy here today that will help to build a “coalition of nations [with a] mutual interest in securing cyberspace,” Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said...To realize fully the benefits that networked technology promises the world, these systems must function reliably and securely. People must have confidence that data will travel to its destination without disruption. Assuring the free flow of information, the security and privacy of data, and the integrity of the interconnected networks themselves are all essential to American and global economic prosperity, security, and the promotion of universal rights. Almost a third of the world’s population uses the Internet and countless more are touched by it in their daily lives. There are more than four billion digital wireless devices in the world today. Scarcely a halfcentury ago, that number was zero. We live in a rare historical moment with an opportunity to build on cyberspace’s successes and help secure its future for U.S. citizens and the global community. For these technologies to continue to empower individuals, enrich societies, and foster the research, development, and innovation essential to building modern economies, it must retain the openness and interoperability that have characterized its explosive growth. Underlying these are technical principles and effective governance structures that demand our support. At the same time, our networks must be secure and reliable; they must retain the trust of individuals, businesses and governments, and should be resilient to arbitrary or malicious disruption."

"Because we believe that Internet censorship is not only against the basic purpose of the Internet, which is to let people communicate what the want to with the people they want to communicate with, but also fundamentally against the universal right to freedom of opinion and expression [which] includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers (UDHR, Article 19), we offer you here "How to bypass Internet Censorship". This book, How to bypass Internet Censorship. will not only help you find your way in the diversity of tools and techniques that allow you to defeat Internet censorship, but will also tell you more about how censorship works behind the curtains. You will also learn about the risks that may be linked to the use of such tools, and help you evaluate and mitigate them thanks to encryption or anonymization techniques."

Building a Collaborative Digital Collection, a Necessary Evolution in Libraries, Michelle M. Wu, Georgetown University Law Center, Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 11-47, Law Library Journal, Forthcoming

The Social Life of Health Information, 2011 - by Susannah Fox, May 12, 2011

Digital Agenda: more than half EU Internet surfers use foreign language when online, 11 May 2011 — While 90% of Internet surfers in the EU prefer to access websites in their own language, 55% at least occasionally use a language other than their own when online according to a pan-EU Eurobarometer survey released today. However, 44% of European Internet users feel they are missing interesting information because web pages are not in a language that they understand and only 18% buy products online in a foreign language. The results underline the need for investment in online translation tools so that EU Internet users are not excluded from finding information or products online because they lack the language skills. Currently the European Commission manages 30 different research projects working at the interface of language and digital content, supported by €67 million of EU funding and the new projects submitted this year will get an additional €50 million. One of the objectives of the Digital Agenda for Europe is to ensure more accessibility to web content for everyone."

"Search.USA.gov is the U.S. government’s official search engine. It is a comprehensive, searchable index of about 50 million pages from federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal websites.

• Leverages Bing™ index of government websites.
  
• Customizes search using structured algorithms specific to government information.
  
• Optimizes search to retrieve and make sense of relevant information quickly.
  
• Improves navigation by providing customized search suggestions, such as related topics and type-ahead search.
  
• Enhances mobile access through a mobile site and native iPhone application.
  
• Provides access to all Spanish language government websites at Buscador.USA.gov"

The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security. (May 1, 2011). Daniel J. Solove, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security, Chapter 1, Yale University Press, 2011.

Internetnews.com: "Microsoft announced Tuesday that it is buying Internet communications provider Skype for some $8.5 billion in cash -- the largest acquisition in the company's history. The two companies said the deal was the result of an unsolicited offer from Microsoft and, if it passes regulatory hurdles, will make Skype a division of the software giant. The companies hope to finalize the purchase during the current calendar year. Microsoft sees the acquisition as key to its vision of a connected world which will have, the two companies hope, billions of users over time."

What Really Works in Mobile Health, by Susannah Fox, May 4, 2011: "The Mobile Health conference at Stanford University highlights practical, proven solutions to improve the health behavior of everyday people. Susannah Fox discussed the Pew Internet Project's latest research about what people are really doing online -- how they are gathering, sharing, and creating health information and what it means now that a majority of adults have on-the-go internet access."

Better Choices: Better Deals - Consumers Powering Growth. UK Department for Business, Innovations and Skills, April 2011

Larsson, Stefan, The Path Dependence of European Copyright (April 15, 2011). SCRIPT-ed, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1824228

The Deciders: Facebook, Google, and the Future of Privacy and Free Speech, Jeffrey Rosen

Implementing Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 IT Purchasing Requirements: M-1l-20 - Memorandum for Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies from Jacob Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, April 28, 2011

U.S. Public Libraries and the Use of Web Technologies, 2010 - April 2011, Zeth Lietzau, Jamie Helgren. This study was funded through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) by the Colorado State Library, Colorado Department of Education.

"A new economic analysis of federal government broadband stimulus projects awarded by the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) concludes that the program's funding of duplicative broadband networks has resulted in an extremely high cost to reach a small number of unserved households. The study, Evaluating the Cost-Effectiveness of RUS Broadband Subsidies: Three Case Studies, was commissioned by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and prepared by Jeffrey Eisenach and Kevin Caves of Navigant Economics of Washington, D.C., April 13, 2011."

The Mobile Movement Understanding Smartphone Users - Google/IPSOS OTX MediaCT U.S., April 2011

• General Smartphone Usage: Smartphones have become an integral part of users’ daily lives. Consumers use smartphones as an extension of their desktop computers and use it as they multi-task and consume other media.
  
• 81% browse the Internet, 77% search, 68% use an app, and 48% watch videos on their smartphone
  
• 72% use their smartphones while consuming other media, with a third while watching TV
  
• 93% of smartphone owners use their smartphones while at home

The big four phone carriers spill on their location and customer data collection policies: "The recent uproar over location tracking in smartphones has gotten ugly and fingers are bound to be pointed. But in the spirit of transparency, the four major carriers have outlined and detailed their location tracking applications s well as what exactly that data is being used for. The honesty does come as a response to the revelation that iPhones, Android devices, and Windows Phone 7 units are tracking user location."

Rethinking Music: A Briefing Book Compiled and Presented By The Berkman Center for Internet & Society At Harvard University, April 2011.

News release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Access have launched an international campaign for HTTPS Now, rallying consumers around the world to help us make web surfing safer. HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) protects web surfing by encrypting requests from a user's browser and the resulting pages that are displayed, but many websites default to using the unencrypted and vulnerable HTTP protocol. The HTTPS Now campaign takes a three-pronged approach to protecting web surfing, including distributing updated tools for people to use to protect their web browsing, taking an Internet-wide survey of the state of HTTPS deployment, and helping website operators implement HTTPS. As a first step, individuals using the web are encouraged to install HTTPS Everywhere, a security tool for the Firefox browser developed by EFF and the Tor Project. HTTPS Everywhere automatically encrypts a user's browsing, changing it from HTTP to HTTPS whenever possible."

NYT: "As technical problems interrupted computer services provided by Amazon for a second day on Friday, industry analysts said the troubles would prompt many companies to reconsider relying on remote computers beyond their control...Amazon set up a side business five years ago offering computing resources to businesses from its network of sophisticated data centers. Today, the company is the early leader in the fast-growing business of cloud computing. In business, the cloud model is rapidly gaining popularity as a way for companies to outsource computing chores to avoid the costs and headaches of running their own data centers — simply tap in, over the Web, to computer processing and storage without owning the machines or operating software. Amazon has thousands of corporate customers, from Pfizer and Netflix to legions of start-ups, whose businesses often live on Amazon Web Services. Those reporting service troubles included Foursquare, a location-based social networking site; Quora, a question-and-answer service; Reddit, a news-sharing site; and BigDoor, which makes game tools for Web publishers."

