Politics and Law

In what amounts to a thinly veiled legal threat, the Chinese government has intensified its campaign against sexually explicit material online by instructing companies, including Google, to curb the availability of pornography.

Monday's announcement from a collection of seven government agencies singles out 19 sites as unlawfully providing access to "vulgar content." On the list: Google's Web search and image search, Baidu.net and the company's blogging site, and Sohu.net. (Google has denied any wrongdoing.)

The announcement from the State Council Information Office is billed as a "nationwide anti-crime" initiative, and urges the public to report illicit posts and Web sites. The state-controlled China Daily said that the companies named on the list "have been found to spread pornography and threaten youth's morals." It also warns that a regulatory crackdown may be coming.

While politically themed Internet censorship in China has received most of the attention--news sites and human rights sites are frequently restricted--the country's ruling Communist Party has long been interested in stamping out smut too. A CNET News article from as far back as 1996 said that Chinese Internet users were asked to "sign a set of rules that makes it illegal for users to produce or receive pornography."

More recently, the public security ministry said in 2007 that it would target porn, online strip shows, and even erotic stories. Some of the electronic barriers came down during the Olympics last year, only to reappear in the last few weeks.

Along the way, Chinese officials have made some bizarre statements. At an international Internet summit in Athens, a government representative told an incredulous audience: "I've heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it's blocked. I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all." (That statement would come as a surprise to Falun Gong practitioners.)

If this were simply political speech, no doubt members of the U.S. Congress would be tempted to convene ritual hearings where China, Google, and various other companies could be ceremoniously denounced in front of the cameras. But because we're talking about porn, a Senate resolution applauding China's censorial policies is probably more likely.

Caption: Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman speaks to delegates at Republican convention last year.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

Meg Whitman has been talked about as long ago as March 2008 as a candidate for governor of California. Now there's more evidence the former eBay CEO will actually run.

The latest news that's fueling speculation is that Whitman, 52, resigned from the boards of eBay, Procter & Gamble, and Dreamworks SKG. Her spokesman said Monday that the resignation was for personal reasons, and carefully did not confirm--or deny--any gubernatorial ambitions.

Whitman had become an adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, and enthusiastically endorsed him during the party's convention in St. Paul, Minn., last year. Whitman's message at the time: "Higher taxes encourage wasteful spending, demonstrate government's inability to choose among competing priorities, and destroy your prosperity."

That positions the billionaire executive as one of the better-known, albeit politically untested, Republican candidates who could succeed outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010. He's scheduled to be retired by term limits.

Possible primary rivals include State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, another Silicon Valley exec who already holds a statewide office. He founded SnapTrack, a cell phone locating company, and sold it to Qualcomm for $1 billion in January 2000, and also worked in the Bush administration's National Security Council. Another GOP rival could be Tom Campbell, a former U.S. congressman and dean of the business school at University of California, Berkeley.

Democrats that could be contenders in the general election include Attorney General Jerry Brown, who was already governor 30 years ago, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. So is current U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, assuming she's not entirely satisfied by her new job as head of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.

Crowd control at President-elect Barack Obama's January 20 inauguration ceremony will present quite a challenge: On top of the 240,000 ticketed guests who will descend upon the National Mall that day, millions more are expected to join. Ten thousand charter buses will converge on the Washington area. Metro riders have been warned to be prepared "to stand in close proximity to several thousand people."

To manage all of those people, inauguration organizers are turning to text messaging and Twitter.

In an advisory released Monday, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies warned that making calls from cell phones that day may be difficult and that critical messages should be sent via text message.

The organization is also urging inauguration-goers to check out the District of Columbia's inaugural Web site. There visitors can sign up for Alert DC, through which DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management sends text notifications and updates during a major crisis or emergency.

For help navigating the crowded streets of Washington that day--emergency or otherwise--the Presidential Inauguration Committee has set up a Twitter account. It is currently updated with official logistical and scheduling information, and on the day of the ceremony it will be regularly updated with transportation, weather, and event information.

Apple's App Store also boasts at least one iPhone application to help spectators survive the hectic day.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations filed suit against U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last week, complaining that the Homeland Security Department cannot legally require federal contractors to use its online worker verification database.

Beginning January 15, 2009, the department will require certain federal contractors and subcontractors to use its E-Verify system, an online database run by the Homeland Security Department and the Social Security Administration against which employers can check a person's work status. Use of the system is voluntary, but President George Bush signed an executive order earlier this year requiring federal contractors to electronically verify their workers' employment eligibility.

The lawsuit, filed on December 23 in the U.S. District Court for Maryland's southern division, asks the court to declare the executive order and subsequent rule changes to be illegal and void, since the president's order is in direct contradiction to the law, which says that no person or entity shall be compelled to participate in the E-Verify program. The only exemptions are federal agencies, the legislative branch, and certain immigration law violators.

