I’d like to recommend Sonia Arrison’s recent article on the need for updating the Electronic Privacy Communications Act (ECPA). She makes a good case why citizens should feel a bit worried about the ability of government to invade their privacy when they keep data in the cloud. And citizens are customers, so online businesses are worried if people may use less of their services. But here’s another angle for why we need to update ECPA…it’s to promote online safety. From an excellent analysis by Becky Burr, ECPA reform:
Would establish uniform, clear, and easily understood rules about when and what kind of judicial review is needed by law enforcement to access electronic content; and
Would, by clarifying the applicable rules, enable business to respond more quickly and with greater confidence to law enforcement requests and to avail themselves of hosted productivity technology.
Right now the law is muddled, and online services have a hard time determining legitimate requests from those that are overreaching. When the law is clarified, businesses and law enforcement can (with appropriate legal process) share information that can help find sexual predators and other online miscreants.
Up on the NetChoice blog, Steve DelBianco writes about how online child safety was a hot topic at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) last week in Lithuania. There was one workshop on location-based services that allow users to publish their mobile phone location info to their parents or social network pages (e.g. Foursquare, Loopt, and Facebook Places).
The entire workshop reminded Steve of the movie Minority Report, where a ‘precrime’ police unit relies on the visions of psychics to predict future crimes, then arrests the potential perpetrators before they do anything wrong:
In the world of Internet governance, the future is now, as regulators want online services to predict and prevent safety threats before they actually occur. According to some privacy advocates and lawmakers, the precrime problem here is that location data might be seen by someone with bad intentions. In the name of protecting children, panelists here favor a policy framework that would require innovators to clear new location-based services with regulators before making them available to users.
Think of the irony with this regulatory approach. Lawmakers are not likely to predict all the ways that bad people can abuse a good service, and regulatory approvals are notoriously slow and inflexible. On the other hand, Internet innovation is marked by rapid development of new services and quick reactions to fine-tune new features or fix unexpected problems.
Thankfully, there was a young person in the audience that actually knows how kids use the Internet and what will help them the most:
More sage advice came from young people – the anticipated victims of precrimes that might use location-based info. Joonas Makinen of the Youth Coalition on Internet Governance told the IGF, “It is better to focus on fighting ignorance and building digital literacy than applying safety strategies based on restriction.”
Indeed.
Back in March, the Motion Picture Association of America re-launched its film-rating website, filmratings.com. While this may be old news to some, I just learned about it from a post on BoingBoing which makes fun of the rationales given for the ratings, which are available on the new website. Example: The movie “3 Ninjas Knuckle Up” was “rated PG-13 for non-stop ninja action.”
Continue reading →
Internet governance is often thought of as ICANN and domain names, but the Internet Governance Forum, a body of the UN, takes a broad approach. Tomorrow I’ll be speaking on a panel about online safety at IGF-USA, a national body that reports to the full IGF. We’ll discuss the recent NTIA OSTWG “Youth Safety on a Living Internet” report, among other online safety issues such as sexting, cyberbullying, and proposed state legislation.
UPDATE: Here’s a summary and video excerpt of my presentation.
Here’s the panel:
Moderator: Danny Weitzner, Associate Administrator, Office of Policy Analysis and Development U.S. Department of Commerce
Panelists:
- Michael W. McKeehan, Executive Director, Internet and Technology Policy, Verizon
- Braden Cox, Policy Counsel, NetChoice Coalition
- Anne Collier, via remote participation [Invited]
- Jennifer Hanley, Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI)
- Stacie Rumenap, Stop Child Predators
Respondents:
- Morgan C. Little, Elon University Graduate, Political Science, American University
- Jane Coffin, NTIA: comments on some of the global activities
- Bessie Pang, Executive Director, POLCYB
Check it out and come for the other panels on cybersecurity, cloud computing and global governance for governments. Registration is free.
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Posted in: Online Child Safety, Privacy, Security & Government Surveillance 
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