5 Myths About the 'Information Age', by Robert Darnton, professor and university librarian at Harvard University. This essay is based on a talk he gave last month at the Council of Independent Colleges' Symposium on the Future of the Humanities, in Washington - snipped: "Confusion about the nature of the so-called information age has led to a state of collective false consciousness. It's no one's fault but everyone's problem, because in trying to get our bearings in cyberspace, we often get things wrong, and the misconceptions spread so rapidly that they go unchallenged. Taken together, they constitute a font of proverbial nonwisdom. Five stand out:

1. The book is dead." Wrong: More books are produced in print each year than in the previous year.
   
2. We have entered the information age." This announcement is usually intoned solemnly, as if information did not exist in other ages. But every age is an age of information, each in its own way and according to the media available at the time.
   
3. "All information is now available online." The absurdity of this claim is obvious to anyone who has ever done research in archives. Only a tiny fraction of archival material has ever been read, much less digitized. Most judicial decisions and legislation, both state and federal, have never appeared on the Web.
   
4. "Libraries are obsolete." Everywhere in the country librarians report that they have never had so many patrons. At Harvard, our reading rooms are full. The 85 branch libraries of the New York Public Library system are crammed with people.
   
5. "The future is digital." True enough, but misleading. In 10, 20, or 50 years, the information environment will be overwhelmingly digital, but the prevalence of electronic communication does not mean that printed material will cease to be important."

"Federal agencies can improve the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of large-scale IT systems by learning from each other, and by leveraging best practices in the private and public sectors. The CIO Council created and will continue to evolve this Best Practices information-sharing platform to realize those benefits. Agencies will be aggregating case studies, lessons learned, and other tools here, helping to grow this platform into a robust resource for all Federal IT professionals. This platform implements point 10 from the 25-Point Implementation Plan To Reform Federal IT Management: “Within six months, the Federal CIO Council will develop a collaboration portal to exchange best practices, case studies, and allow for real-time problem-solving.” Federal agencies have begun developing case studies (below) that demonstrate their use of best practices in managing large-scale IT systems. Please check back for additional case studies, best practices, and other content related to effective IT management."

Information 2.0 and Beyond: Where are we, where are we going? by Kristen Purcell, Mar 29, 2011 at APLIC's 44th Annual Conference in Washington, DC

"The Affordable Care Act (ACA) calls for a number of web-based initiatives, including development of the website healthcare.gov which provides a variety of health information and helps individuals find coverage options. Therefore, understanding the level and quality of Internet access among those groups most likely to benefit from reform, such as the uninsured, those with lower incomes, and members of racial and ethnic minority groups, is an important consideration as health reform is implemented. A new Data Note, using data from The Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University Race and Recession Survey, conducted Jan. 27-Feb. 9, 2011, examines racial and ethnic disparities in the shares who report seeking out health information online, and explores the broader question of how disparities in Internet access might impact the abilities of different groups to access health care information available on the web as part of the ACA."

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, April 11, 2011: "Users increasingly rely on individual pages listed by search engines instead of finding better ways to tackle problems. Although some analysts questioned the finding of search dominance, it's a user behavior that gets stronger every year. Today, many users are so reliant on search that it's undermining their problem-solving abilities. Ironically, the better search gets, the more dangerous it gets as people increasingly assume that whatever the search engine coughs up must be the answer...Still, the rough estimate from our available data is obvious: users change search strategy only 1% of the time; 99% of the time they plod along a single unwavering path. Whether t"e true number is 2% or 0.5%, the big-picture conclusion is the same: users have extraordinarily inadequate research skills when it comes to solving problems on the Web."

[April 8, 2011] "the initial roll out of YouTube Live, which will integrate live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform for the first time. This begins with a new YouTube Live browse page, where you can always find the most compelling live events happening on YouTube and add events to your calendar. Subscribe to your favorite YouTube live-streaming partners to be notified of upcoming live streams on your customized homepage."

Presidential Policy Directive PPD-8, National Preparedness, March 30, 2011 [via FAS]

"The FCC acted today to promote increased consumer access to nationwide mobile broadband service by adopting an Order that requires facilities-based providers of commercial mobile data services to offer data roaming arrangements to other such providers on commercially reasonable terms and conditions, subject to certain limitations. Consumers expect mobile data services that will allow them to remain connected wherever they go; a data roaming rule will help ensure that consumers’ services are not interrupted and that coverage is available on a competitive basis. The widespread availability of data roaming arrangements will allow consumers with mobile data plans to remain connected when they travel outside their own provider’s network coverage areas by using another provider’s network. This promotes connectivity and nationwide access to mobile data services such as email and wireless broadband Internet access. The rule the FCC adopted today promotes investment in and deployment of mobile broadband networks, consistent with the recommendations of the National Broadband Plan. This new investment in broadband will increase competition and benefit consumers; without data roaming guarantees, consumers will be limited in their choices, especially in rural areas."

OPEN Compute Project: We started a project at Facebook a little over a year ago with a pretty big goal: to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost. We decided to honor our hacker roots and challenge convention by custom designing and building our software, servers and data centers from the ground up. The result is a data center full of vanity free servers which is 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to build and run than other state-of-the-art data centers. But we didn't want to keep it all for ourselves. Instead, we decided to collaborate with the entire industry and create the Open Compute Project, to share these technologies as they evolve."

Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Trends for 2010, Volume 16, Published April 2011

Via CDT, "Regardless of Frontiers:" The International Right to Freedom of Expression in the Digital Age: "The purpose of this report is to explore how the internationally recognized right to freedom of expression should apply to the Internet. This report is intended to spark further research, discussion, and action. The Internet offers individuals around the world the potential to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas in unprecedented ways. Like no medium before it, the Internet can empower citizens to communicate instantaneously with others in their own communities and worldwide, at low cost relative to traditional forms of media. The Internetʼs unique attributes create new opportunities to collaborate, exchange ideas, and promote scientific, cultural, and economic progress. Producers of traditional forms of media also can use the Internet to greatly expand their audiences at nominal cost. Like no other technology, the Internet can transcend national borders and eliminate barriers to the free flow of information. These unique features of the Internet, if properly supported, can foster innovation, economic growth, democratic participation, and human development."

"Pediatricians are adding another topic to their list of questions for visits with school-aged and adolescent patients: Are you on Facebook? Recognizing the increasing importance of all types of media in their young patients’ lives, pediatricians often hear from parents who are concerned about their children’s engagement with social media. To help address the many effects—both positive and negative—that social media use has on youth and families, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued a new clinical report, The Impact of Social Media Use on Children, Adolescents and Families in the April issue of Pediatrics (published online March 28). The report offers background on the latest research in this area, and recommendations on how pediatricians, parents and youth can successfully navigate this new mode of communication."