Along with the chamber, the plaintiffs in the case include the Associated Builders and Contractors, the Society for Human Resource Management, the American Council on International Personnel, and the HR Policy Association.

The rule change will apply to all new hires for federal contractors with projects exceeding $100,000 and for sub-contractors with projects exceeding $3,000. It also will apply to certain existing employees who were hired after November 6, 1986, but the plaintiffs complained the "relative ambiguity" of the new rules will force many companies to electronically verify all of their employees hired after that date.

While Bush's executive order stated that the new requirement was "designed to promote economy and efficiency in federal government procurement," the lawsuit alleges it will create a "significant expense and time burden" on many of the plaintiffs' member companies. It also says the requirement "increases substantially the likelihood that many of plaintiffs' respective members will face expensive and time-consuming lawsuits brought by individuals who believe they have been discriminated against on the basis of race and/or national origin."

"The DHS intends to expand E-Verify on an unprecedented scale in a very short time frame and to impose liability on government contractors who are unable to comply," said Randy Johnson, vice president of Labor, Immigration and Employee Benefits at the U.S. Chamber. "Given the current economy, now is not the time to add more bureaucracy and billions of dollars in compliance costs to America's businesses."

More than 90,000 employers have signed up to use E-Verify, said DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner, and the DHS' efforts to provide such programs are reflected in lower illegal immigration rates.

With the free system, "there is little excuse for companies to engage in hiring illegal workers," Keehner said. "This is just another delay tactic."

E-Verify, she said, shows "we have taken seriously the charge to gain back the trust of the American people to enforce immigration law."

As Congress and the next administration consider potential investments in a national broadband infrastructure, cable companies and phone companies are at odds over what should be considered high-speed broadband and how the investment should be made, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Members of Congress are drawing up plans for broadband investment that may include corporate tax credits to build new wireless or landline infrastructure in regions with little or no service, the Journal reports. Cable companies would like to see the Federal Communications Commission define broadband download speed at 5 megabits per second, according to the newspaper, so that they would receive tax credits for increasing their infrastructure in regions of the country where that service of speed isn't yet available. The companies are also pushing for incentives to build out next-generation services, at 40 Mbps to 50 Mbps, in areas with only one broadband provider.

Meanwhile, the Journal reports, the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, which represents midsize phone companies, is advocating for broadband download speed to be defined within a range of 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. The slower standard would benefit phone companies with services slower than cable modems.

Certain wireless providers also stand to gain from a redefining of broadband. Clearwire in particular could benefit if wireless broadband download speed is designated as above 2 Mbps, since its WiMax network will qualify as broadband. Other wireless carriers have not planned major upgrades to their networks for before 2010, the Journal reports.

Along with tax credits, lawmakers are also considering government-backed grants for companies or local governments to build out broadband networks, according to the Journal.

The Telecommunications Industry Association, which represents equipment makers, is pushing for a $25 billion grant program for Internet service providers, the paper reports. Telecommunications companies would be unlikely to support proposals in which the money would instead go to state or local authorities, which would build broadband networks and open them up to competing service providers.

Some telecommunications firms earlier this month signaled their intent to be involved in shaping a national broadband strategy when they joined with public interest groups and other organizations to draw up goals for such a plan.

TechCrunch suggests that Facebook's chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, will shortly announce his candidacy to become California's attorney general in 2010. Given how poorly Facebook has handled privacy, it's difficult to see why California voters should assume Kelly would do better in the higher matters of public office.

Specifically, California's attorney general is charged with the following responsibilities:

The attorney general represents the people of California in civil and criminal matters before trial, appellate and the supreme courts of California and the United States. The attorney general also serves as legal counsel to state officers and, with few exceptions, to state agencies, boards and commissions...

The attorney general also assists district attorneys, local law enforcement, and federal and international criminal justice agencies in the administration of justice...

In addition, the attorney general establishes and operates projects and programs to protect Californians from fraudulent, unfair, and illegal activities that victimize consumers or threaten public safety, and enforces laws that safeguard the environment and natural resources.

Kelly is an experienced and competent attorney, having worked at Baker & Mckenzie and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosatti before joining Facebook. But if he's in any way implicated in Facebook's failed foray into consumer privacy (Beacon, anyone?), and he will be by virtue of throwing his hat in the campaign ring, he needs to answer for his involvement in Facebook's privacy faux-pas before California voters should vote him their trust.

He has answered critics before, and it's possible that being on the front line of electronic privacy issues actually makes him a better candidate than most, even despite missteps. But he first needs to demonstrate that he's done more good than harm relative to protecting people from "fraudulent, unfair, and illegal activities" on Facebook before attempting to protect the broader California public as attorney general.

