policy

A year ago, Facebook experienced something of a privacy uprising from its users over a minor change to its privacy policy.

Never mind that the outcry grew out of a consumer blogger's mostly mistaken analysis: Online protests were staged, a Washington, D.C., activist group threatened to complain to federal regulators, and founder Mark Zuckerberg offered a public mea culpa.

This time around, by announcing proposed changes dealing with location tagging and third party Web sites before they take effect, Facebook is hoping to avoid repeating what happened last year.

In a post on Friday, Michael Richter, Facebook's … Read more

A reverse proxy server stands between your home network server and the Internet, controlling access and protecting your network. Fastream Technologies' IQ Proxy Server is a forward-reverse proxy server application for Windows. It acts as a secure front end for all incoming traffic, and it can also perform common tasks like load balancing, authentication, and caching. It boasts a robust, scalable server engine that can handle up to 20,000 hits at once and serve more than 10,000 requests per second in keep-alive mode. It supports all major Web protocols, features a strong firewall for both forward and reverse … Read more

PolicyMap is a collection of real estate, civil, and financial systems built into a mapping and charting engine. It can locate superfund sites; show you crime stats; tell you about mortgage originations (including things like subprime mortgages to various demographic groups), and age and educational background. The data is at a variety of resolutions (some is per ZIP code, some by census tract) and timeliness.

In many data sets you zoom into deep detail on your information. You can also build charts, for data sets with information over time, and generate preconfigured "community reports" for particular regions or … Read more

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes' bio below.

While much of the technology policy conversations at CES concerned positive developments such as the imminent National Broadband Plan, one dark cloud appeared at every turn.

Nearly every speaker invoked fears of a looming "spectrum crisis" in wireless communications. Simply put, the faster that U.S. consumers embrace new mobile devices and services, the faster we will run out of available frequencies that can handle the increased traffic.

Wireless communications, including 3G and now 4G information services, have seen remarkable expansion over the last five years, … Read more

In a far reaching policy speech Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talked about freedom of speech on the Internet.

She addressed the issue of alleged Chinese intrusion into Google servers to spy on human rights activists, as well as freedom of religion and economic issues.

Clinton also addressed issues of hate speech and terrorists who use the Internet for recruitment.

She raised concerns about "the issue of anonymous speech" and worries about terrorists and criminals who "divorce their online actions from their real world identities." However, some human rights activist rely on anonymity to … Read more

Among the budget cuts California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed to health care, prison, environment, and other parts of the state budget, there's one area that has a good chance of actually getting a budget increase: open source in IT.

According to a policy letter (PDF) issued last week by California CIO Teri Takai, "the use of Open Source Software (OSS) in California state government [has now been formally established] as an acceptable practice."

It's about time.

California faces a $20 billion budget deficit, a gaping void that open-source software, no matter how aggressively used by … Read more

U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled a $2.3 billion tax credit on Friday to boost jobs by promoting clean energy, as new data showed the country's unemployment rate remained stuck in the double digits.

Obama said the credit, from funds earmarked under a $787 billion stimulus package he signed last February, would create 17,000 U.S. jobs and be matched by an additional $5 billion in private capital.

"Building a robust clean-energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future, jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced," Obama said.

"… Read more

Privacy advocates opposed to new privacy regulations at Facebook are attempting to get the attention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, according to a complaint filed Thursday on behalf of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and several allied groups.

"These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations," the complaint says of Facebook's new regulations, which push more content public, and make even more data available to third-party applications and advertisers. EPIC's goal is to force Facebook to restore the old settings and add additional controls for members.

"We'… Read more

Spanish officials said earlier this week that the government will require service providers to offer broadband with speeds of at least 1 Mbps at regulated rates to residents living anywhere in the country.

The Spanish telecommunications minister issued a statement Tuesday declaring that broadband would be added to the country's so-called "universal service," which guarantees reasonably priced telephone service to citizens, Reuters reported. The goal is to offer affordable broadband with speeds of at least 1 Mbps to residents by 2011.

To achieve this goal the Spanish government will require any service provider that gets universal service … Read more