Via EFF: "Your cell phone company knows everywhere you go, twenty-four hours a day, every day. How concrete is this fact for you? It's very concrete for Malte Spitz, a German politician and privacy advocate. He used German privacy law — which, like the law of many European countries, gives individuals a right to see what private companies know about them — to force his cell phone carrier to reveal what it knew about him. The result? 35,831 different facts about his cell phone use over the course of six months. As the German newspaper website Zeit Online reports:

Internet Access Services: Status as of June 30, 2010, Industry Analysis and Technology Division, Wireline Competition Bureau, March 2011: "This report summarizes information about Internet access connections over 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction in service in the United States on June 30, 2010, as collected by FCC Form 477. Form 477 gathers standardized information about subscribership to Internet access services in the fifty states, District of Columbia, and inhabited insular areas (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands). The information is reported by telephone companies, cable system operators, terrestrial wireless service providers, satellite service providers, and other facilities-based providers of advanced telecommunications capability.
Notable developments during the first half of 2010 include:

News release: "Today, the OpenNet Initiative, a partnership between the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs (Munk School) and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, announced the release of a new report titled West Censoring East: The Use of Western Technologies by Middle East Censors, 2010-2011 by Helmi Noman and Jillian C. York. The OpenNet Initiative has documented network filtering by national governments of the Internet in more than forty countries worldwide. National governments use network filtering as one of many methods to control the flow of online content, and utilize a variety of technical means to institute such filtering. The report analyzes the use of three American and Canadian-made tools: Websense, McAfee SmartFilter, and Netsweeper for the purpose of government-level filtering in the Middle East and North Africa. The investigation found that nine countries in the region utilize Western-made tools for the purpose of blocking social and political content, effectively blocking a total of over 20 million Internet users from accessing such websites. The authors analyze as well the increasing opacity of the usage of Western-made tools for filtering at the national level."

Enabling Distributed Security in Cyberspace - Building a Healthy and Resilient Cyber Ecosystem with Automated Collective Action, March 23, 2011

Privacy Impact Assessment for the Use of Unidirectional Social Media Applications Communications and Outreach, March 8, 2011. Kathleen McShea
Director of New Media and Web Communications, Office of Public Affairs, Department of Homeland Security

How to Hack RSS to Reduce Information Overload, By Dawn Foster: "Last week, I held a session at South by Southwest [SXSW] Interactive titled Hacking RSS: Filtering & Processing Obscene Amounts of Information, where I talked about creative ways to use RSS to manage information overload without using any programming skills. There is more information available in the world than any one person could hope to consume (hundreds of exabytes of data), but most of that information isn’t interesting, out of date, inaccurate, or not relevant for you. The key to reducing information overload is to more efficiently find the data you want among the information that you don’t care about. The tools that I talked about in my SXSW session are focused on discarding or de-emphasizing the data you don’t need, while highlighting the data that’s relevant for you."

"The Net, smartphones, and other technologies have added to the way people can engage with so much to local communities and wider communities of interest. Yet, there are many gaps. Lee Rainie. Director of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project explores those gaps at the Computers in Libraries conference. He points to some findings of his Project that highlight areas where libraries and information services add value to the participants in their communities."

Smartphone Security - Survey of U.S. consumers, Ponemon Institute© Research Report, Sponsored by AVG Technologies, Independently conducted by Ponemon Institute LLC, Publication Date: March 2011

Americans under age 40 are as likely to donate to Japan disaster relief through electronic means as traditional means like the phone or postal mail. Kristen Purcell, Michael Dimock, Pew Center for The People & The Press. March 23, 2011

How mobile devices are changing community information environments, by Kristen Purcell, Lee Rainie, Tom Rosenstiel, Amy Mitchell, Mar 14, 2011 - Pew Internet

More than half of all American adults were online political users in 2010: "Fully 73% of adult internet users (representing 54% of all U.S. adults) went online to get news or information about the 2010 midterm elections, or to get involved in the campaign in one way or another. We refer to these individuals as "online political users" and our definition includes anyone who did at least one of the following activities in 2010:

• Get political news online - 58% of online adults looked online for news about politics or the 2010 campaigns, and 32% of online adults got most of their 2010 campaign news from online sources.
  
• Go online to take part in specific political activities, such as watch political videos, share election-related content or "fact check" political claims - 53% of adult internet users did at least one of the eleven online political activities we measured in 2010.
  
• Use Twitter or social networking sites for political purposes - One in five online adults (22%) used Twitter or a social networking site for political purposes in 2010."

News release: "In testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission discussed its efforts to protect consumer privacy through enforcement actions, consumer education, and policy initiatives like the FTC staff’s recent preliminary privacy report. The report proposes a framework to balance consumer privacy with industry innovation by: 1) building privacy protections into everyday business practices (“privacy-by-design”); 2) simplifying privacy choices for consumers; and 3)improving transparency with clearer, shorter privacy notices. The Commission told Congress that industry stakeholders have made important progress in implementing Do Not Track, a mechanism proposed in the staff's preliminary privacy report last December that would allow consumers to choose not to have their Internet browsing tracked by third parties. The testimony noted that two of the major Internet browsers – Microsoft and Mozilla – “have recently announced the development of new choice mechanisms for online behavioral advertising that seek to provide increased transparency, greater consumer control, and improved ease of use.”

Official Google Blog: "Ever been stuck in traffic, only to find out you’d have been better off going a bit out of your way to take a less congested route? If you’re like me, you probably hear the traffic report telling you what you already know: traffic is bad on the road you’re currently on, and you should have taken another. It doesn’t need to be this way, and we want to help. So we’re happy to announce that Google Maps Navigation (Beta) will now automatically route you around traffic. With more than 35 million miles driven by Navigation users every day, this should add up to quite a bit of time saved!"

News release: "The 2011 Sleep in America® poll released today by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) finds pervasive use of communications technology in the hour before bed. It also finds that a significant number of Americans aren't getting the sleep they say they need and are searching for ways to cope. Many Americans report dissatisfaction with their sleep during the week. The poll found that 43% of Americans between the ages of 13 and 64 say they rarely or never get a good night's sleep on weeknights. More than half (60%) say that they experience a sleep problem every night or almost every night..Communications technology use before sleep is pervasive. Americans report very active technology use in the hour before trying to sleep. Almost everyone surveyed, 95%, uses some type of electronics like a television, computer, video game or cell phone at least a few nights a week within the hour before bed. About two-thirds of baby boomers (67%) and generation X'ers (63%) and half of generation Z'ers (50%) and generation Y'ers (49%) watch television every night or almost every night within the hour before going to sleep...Computer or laptop use is also common. Roughly six in ten (61%) say they use their laptops or computers at least a few nights a week within the hour before bed. More than half of generation Z'ers (55%) and slightly less of generation Y'ers (47%) say they surf the Internet every night or almost every night within the hour before sleep."

"YouTube World View is a series of monthly interviews with the world's most foremost leaders where you ask the questions."

Via Microsoft, IE6 Countdown: "10 years ago a browser was born. Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye. This website is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Internet Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web developers..."

Who Tries to Find Objective Information on Health Care? Findings From the 2010 Health Confidence Survey - Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI)

• "USERS OF HEALTH INFORMATION: This analysis looks at who currently uses information on health cost, quality, and outcomes. Data comes from the EBRI/MGA 2010 Health Confidence Survey (HCS), a survey that examines a broad spectrum of health care issues, including Americans’ satisfaction with health care today, their confidence in the future of the health care system and the Medicare program, and their attitudes toward health care reform.
  
• TYPES OF INFORMATION SOUGHT VARIES: Overall, 45 percent of the population reported having tried to find information about the advantages and disadvantages of different treatments, while only 14 percent tried to find information about the number of disciplinary actions taken against a doctor or hospital. About one-quarter tried to find cost information (28 percent for the full costs of different treatments; 24 percent for the costs of different doctors and
  hospitals).
  
• WHO SEARCHES FOR INFORMATION: Women, younger individuals, and individuals with higher levels of education were more likely than others to seek information on cost, quality, and access. Individuals who experience an increase in either premiums or cost sharing are more likely than those who do not to seek information."

Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive's Examination of URL Stability: "This guide for researches by Sarah Rhodes focuses on the highly significant impact of "link rot", which refers to the loss or removal of content at a particular Uniform Resource Locator (URL) over time. When an attempt is made to open a documented link, either different or irrelevant information has replaced the expected content, or else the link is found to be broken, typically expressed by a 404 or "not found" error message. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Web-based materials often disappear as URLs change and web sites are changed, updated, or deleted."

2010 Internet Crime Report, The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), February 2011

News release: "Worldwide PC microprocessor shipment growth in the fourth calendar quarter of 2010 (4Q10) slowed notably, compared to both 3Q10 (-.04% quarter-over-quarter) and to 4Q09 (-.21% year-over-year), according to the latest PC microprocessor study from International Data Corporation (IDC). For the full year 2010, however, worldwide PC microprocessor unit shipments grew 17.1%, while revenue increased 26.7% to $36.3 billion. "The fourth quarter was weak and out of synch with normal seasonal patterns in terms of unit shipments," said Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC. "The first half of the year turned out to be the better half of the year. However, looking back at the whole year 2010, it's clear that the ongoing shift to mobile processors, combined with a shift back towards high-performance mobile processors, as opposed to Atom processors for netbooks, drove a significant rise in overall processor average selling prices." In 2010, the industry average selling price (ASP) for microprocessors rose 8%, approaching the levels last seen in 2008. While a strange year in terms of shipment patterns, 2010 was also a year of recovery. Looking at processor shipments by form factor, during the year 2010 mobile PC processor unit shipments grew 26.2%, x86 server processor unit shipments grew 28.1%, and desktop processor unit shipments grew 6.2%. Mobile PC processors, which represented 50.2% of all PC processors shipped in 2009, represented 54.1% of processors in 2010."

Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation Exposure and Brain Glucose Metabolism - Henry Lai, Lennart Hardell. JAMA. 2011;305(8):828-829.doi:10.1001/jama.2011.201

Wikipedia, past and present, by Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie, Jan 13, 2011

"The National Broadband Map is a searchable and interactive website that allows users to view broadband availability across every neighborhood in the United States. The NBM was created by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), in collaboration with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and in partnership with 50 states, five territories and the District of Columbia. The NBM is a project of NTIA's State Broadband Initiative. The NBM will be updated approximately every six months and was first published on February 17, 2011."

Egyptians Find Their Power in Access to Information: "Make no mistake: Access to information, in a country with limited resources, served as the first catalyst for the Egyptian revolution that began January 25 and resulted 18 days later in the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak after almost 30 years in office. The internet, along with Facebook and Twitter, was the Open University that facilitated learning about democracy for Egypt’s young people...But on the internet, the release of a single document spread like a ferocious fire in seconds, and millions had access to it. In a nation where only one in 700 citizens read the newspapers, young people with some European-language skills were able to translate and share news about the rest of the world with their fellow Egyptians. Those who did not read a foreign language saw the images, which they received through mobile technologies." by Sohair Wastawy - dean of university libraries at Illinois State University in Normal - who the first chief librarian of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, where she served for six years.

"The Federal Cloud Computing Strategy was published February 13, 2011, marking a milestone in the Administration’s 25-Point Implementation Plan To Reform Federal IT Management. The strategy is designed to help the government deliver value to the public by increasing the operational efficiency of Federal IT dollars, and responding faster to taxpayer needs. In releasing the report, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra noted, “The adoption of cloud computing will play a pivotal role in helping the government close the productivity gap between the public and private sectors.” The strategy outlines how the Federal government can accelerate the safe, secure adoption of cloud computing, and provides agencies with a framework for migrating to the cloud. It also examines how agencies can address challenges related to the adoption of cloud computing, such as privacy, procurement, standards, and governance...Moving forward, agencies are required to evaluate their technology sourcing strategies so that cloud computing options are fully considered, consistent with the “Cloud First” policy outlined in the 25-Point Implementation Plan, which states: “The three-part strategy on cloud technology will revolve around using commercial cloud technologies where feasible, launching private government clouds, and utilizing regional clouds with state and local governments where appropriate.”

The Triangle Research Libraries Network’s Intellectual Property Rights Strategy for Digitization of Modern Manuscript Collections and Archival Record Groups, January 2011 - Laura Clark Brown, Judy Ruttenberg, and Kevin L. Smith, J.D.

10 Conservative Principles for Cybersecurity Policy, by Paul Rosenzweig, George Washington University School of Law; Posted FEbruary 10, 2011

News release: "President Barack Obama will today detail his plan to win the future by catalyzing the buildout of high-speed wireless services that will enable businesses to grow faster, students to learn more, and public safety officials to access state-of-the-art, secure, nationwide, and interoperable mobile communications. In his State of the Union address, President Obama called for a National Wireless Initiative to make available high-speed wireless services to at least 98 percent of Americans. The Wireless Innovation and Infrastructure Initiative laid out today will make it possible for businesses to achieve that goal, while freeing up spectrum through incentive auctions, spurring innovation, and creating a nationwide, interoperable wireless network for public safety. It will also reduce the national deficit by approximately $10 billion."

News release: "Experian® Hitwise®, a part of Experian Marketing Services, announced today that Google accounted for 67.95 percent of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Jan. 29, 2011. Bing-powered search comprised 27.44 percent of searches for the month, with Yahoo! Search and Bing receiving 14.62 percent and 12.81 percent, respectively. The remaining 70 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report accounted for 4.61 percent of U.S. searches. Bing and Yahoo! Search achieved the highest success rates in January 2011. This means that for both search engines, more than 81 percent of searches executed resulted in a visit to a Website. Google achieved a success rate of 65 percent. The share of unsuccessful searches highlights the opportunity for both the search engines and marketers to evaluate the search engine result pages to ensure that searchers are finding relevant information."

"The Digital Signage Federation (DSF), a professional membership association, announced today the release of new industry standards for digital signage privacy. The “Digital Signage Privacy Standards” are a set of voluntary privacy guidelines recommended by DSF for digital signage companies, their partners and the venues that host these systems....The DSF Standards Committee is comprised of eight members from different sectors of the industry, and is chaired by Ken Goldberg, CEO of Real Digital Media. Harley Geiger, a committee member and Policy Counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, was instrumental in leading the effort to develop policies that safeguard consumer privacy and preserve the public’s trust in the digital signage industry. Subsequently, the Digital Signage Privacy Standard includes strong principles in the following categories:

• Transparency
  
• Individual Participation
  
• Purpose Specification
  
• Data Minimization
  
• Use Limitation
  
• Data Quality & Integrity
  
• Security
  
• Accountability

"The role of social media in Congressional leaders’ messaging and outreach has exploded over the past few years, whether it be through tweets about floor schedule updates or on Facebook. But within that trend is a clear — and nonpartisan — divide between the savvy and those still in the dark. House Democratic and Republican leadership aides are eager to tout their bosses’ use of social media." [Link]

State Cyberbullying Law - A Brief Review of State Cyberbullying Laws and Policies, Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D. and Justin W. Patchin, Ph.D., Cyberbullying Research Center, updated January 2011

Emerging Legal Issues in Social Media: In Part 1 of his commentary, Ken Strutin discusses how the growth of social media and social networking applications has permeated and extended the range of legal investigation, discovery and litigation. The materials he highlights represent a current sampling of notable developments in law enforcement, law practice, civil and criminal litigation, and technology's influence on human behavior.