It's very possible that he can, but I've yet to hear that campaign speech.

Broadband development should not be stifled by federal regulation that intends to make networks more "neutral," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is arguing through two papers released Monday.

The papers, the first in a series of five that will examine the impact of broadband on certain user groups and for certain purposes, argue that the federal government's current loose regulatory structure has enabled broadband to become a "life-altering tool" both for the general population and for senior citizens specifically.

"An estimated $60 billion has been invested in broadband infrastructure by the communications industry this year," William Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber's vice president for environment, technology, and regulatory affairs, said in a statement. "Given these turbulent economic times, federal policy must continue to support this high-level of investment. This will spur job growth, innovation, and consumer choice."

The lack of Net neutrality laws or other federally-mandated regulations has spurred telecommunications companies to heavily invest in broadband infrastructure, according to the first paper, "Network Effects: An Introduction to Broadband Technology & Regulation." (PDF)

"Moving away from a pro-investment model would halt this organic progress and would have a devastating effect on the U.S. economy, investment, and innovation," it says. "Moreover, policies aimed at management practices are unnecessary and would serve only to chill innovation at the network level and at its edges, resulting in net consumer welfare losses."

Network owners need to be able to manage content flow in order to prioritize important data like 911 voice over IP calls, according to the paper, authored by Charles Davidson and Michael Santorelli of the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute at New York Law School. The need to manage networks will only grow as the amount of services offered online grows, it says.

"A variety of proposals have been put forward to regulate the broadband sector under the guise of making the physical infrastructure more 'neutral' to the data flowing over it," the paper says, but such regulations would lessen incentives for investment in broadband and slow the development of content and applications.

The paper recommends legislators focus on targeting broadband funding in regions where it is most needed, reforming the Universal Service Fund, and embracing public-private partnerships to promote broadband deployment.

The second paper, "The Impact of Broadband on Senior Citizens," (PDF) recommends similar support for broadband deployment as well as educating seniors on the usefulness of broadband and expanding their options for getting online. If obstacles for adoption are removed, the paper says, broadband could transform senior life and senior care, just as the senior population is set to expand significantly.

The chamber will later release papers examining the impact of broadband deployment on telemedicine, education, and people with disabilities.

President-elect Barack Obama has named four scientists who will lead his science and technology team, choosing experts in climate change, cancer, and genetic research to chair the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

"Whether it's the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create 21st century jobs, today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation," Obama said in his weekly radio address Saturday.

John Holdren, a leading voice on climate change, will serve as assistant to the president for science and technology, as well as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

(Credit: Woods Hole Research Center)

Obama named John Holdren co-chair of PCAST, as well as assistant to the president for science and technology, and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. As president and director of the Woods Hole Research Center, which puts forth policy and science initiatives on climate change and other environmental issues, Holdren is a leading voice on climate change issues.

Holdren is also director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and was a member of Bill Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology. Since 2002, he has co-chaired the National Commission on Energy Policy.

Obama also named genetic researcher Harold Varmus to co-chair PCAST. Varmus won a Nobel Prize in 1989 for his discoveries relating to the genetic basis of cancer, and he served as the director of the National Institutes of Health from 1993 to 1999. Since 2000, he has served as president and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. As chairman of the board of directors for the Public Library of Science, Varmus has advocated for the open access of biomedical papers.

Eric Lander, one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project, was also named as a co-chair of PCAST. In 1990, Lander founded the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research, which is now part of the Broad Institute. Lander is a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as Harvard Medical School.

Obama is nominating Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist from Oregon State University, to serve as administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Lubchenco's areas of expertise include climate change and sustainability science, and she was a two-term appointee to the National Science Board, which advises the president and Congress. She is past president of the International Council for Science and is a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Citing privacy concerns, a group of Japanese lawyers and professors have asked Google to shut down its Street View feature of Google Maps in the country, according to a Reuters report.

"We strongly suspect that what Google has been doing deeply violates a basic right that humans have," said Yasuhiko Tajima, a professor of constitutional law at Sophia University in Tokyo and head of the Campaign Against Surveillance Society, in an interview with Reuters.

"It is necessary to warn society that an IT (information technology) giant is openly violating privacy rights, which are important rights that the citizens have, through this service," he said.

Google didn't immediately comment on its plans for Japan but directed attention to its Street View privacy site, which says the service respects people's privacy.

"Street View only features photographs taken on public property and the imagery is no different from what a person can readily see or capture walking down the street. Imagery of this kind is available in a wide variety of formats for cities all around the world. We are committed to respecting local laws and norms in each country in which we launch Street View," the page says. "We make it easy for users to ask to have photographs of themselves, their children, their cars or their houses completely removed from the product, even where the images have already been blurred."

