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Alec Ross serves as Senior Advisor for Innovation in the Office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In this role, Alec is tasked with maximizing the potential of technology in service of America’s diplomatic and development goals. Prior to his service at the State Department, Alec worked on the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team and served as Convener for Obama for America's Technology, Media & Telecommunications Policy Committee. In 2000, Alec Ross and three colleagues co-founded One Economy, a global nonprofit that uses innovative approaches to deliver the power of technology and information about education, jobs, health care and other vital issues to low-income people.
Diplomacy in a Digital World - Alec Ross - The Clinton School Speaker Series - Inspiring Ideas and Action
Internet Rights and Wrongs: Choices & Challenges in a Networked World
Thank you all very much and good afternoon. It is a pleasure, once again, to be back on the campus of the George Washington University, a place that I have spent quite a bit of time in all different settings over the last now nearly 20 years. I’d like especially to thank President Knapp and Provost Lerman, because this is a great opportunity for me to address such a significant issue, and one which deserves the attention of citizens, governments, and I know is drawing that attention. And perhaps today in my remarks, we can begin a much more vigorous debate that will respond to the needs that we have been watching in real time on our television sets. A few minutes after midnight on January 28 th , the internet went dark across Egypt.
"Au lieu de s' engager dans d'âpres discussions sur la manière de faire cesser une situation de quasi-monopole, existe-t-il des alternatives techniques à la gestion des noms de domaine par l' Icann ?" , s'interroge le chercheur Francis Muguet, auteur du projet de recherche "Net4D " ("Nouvelle génération de services de noms de domaine"). Sous contrat depuis mi-juillet auprès de l'Union internationale des télecommunications (UIT) à Genève, il propose d' utiliser les mêmes tuyaux techniques que le réseau Internet, c'est-à-dire le protocole IP, mais d' exploiter un paramètre inexploité, celui des "classes" , pour introduire de la concurrence dans le système des noms de domaine. Lorsqu'un internaute accède au réseau, un paramétrage invisible, réglé par défaut, utilise une classe "IN", gérée par l'Icann.
Les 65 000 concurrents de l'Icann
A year ago this January, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the stage at Washington's Newseum to tout an idea that her State Department had become very taken with: the Internet's ability to spread freedom and democracy. "We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them to advance democracy and human rights," she told the crowd, drawn from both the buttoned-up Beltway and chronically underdressed Silicon Valley. Call it the Internet Freedom Agenda: the notion that technology can succeed in opening up the world where offline efforts have failed.
Freedom.gov - By Evgeny Morozov
This report on a lecture at the LSE by Evgeny Morozov is by POLIS intern, Beth Lowell. From discussions of Iran’s “Twitter Revolution” to praise for Google’s decision to stop its censorship in China, the Internet is often heralded as a vital tool for democracy. The United States government in particular has long referred to the Internet as a beacon of hope, a great equalizing tool that has the potential to spread democratic practices across the globe by making information available to all. However, in his book The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World, Evengy Morozov steps back from the glow of all this Internet hope and optimism to ask: aren’t we missing something? During his LSE public lecture, Morozov opened with a confession: he used to be an Internet optimist too. A native of Belarus, Morozov was initially drawn to Internet idealism but was quickly disheartened when he saw that his work with NGOs and as a blogger was not, in his opinion, making much of a difference.
Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director » Blog Archive » Are We Ignoring the Dark Side of the Internet? Evgeny Morozov at LSE (Guest blog)
The Inside Story of How Facebook Responded to Tunisian Hacks - Alexis Madrigal - Technology
The social-media site's security team talks to The Atlantic -- revealing key details about a revolution that could become a parable for Internet activism. It was on Christmas Day that Facebook's Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan first noticed strange things going on in Tunisia. Reports started to trickle in that political-protest pages were being hacked. "We were getting anecdotal reports saying, 'It looks like someone logged into my account and deleted it,'" Sullivan said. For Tunisians, it was another run-in with Ammar, the nickname they've given to the authorities that censor the country's Internet.
“L'’Internet civilisé”, histoire d’un concept à géométrie variable
Le prochain sommet du G8 à Deauville, en mai, ne sera finalement pas consacré à la régulation d'Internet. C'était le souhait de Nicolas Sarkozy , avait fait savoir l'entourage du président de la République début janvier ; mais au final, cette question sera évoquée lors d'une réunion plus informelle en mai, avant une possible réunion du G20 à Cannes consacrée au droit d'auteur . Le fond du discours présidentiel a également légèrement évolué au cours du mois : "Nous allons mettre sur la table une question centrale, celle de l'Internet civilisé, je ne dis pas de l'internet régulé, je dis de l'internet civilisé" , a-t-il insisté lors de ses vœux au monde de l'éducation et de la culture . Si l'expression d'"Internet civilisé" est régulièrement apparue dans la rhétorique gouvernementale ces dernières années, elle est évoquée indistinctement pour critiquer les révélations de WikiLeaks ou la lutte contre le téléchargement illégal .