Report: Generations, Mobile, Seniors - Generations and their gadgets, by Kathryn Zickuhr, Feb 3, 2011

Audit Report, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Monitoring of Power Grid Cyber Security, DOE/IG-0846, January 2011

McCabe, Mark J. and Snyder, Christopher M., Did Online Access to Journals Change the Economics Literature? (January 23, 2011).

Health Topics - 80% of internet users look for health information online, Susannah Fox, Associate Director, Pew Research, February 1, 2011

Patterns of Misconduct: FBI Intelligence Violations from 2001 - 2008, A Report Prepared by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, January 2011

News release: "The Center for Democracy & Technology today released a proposal that sketches the parameters of what Do Not Track (DNT) means. The document is intended to identify the types of behaviors that DNT should prohibit, and jumpstart a discussion aimed at developing a common understanding of the terms of this emerging technology. The concept of DNT technology is gaining momentum; however, definitions underlying technology—such as what "tracking" actually means—are still in flux...CDT suggests that the following definition for "tracking" in the context of Do Not Track:

Freedom in the World 2011: The Authoritarian Challenge to Democracy, Washington, D.C, January 13, 2011: "Global freedom suffered its fifth consecutive year of decline in 2010, according to Freedom in the World 2011, Freedom House’s annual assessment of political rights and civil liberties around the world. This represents the longest continuous period of decline in the nearly 40-year history of the survey. The year featured drops in the number of Free countries and the number of electoral democracies, as well as an overall deterioration for freedom in the Middle East and North Africa region. A total of 25 countries showed significant declines in 2010, more than double the 11 countries exhibiting noteworthy gains. The number of countries designated as Free fell from 89 to 87, and the number of electoral democracies dropped to 115, far below the 2005 figure of 123. In addition, authoritarian regimes like those in China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela continued to step up repressive measures with little significant resistance from the democratic world. Published annually since 1972, Freedom in the World examines the ability of individuals to exercise their political and civil rights in 194 countries and 14 territories around the world. The latest edition analyzes developments that occurred in 2010 and assigns each country a freedom status—Free, Partly Free, or Not Free—based on a scoring of performance on key democracy indicators.

PewInternet: 22% of online Americans used social networking or Twitter for politics in 2010 campaign, by Aaron Smith, January 27, 2011:

"Working in partnership, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) promotes and funds high-quality, cost-effective teaching and research, meeting the diverse needs of students, the economy and society."

National Journal: Google and Mozilla both announced that they will be adding "do-not-track" options to their Internet browsers, allowing users to prevent websites from gathering personal information and selling it to advertisers. Mozilla announced its plan Sunday with Google following suit Monday. According to a company statement, Google's "Keep My Op-Outs" feature will be available as an extension for download on its Chrome browser Monday. "We made available, for all major browsers, a downloadable browser plugin that enables you to permanently opt out of Google's advertising cookie, even if you deleted all your browser's cookies," according to the statement." Mozilla's Firefox version will be an HTTP header that will tell websites that a user wants to opt-out what's called "online behavioral advertising." "The advantages to the header technique are that it is less complex and simple to locate and use, it is more persistent than cookie-based solutions, and it doesn't rely on user's finding and loading lists of ad networks and advertisers to work," said Mozilla technology and privacy officer Alex Fowler wrote in a blog post Sunday. Microsoft announced a similar feature for its Internet Explorer in December."

National Security Cyberspace Institute - Federal Government Cybersecurity Progress: Obama Administration Report Card 2009-Present

"On Tuesday, January 25, at 9 p.m. EST, President Obama will deliver the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol. We have been working on a number of ways citizens can get involved in the State of the Union and ask their questions of President Obama and senior Administration officials. You can find all the details on our brand new State of the Union page."

• Watch the live stream of the State of the Union Address on WhiteHouse.gov.
  
• Immediately following the State of the Union Address, stay tuned for a live Open For Questions event where Senior White House officials will answer your questions about key issues addressed in the speech live from the White House.
  
• Wednesday: Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will be taking your questions via Twitter before his post-State of the Union briefing on Wednesday, January 26. Follow @PressSec on Twitter to find out when he’ll be taking your questions, then respond to @PressSec using the hashtag #1Q and watch for his video responses.
  
• President Obama will answer your questions during a live YouTube interview at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday January 27. Submit your questions on youtube.com/askobama."

Americans living with disability and their technology profile by Susannah Fox

News release: "Verizon Communications on Thursday (Jan. 20) filed an appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, challenging the Federal Communications Commission's Report and Order on rules dealing with the issue of net neutrality..."Today's filing is the result of a careful review of the FCC's order. We are deeply concerned by the FCC's assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself. We believe this assertion of authority goes well beyond any authority provided by Congress, and creates uncertainty for the communications industry, innovators, investors and consumers." [Michael E. Glover, Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel]

News release: "Today, the Federal Communications Commission grants—with conditions and enforceable commitments—approval of the assignment and transfer of control of broadcast, satellite, and other radio licenses from General Electric Company (GE) to Comcast Corporation. The approval will allow GE and Comcast to create a joint venture involving NBC Universal, Inc. (NBCU) and Comcast. An Order further explaining the Commission’s reasoning and the conditions and commitments will be issued shortly. The Commission's decision is based on a thorough review of the record, which includes extensive data and voluntary commitments from the applicants, as well as thousands of comments from interested parties and public input received at a public forum held in Chicago. Based on this review, the Commission has determined that granting the application, with certain conditions and contingent upon enforceable commitments, is in the public interest."

The Social Side of the Internet - Technology use has become deeply embedded in group life and is affecting the way civic and social groups behave and the way they impact their communities, by Lee Rainie, Kristen Purcell, Aaron Smith, Jan 18, 2011

News release: "Most Internet users in America say they go online to answer routine questions, and they give overwhelmingly positive marks to today’s Internet search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 66% of regular Internet users instinctively go online to answer routine questions. Just 30% say they do not. (To see survey question wording, click here). Eighty-nine percent (89%) of those who regularly go online rate today’s Internet search engines as good or excellent in terms of finding the information they need. Fewer than half a percent rates the search engines they use as poor. Seventy-eight percent (78%), in fact, say they generally use the same Internet search engine all the time. Just 19% use more than one."

McIntyre, Joshua J., The Number is Me: Why Internet Protocol (IP) Addresses Should Be Protected as Personally Identifiable Information (August 15, 2010). DePaul Law Review, Vol. 60, No. 3, 2011.

Follow up to Critical Undersea Internet Cables Damaged Between Europe and Mideast, this related commentary, Undersea Cables: The Achilles Heel of our Economies, by Franz-Stefan Gady

Sources Sought: "The Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the United States House of Representatives seeks vendors experienced with web design, development and support using Drupal, the open-source web content management system. This is a source selection process only. The CAO will not be making any contract awards during this process. The CAO has established a flexible Drupal hosting platform as the preferred web hosting environment for the House. Members, Committees, Leadership, Officers and Officials (the CAO’s customers) each manage and control a public web site. These customers have the independent authority to select the web vendor of their choice provided that vendor meets specific House requirements. In total, there are nearly 520 unique House web sites within House.gov."

Via Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, this new memorandum on technology neutrality: "Each year, the U.S. Government spends almost $80 billion dollars buying information technology (IT); the software, computer equipment and network devices that help the Government run efficiently. It is important that those purchases be fair, neutral and based on an objective assessment of relevant criteria. To ensure that the agencies and the public are aware of our policy, today U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy Dan Gordon and I issued a statement to Senior Procurement Executives and Chief Information Officers reminding them to select IT based on appropriate criteria while analyzing available alternatives including proprietary, open source and mixed source technologies."