Google began blurring faces in Street View in May.

When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was created, it was supposed to find a way to respond to serious "cybercrises." "The department will gather and focus all our efforts to face the challenge of cyberterrorism," President Bush said when signing the legislation in November 2002.

More than six years later, and after spending more than $400 million on cybersecurity, DHS still has not accomplished that stated goal. "We need to have a plan tailored for a cybercrisis," DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Thursday.

Chertoff told a conference in Washington, D.C., that creating such a plan first requires "a clear awareness of exactly what the dimension of the threat was," meaning the ability to detect intrusions in real time, and probably means taking some of the existing plans for physical attacks and "adapt them and some of the basic principles" to electronic threats.

"I do think that we have work to do in figuring out how to tailor something specific for cybersecurity in the same way that we've done it for natural disasters or terrorist attacks or things of that sort," he added.

Because only a few weeks are left in the Bush administration, any further work will be left to the administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

The Bush administration has spent $115 million on DHS's National Cybersecurity Division for the 2008 fiscal year. Totaling the budgets for the previous four years yields approximately $300 million, or approximately $415 million over five years including 2008.

The cybersecurity division has been plagued by a lack of leadership, with industry representatives unsure of who to contact. The revolving door of leadership within the division prompted a cybersecurity commission to recommend that leadership be moved to the White House, something that DHS opposes.

"There's no one place in charge," said Andy Singer, principal of the cybercampaign team for Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the sponsors of Thursday's conference. "Who does Bank of America go to if they're having a problem?"

Even by Washington standards, the turnover of various cybersecurity "czars" has been remarkable: Richard Clarke, a veteran of the Clinton and first Bush administrations, left the post with a lucrative book deal. Clarke was followed in quick succession by Howard Schmidt, then Amit Yoran and Robert Liscouski. Another DHS cybersecurity official, Jerry Dixon said after he left that "nothing is happening" in the department in this area.

Secretary Michael Chertoff

(Credit: Department of Homeland Security)

Along the way, DHS was regularly receiving poor grades--including an F--on computer security report cards released by a congressional oversight committee.

Not helping was what Chertoff once described as "initial concerns" about raising the profile of cybersecurity in a bureaucratic culture that was focused on physical threats, and the decision to leave the top DHS cybersecurity post open for over a year. Greg Garcia got the job in September 2006 and is still there, as is Undersecretary Robert Jamison, who oversees "infrastructure protection."

Part of the problem for DHS, though, is out of its immediate control. The commercial Internet has been built by private companies, who constantly monitor their systems for attacks and know the status and performance of their networks much better than a Washington bureaucracy ever could. Moreover, monitoring of private networks by government agencies raises serious security and privacy concerns.

This is what Chertoff said on Thursday:

I want to begin by saying that I'm very sensitive to the fact that the culture of the Internet, as well as the actual architecture, is one which does not lend itself to government regulation and mandates... We are willing to provide capability to those who want us to provide that capability, but we don't make you do it. And if someone doesn't want to have the government involved and they want to live outside of any kind of government assistance or cooperation, I don't know that we would necessarily be wise to try to make them do it...

And that's why I'm really emphatic about the need to not make this a mandatory system but rather a system where we create opportunities for people. I actually think most people in the private sector will take those opportunities and will accept our invitation. But I also know if we try to make it something that we push onto people, the backlash we are going to see will dwarf of the controversies that we've seen with respect to what we've done in the communications field over the last eight years...

And then we're behind the eight ball because we're explaining that we're really not Big Brother. A classic example, before my time, was a search engine--I think it was called Carnivore, which the FBI came up with. And I think it made a lot of sense, but the word "Carnivore" was the absolute wrong thing to have in that program.

Chertoff also said that Bush is has been briefed on these topics as recently as the last week--"he's very, very concerned about making sure this vulnerability is adequately reduced and protected"--and said that the next generation of DHS' early-warning system for cyberincidents, called Einstein 3, would go live in the next six months.

Part of the purpose of arranging this week's cyberthreat simulation conference was to help all the relevant parties develop a plan of response in the event in a cyberattack--something that the DHS National Cyber Response Coordination Group has not accomplished.

Booz Allen Hamilton's Singer said it's too early to tell whether DHS will be able to sufficiently manage cybersecurity.

"If you look at some of the constructs in DHS--they have Undersecretary Jameson and the NCSC, the NCSD--it's a pretty tough task to make sure all of those pieces fit together," he said. "Whenever there's people involved, you always have the potential for seams, for things to fall through the cracks. On the first day of the simulation, people were looking for government to solve problems, but by the end of today, people were saying government can't save everything."

CNET's Stephanie Condon contributed to this report