Google’s aggressive tactics have put it on top of the business world, and now the Internet giant is looking to leverage the high profile and sterling connections of its CEO to achieve similar power in the political sphere. Google boss Eric Schmidt is one of the nation’s most politically active business leaders — a man who uses the cachet of the company he leads, as well as his own charisma, to build strategic alliances in the Obama administration and on Capitol Hill. Schmidt, 55, grew up in Washington and returns frequently to visit his mother, who still lives in Northern Virginia. Those trips often double as chances to meet with President Barack Obama, chat with staffers at the Federal Communications Commission and meet with top lawmakers. Schmidt’s newly formed friendships in town have helped transform Google from a D.C. outsider into an Obama administration darling with growing clout in policy circles.
Google search: Political power - POLITICO.com Print View
The Digital Disruption
News & Events Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen discuss their article, "The Digital Disruption," from the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs . Author Interview Stephen Cook and Jared Cohen answer questions about the protests in Tunisia. The advent and power of connection technologies -- tools that connect people to vast amounts of information and to one another -- will make the twenty-first century all about surprises.
Google's corporate slogan – "Don't be evil" – has always bothered me. No one should "be" evil, of course. But why did Google need to spell out its determination to avoid Satan and all his works with such vehemence? When a husband declares to his wife that he would never dream of taking a mistress, or a chief executive interrupts a board meeting to announce that she isn't embezzling the company's funds, the audience is entitled to wonder if they're listening to the voice of a guilty conscience.
Google's arrogance presages a mighty fall | Nick Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer
Merrick Morton/Columbia Pictures Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and Rooney Mara as his girlfriend Erica in The Social Network How long is a generation these days? I must be in Mark Zuckerberg’s generation—there are only nine years between us—but somehow it doesn’t feel that way. This despite the fact that I can say (like everyone else on Harvard’s campus in the fall of 2003) that “I was there” at Facebook’s inception, and remember Facemash and the fuss it caused; also that tiny, exquisite movie star trailed by fan-boys through the snow wherever she went, and the awful snow itself, turning your toes gray, destroying your spirit, bringing a bloodless end to a squirrel on my block: frozen, inanimate, perfect—like the Blaschka glass flowers. Doubtless years from now I will misremember my closeness to Zuckerberg, in the same spirit that everyone in ’60s Liverpool met John Lennon.
Generation Why? by Zadie Smith
Google and Money! by Charles Petersen
Matthew Peyton/Getty Images/Space Adventures Google cofounder Sergey Brin, center, training in zero gravity for a future vacation in space, 2008 Google plays such a large part in so many of our “digital lives” that it can be startling to learn how much of the company’s revenues come from a single source. Almost everyone online relies on one Google service or another; personally I make semiregular use of Google Search, Gmail, Google Chat, Google Voice, Google Maps, Google Documents, Google Calendar, Google Buzz, Google Earth, Google Chrome, Google Reader, Google News, YouTube, Blogspot, Google Profiles, Google Alerts, Google Translate, Google Book Search, Google Groups, Google Analytics, and Google 411.Facebook could gain from foreign ownership
Reuters reported that Goldman Sachs will only allow non-US investors to take part in a private placement of Facebook shares because of "intense media coverage" in the US. Felix Salmon explains why in his column: Analysis & Opinion | Because of the media coverage Goldman could be accused of "front running their own private market" to evade securities laws.In his new book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom , Evgeny Morozov aims to prick the bubble of hyper-optimism that surrounds debates about the Internet’s role in advancing human freedom or civic causes. Morozov, a native of Belarus, is a tremendously gifted young cyber-policy scholar affiliated with Stanford University and the New America Foundation. He’s an expert on the interaction of digital technology and democracy and writes frequently on that topic for a variety of respected media outlets. In Net Delusion , as with many of his previous columns and essays , Morozov positions himself the ultimate Net “realist,” aiming to bring a dose of realpolitik to discussions about how much of a difference the Net and digital technologies make to advancing democracy and freedom. His depressing answer: Not much. Indeed, Morozov’s book is one big wet blanket on the theory that “technologies of freedom” can help liberate humanity from the yoke of repressive government.
Book Review: The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov
Cybersécurité : entretien avec N. Arpagian
Nicolas Arpagian a bien voulu répondre à mes questions. Pour mémoire, il est l'auteur d'un récent " que sais-je? " sur la cyberséurité, qui reprend l'essentiel de son ouvrage majeur sur le même sujet. J'avais rédigé une petite fiche de lecture sur l'ouvrage, qui m'a donné envie d'aller un peu plus loin. Tout ceci s'insère dans le thème du mois d' AGS , qui traite je vous le rappelle des questions de cyberstratégie. Nicolas ARPAGIANACTA
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