Government Technology: "A new study ranking government, nonprofit and industry trade groups for their use of social media and online strategies revealed that more than 50 percent of the organizations polled are not using these digital avenues as effectively as they could be. The first L2 Digital IQ Index: Public Sector was co-authored by digital think tank L2 and the George Washington University School of Business, and ranked 100 digitally active public-sector groups on how well they are using different technologies to their greatest ability, or how high their digital IQ is. NASA, the White House and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are respectively ranked as having the highest digital IQs. The International Civil Aviation Organization, the Universal Postal Union, and the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America (IIABA) came in last."

News release: "...the FCC announced a challenge to researchers and software developers to engage in research and create apps that help consumers foster, measure, and protect Internet openness. The Open Internet Challenge is part of the FCC’s efforts to empower end users to help preserve Internet openness. Details of the challenge are posted at openinternet.gov/challenge. “This challenge is about using the open Internet to protect the open Internet,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. “Our goal is to foster user-developed applications that shine light on any practice that might be inconsistent with the free and open Internet. Empowering consumers with information about their own connections will promote a vibrant, innovative, world-leading broadband ecosystem.” The Open Internet Challenge seeks to encourage the development of innovative and functional applications that provide users with information about the extent to which their fixed or mobile broadband Internet services are consistent with the open Internet. These software tools could, for example, detect whether a broadband provider is interfering with DNS responses, application packet headers, or content."

Presentation: Race and Ethnicity Asian-Americans and Technology

News release: "This report presents findings from a year-long study designed and executed by OCLC Research, the HathiTrust, New York University's Elmer Bobst Library, and the Research Collections Access & Preservation (ReCAP) consortium, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The objective of the project was to examine the feasibility of outsourcing management of low-use print books held in academic libraries to shared service providers, including large-scale print and digital repositories. The study assessed the opportunity for library space saving and cost avoidance through the systematic and intentional outsourcing of local management operations for digitized books to shared service providers and progressive downsizing of local print collections in favor of negotiated access to the digitized corpus and regionally consolidated print inventory."

Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books, Published Online 16 December 2010, Jean-Baptiste Michel et al. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1199644.

"Google Refine is a power tool for working with messy data, cleaning it up, transforming it from one format into another, extending it with web services, and linking it to databases like Freebase."

"The internet is slowly closing in on television as Americans’ main source of national and international news. Currently, 41% say they get most of their news about national and international news from the internet, which is little changed over the past two years but up 17 points since 2007. Television remains the most widely used source for national and international news – 66% of Americans say it is their main source of news – but that is down from 74% three years ago and 82% as recently as 2002. The national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 1-5, 2010 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, finds that more people continue to cite the internet than newspapers as their main source of news, reflecting both the growth of the internet, and the gradual decline in newspaper readership (from 34% in 2007 to 31% now). The proportion citing radio as their main source of national and international news has remained relatively stable in recent years; currently, 16% say it is their main source."

The commercial data privacy issues discussed in the Department’s green paper, Commercial Data Privacy and Innovation in the Internet Economy: A Dynamic Policy Framework, provide a clear lens through which to assess current policy. Throughout the history of the Internet as a commercial medium, the Department of Commerce has been a key avenue of government engagement. Today, the Department continues this role, primarily through the Internet Policy Task Force, established by Secretary Locke. This Task Force is examining policy approaches that reduce barriers to digital commerce while strengthening protections for commercial data privacy, cybersecurity, intellectual property, and the global free flow of information."

The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program - Expanding Broadband Access and Adoption in Communities Across America, Overview of Grant Awards, December 2010

Google Voice Blog: "When we launched calling in Gmail back in August, we wanted it to be easy and affordable, so we made calls to the U.S. and Canada free for the rest of 2010. In the spirit of holiday giving and to help people keep in touch in the new year, we’re extending free calling for all of 2011. In case you haven’t tried it yet, dialing a phone number works just like a regular phone. Look for “Call phone” at the top of your Gmail chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name. To learn more, visit gmail.com/call. Calling in Gmail is currently only available to U.S. based Gmail users."

65% of internet users have paid for online content, Jim Jansen, Senior Fellow, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, 12/30/2010

"Mass collaboration is revolutionizing not only the way we work, but the way we live, learn, create and care for each other. Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, authors of Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World, analyze some of the trends reshaping our world. Today: Journalism in the age of user-generated content and Wikileaks - "It turns out people will not pay for news as a commodity. In an age of Twitter, bloggers, WikiLeaks and social networks, people can find the news without buying a paper. As one youngster said, “If the news is important it will find me.” The Internet has destroyed the business model for print. Print publications will survive, but not in the long term, and this has big implications for journalism. Compared to the massive physical assets of, say, The New York Times, online newspaper The Huffington Post has almost zero printing and distribution costs. The New York Times employs more than a thousand people in its editorial department alone. The Huffington Post employs 60 and a volunteer roster of thousands of writers. The site is thriving, with 20 million readers."

Peter Eckersley: "At the beginning of this year EFF identified a dozen important trends in law, technology and business that we thought would play a significant role in shaping digital rights in 2010, with a promise to revisit our predictions at the end of the year. Now, as 2010 comes to a close, we're going through each of our predictions one by one to see how accurate we were in our trend-spotting."

News release: "S&P Equity Research sees big developments for the Internet segment in 2011, including continuing challenges for Google, changes at Yahoo, a cloud offering from Apple, and excitement from China. "The coming year should also be another year of solid growth, with double-digit gains for U.S. Internet advertising and retail spending," observed Scott Kessler, Information Technology analyst at S&P Equity Research."

"The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to announce the release of a new paper, Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and Promise of Online Organizing, by Bruce Etling, Robert Faris, and John Palfrey."

"The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to share a new report, Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Against Independent Media and Human Rights Sites by Ethan Zuckerman, Hal Roberts, Ryan McGrady, Jillian York, John Palfrey

Net Neutrality as Diplomacy, Jonathan Zittrain. Vol. 29, Yale Law & Policy Review, December 2010.

Via LLRX.com - Juror Behavior in the Information Age: Ken Strutin focuses on the impact of social media on jurors who increasingly try to stay connected to work and home while performing their civic duty, and the resulting impact of the power of individual jurors to virtualize a trial by going online. His article collects recent and notable examples of juror online misbehavior and highlights scholarship and practice resources concerning its implications for voir dire, trial management and the administration of justice.

Free Kindle Books: A Guide, by Lauren Indvik

1. "Project Gutenberg: 33,000 free e-books, including all of the classics, available in Kindle, HTML and simple text formats.
   
2. Google E-Bookstore: The free section is filled with thousands of free, scanned copies of books, available in Kindle-friendly PDF formats.
   
3. Internet Archive: Millions of primarily rare, out-of-print works in multiple languages and formats (including Kindle), especially useful for academic work.
   
4. Open Library: 20 million user-contributed items in multiple editions and formats (including Kindle).
   
5. ManyBooks.net: Nearly 30,000 titles, many of which have been pulled from Project Gutenberg. Has a good collection of little-known Creative Commons works.
   
6. LibriVox: Thousands of free audiobooks."

• Small Change - Why the revolution will not be tweeted, by Malcolm Gladwell: "he world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coördinate, and give voice to their concerns...Some of this grandiosity is to be expected. Innovators tend to be solipsists. They often want to cram every stray fact and experience into their new model. As the historian Robert Darnton has written, “The marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the Internet.” But there is something else at work here, in the outsized enthusiasm for social media. Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is..." [entire article available free online]
• The Political Power of Social Media Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change, by Clay Shirky: "Since the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, the world's networked population has grown from the low millions to the low billions. Over the same period, social media have become a fact of life for civil society worldwide, involving many actors -- regular citizens, activists, nongovernmental organizations, telecommunications firms, software providers, governments. This raises an obvious question for the U.S. government: How does the ubiquity of social media affect U.S. interests, and how should U.S. policy respond to it? As the communications landscape gets denser, more complex, and more participatory, the networked population is gaining greater access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech, and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action. In the political arena, as the protests in Manila demonstrated, these increased freedoms can help loosely coordinated publics demand change."[Access to this article is available for non-subscribers until 2/13/2011]

Proposed U.S. House Rules Welcome (Quiet) Mobile Devices to the Floor: "In this last Congress, the 111th, the House operated under a rule that dictated that no one shall "smoke or use a wireless telephone or personal computer on the floor of the House." But, according to copy of the proposed rules just posted to the website of the Committee on Rules, that section has been tweaked for the 112th congress to give the Speaker of the House wide discretion in dictating what sort of mobile technologies members and staffers can bring to and use on the floor of the House.

Cancer 2.0: A summary of recent research, Susannah Fox, Associate Director, 12/13/2010: "The majority of U.S. adults have internet access, including those who are living with chronic disease. In 1995 only about 1 in 10 American adults had access to the internet. In 2000, it was up to nearly half of adults. Now, about 75% of adults and 95% teenagers in the U.S. have internet access. Survey data from the Pew Internet Project and the California HealthCare Foundation show that while internet access is the norm, adults living with chronic disease are significantly less likely than healthy adults to go online:

• 81% of adults reporting no chronic diseases go online.
  
• 62% of adults living with one or more chronic disease go online.
  
• It is important to note that 80% of adults who provide care to their parents or another loved one have internet access. So while internet access is unevenly distributed, especially among age groups, many people have “second degree” access."

Politics goes mobile, by Aaron Smith, Lee Rainie, Dec 23, 2010: "More than a quarter of American adults – 26% – used their cell phones to learn about or participate in the 2010 mid-term election campaign. In a post-election nationwide survey of adults, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that 82% of adults have cell phones. Of those cell owners, 71% use their phone for texting and 39% use the phone for accessing the internet. With that as context, the Pew Internet survey found that:

• 14% of all American adults used their cell phones to tell others that they had voted.
  
• 12% of adults used their cell phones to keep up with news about the election or politics.
  
• 10% of adults sent text messages relating to the election to friends, family members and others.
  
• 6% of adults used their cells to let others know about conditions at their local voting stations on election day, including insights about delays, long lines, low turnout, or other issues.
  
• 4% of adults used their phones to monitor results of the election as they occurred.
  
• 3% of adults used their cells to shoot and share photos or videos related to the election..."

News release: "The United States is spending considerably less on networking and information technology research than is suggested by official tallies and would benefit from both a larger investment and improved long-term strategic planning in this crucial field of research, according to an independent report released today by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a group of presidentially appointed experts from academia, non-governmental organizations, and industry. The report, Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology, examines the Nation’s Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program. That 19-year-old program, which encompasses work in more than a dozen Federal agencies, is the primary mechanism by which the Federal government coordinates its investments in unclassified networking and information technology research and development. PCAST examined both the coordinating program and the NITRD research portfolio itself."

Follow up to FTC Staff Issues Privacy Report Offers Framework for Consumers, Businesses, and Policymakers, this news from Gallup: "U.S. Internet users would likely welcome a "Do Not Track" measure like the one the Federal Trade Commission is currently considering to keep advertisers from tracking their movements online. Gallup finds Internet users largely aware that advertisers use their online browsing history to target ads to their interests, but largely opposed to such tactics -- even if they help to keep websites free...The results, from a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Dec. 10-12, 2010, come as the Federal Trade Commission considers a measure that would allow Internet users to essentially opt out of online tracking, as they do with the telemarketing "Do Not Call" list. AdWeek in a recent editorial said such a measure would amount to an "apocalypse" for online advertisers, particularly for the fast-growing $1.1 billion industry that relies on these tactics to target content to users."

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to share a new report, Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Against Independent Media and Human Rights Sites by Ethan Zuckerman, Hal Roberts, Ryan McGrady, Jillian York, John Palfrey

Broadband satisfaction: What consumers report about their broadband Internet provider, FCC Working Paper, December 2010: "Most Internet users have a very good understanding of the information on their bills regarding how to contact customer service or the price they pay. However, when asked about the clarity of information on their bill about speed, restrictions on service, or fees for terminating service, few users find this information very clear."

Google Chrome Blog: "When we announced that Chrome is now used by over 120 million users and showed off some of its latest features last week, we saw a tremendous amount of excitement from both users and businesses. Many businesses asked how they can get the benefits of increased security, speed and the modern browser capabilities that Chrome offers with the configurability and customizations they need. The good news is that businesses don’t need to wait any longer to deploy Google Chrome. Today, we’re announcing that Chrome offers controls that enable IT administrators to easily configure and deploy the browser on Windows, Mac, and Linux according to their business requirements. We’ve created an MSI installer that enables businesses who use standard deployment tools to install Chrome for all their managed users. We’ve also added support for managed group policy with a list of policies and a set of templates that allow administrators to easily customize browser settings to manage security and privacy. By deploying Google Chrome, organizations can take advantage of improved security and web application performance without needing to upgrade other expensive software licenses or buy new hardware. Deploying Google Chrome also gives users access to productivity-enhancing HTML5 web applications. Since Google Chrome is the same as the browser on Chrome OS, admins considering Chrome OS for their organizations can start testing their mission-critical web applications by deploying the Google Chrome browser."

News release: "If you think similarities in the Internet and television are growing, parents may be inclined to agree with you. Parents are rapidly coming to view TV and the Web in similar ways, applying supervisory approaches to both mediums, according to a new survey by the Center for the Digital Future, at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California. In a worrisome trend, the Center also reports in its 2010 survey that an increasing percentage of parents say Internet access at home is reducing their children's in-person time with friends. Researchers at the Center report parents are now limiting their children's Internet access and television use in nearly identical ways. Three in five American households restrict television use as a punishment, a figure that's hardly budged over the past decade. Restricting children's Internet use as a form of punishment has steadily increased over the years and is now a practice in 57 percent of the nation's homes with children under 18. The new survey also shows, however, that parents are still more comfortable about the amount of time their children spend on the Internet v. television, with 69 percent saying it was just about right (v. 57 percent for television); only 28 percent thought their children spent too much time on the Internet, against 41 percent who thought television time was excessive."

Generations 2010, Kathryn Zickuhr, Web Coordinator, 12/16/2010

Rising to the Challenge: "This independent report was commissioned by Savvis and conducted by Vanson Bourne in April 2010. The research surveyed CIOs, IT Directors and Heads of IT in the U.S., U.K. and Singapore from medium to large enterprises and the public sector...Our 2010 survey findings revealed that a large percentage of organizations are looking at infrastructure outsourcing as a means of delivering first-class IT support to the organization. The impetus driving this outsourcing rise is a widespread interest in cloud computing. A significant portion of the respondents are currently using or considering cloud services to deliver some part of their IT infrastructure. With the outsourcing forecast for the next 10 years set to grow (some two-thirds of organizations believe the majority of their infrastructure will be outsourced compared with fewer than one in five currently), it seems that the adoption of cloud services will play an important role in this industry transformation."

Colleges Lock Out Blind Students Online, by Marc Parry

25 Point Implementation Plan To Reform Federal Information Technology Management, Vivek Kundra U.S. Chief Information Officer, December 9, 2010

LLRX.com - ShoppingBots and Online Shopping Resources 2011

Cloud computing: the latest chapter in an epic journey, Posted by Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO - "On Tuesday, we announced a number of updates to Chrome and Chrome OS. For me, these announcements were among the most important of my working life—demonstrating the real power of computer science to transform people’s lives. It’s extraordinary how very complex platforms can produce beautifully simple solutions like Chrome and Chrome OS, which anyone can use from the get-go—as long as you get it right. And that’s very, very hard indeed as history has taught."

8% of online Americans use Twitter, Aaron Smith, Senior Research Specialist, Lee Rainie, Director, 12/9/2010: "Eight percent of the American adults who use the internet are Twitter users. It is an online activity that is particularly popular with young adults, minorities, and those who live in cities."

Official YouTubeBlog: "Your creativity isn’t bound by a time limit, so why should your video uploads be? Back in July we raised the upload limit to 15 minutes for all users. Starting today, we’ll begin allowing selected users with a history of complying with the YouTube Community Guidelines and our copyright rules to upload videos that are longer than 15 minutes."

Google's first Chrome OS laptop - the Cr-48: "This is a tough one to sum up. It's not a "real" product, in the sense that you can't buy it. Still, it represents the infancy of a series of products that will be very real and probably pretty well priced. We can already see some reasons why particularly browser-bound folks might consider this over a netbook, but for most people we'd say Google has a long ways to go to create a true netbook or laptop alternative -- besides, how many secondary and tertiary devices does one person really need? While the OS is pretty much all that matters here right now, and the internals are nothing special, our favorite part of the Cr-48 probably happens to be the one true inessential element: the design. We wish more computer manufacturers would take a note out of this understated book."

FT.com: Facebook’s grand plan for the future: "This is a somewhat different Mark Zuckerberg to the one the public knew just a year ago. In recent months he has transformed from an awkward wunderkind with a preternatural ability to anticipate where the web is going, into an amicable executive unafraid of laying out his grand plan. It is not just that he is a bit more confident and articulate, though he is both; what is striking is that for the first time in my two years of interviewing him, Zuckerberg seems at ease. “The fear is behind him,” said a friend of Zuckerberg’s. “Until a year ago, he thought this might be the next Google, but he wasn’t sure. Now he’s sure. The fear is gone.”

Follow up to WikiLeaks Releases Secret US Embassy Cables, this news release: "The news media are reporting today, accurately, that the Library of Congress is blocking access to the Wikileaks site across its computer systems, including those for use by patrons in the reading rooms. I wanted to provide here the same statement we’ve been giving to reporters and patrons who are asking about it: The Library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget today provided the guidance that “[f]ederal agencies collectively, and each federal employee and contractor individually, are obligated to protect classified information pursuant to all applicable laws, as well as to protect the integrity of government information technology systems.”

Escaping from Microsoft’s Protected Mode Internet Explorer - Evaluating a potential security boundary, November 2010

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s chief privacy policy and enforcement agency for 40 years, issued a preliminary staff report today that proposes a framework to balance the privacy interests of consumers with innovation that relies on consumer information to develop beneficial new products and services. The proposed report also suggests implementation of a “Do Not Track” mechanism – likely a persistent setting on consumers’ browsers – so consumers can choose whether to allow the collection of data regarding their online searching and browsing activities....The report states that industry efforts to address privacy through self-regulation “have been too slow, and up to now have failed to provide adequate and meaningful protection.” The framework outlined in the report is designed to reduce the burdens on consumers and businesses."

Use of the internet in higher-income households, Jim Jansen, Senior Fellow, 11/24/2010

Andy Greenberg's interview was conducted in London on November 11, 2010 - prior to the data dump of U.S. State Department documents: "Early next year, Julian Assange says, a major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out. Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings. The data dump will lay bare the finance firm’s secrets on the Web for every customer, every competitor, every regulator to examine and pass judgment on."

News release: "Verizon is launching 150/35 megabits per second (Mbps) Internet service - the fastest mass-market broadband service in the nation - over the company's all-fiber-optic FiOS network. The company has begun to roll out the ultra-high-speed service to the majority of the more than 12.5 million homes that the FiOS network passes, and will make the service available to Verizon FiOS small-business customers by the end of the year. Verizon's new Internet service surpasses competitors' offers by pumping three times the downstream speed previously available to FiOS customers...With a downstream speed of 150 Mbps, consumers can download a two-hour, standard-definition movie (1.5 gigabytes) in less than 80 seconds, and a two-hour HD movie (5 GB) in less than four and a half minutes."

"Tom Arah investigates the war between Apple, Microsoft, Google and Adobe for web domination - In the 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee produced the first web browser, our expectations of what the internet can deliver have changed beyond all recognition. However, the core experience of browsing of HTML-based pages has remained largely intact. Now that’s all set to change. A series of critical breakthroughs – massively increased bandwidth, the demand for rich media, cloud computing, the advent of wireless connectivity and the rise of mobile devices – has created the foundations for the next generation of rich internet-based apps."

Official Google New Blog: "News publishers and readers both benefit when journalists get proper credit for their work. That can be difficult, with news spreading so quickly and many websites syndicating articles to others. That’s why we’re experimenting with two new metatags for Google News: syndication-source and original-source. Each of these metatags addresses a different scenario, but for both the aim is to allow publishers to take credit for their work and give credit to other journalists. Here’s how to use these metatags:

• syndication-source indicates the preferred URL for a syndicated article. If two versions of an article are exactly the same, or only very slightly modified, we're asking publishers to use syndication-source to point us to the one they would like Google News to use..
  
• original-source indicates the URL of the first article to report on a story. We encourage publishers to use this metatag to give credit to the source that broke the story. We recognize that this can sometimes be tough to determine. But the intent of this tag is to reward hard work and journalistic enterprise...
  
• To learn more about how these metatags work, and how you can implement them for your site, visit our Help Center article.

Policing Content in the Quasi-Public Sphere, Jillian C. York, The OpenNet Initiative (ONI), November 2010

Google: "..we’re releasing a white paper, Enabling Trade in the Era of Information Technologies: Breaking Down Barriers to the Free Flow of Information, that explores the ways that governments impose limits on the free flow of information online. It’s pretty wonky stuff, but the premise is simple: In addition to infringing human rights, governments that block the free flow of information on the Internet are also blocking trade and economic growth. Over the last two decades, the Internet has delivered tremendous economic and trade benefits. It has driven record increases in productivity, spurred innovation, created new economies, and fueled international trade. In part this is because the Internet makes geographically distant markets easy to reach. But this engine of economic growth is increasingly coming under attack. According to one study, more than forty governments now engage in broad-scale restriction of online information. Governments are blocking online services, imposing non-transparent regulation, and seeking to incorporate surveillance tools into their Internet infrastructure. These are the trade barriers of the 21st century economy...we urge policymakers in the United States, European Union and elsewhere to take steps to break down barriers to free trade and Internet commerce. These issues present challenges, but also an opportunity for governments to align 21st century trade policy with the 21st century economy."

News release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a new version of HTTPS Everywhere, a security too