Does Free Press Coordinate Strategy with Google?

Posted by Richard Bennett

The ethics complaints against former Google lobbyist Andrew McLaughlin aren’t going away. Over a two-week period in February 2010, McLaughlin exchanged numerous emails with Free Press director Ben Scott, another prominent advocate for Net neutrality who has coordinated policy strategy with Google and attended joint meetings with Google at the FCC and White House on [...]

Pure Politics

Posted by Richard Bennett

OK, this has nothing much to do with broadband, but it’s certainly politics. CNN has called the Massachusetts Senate race for Scott Brown. Curt Schilling hasn’t made any comment on the outcome yet. politics, Massachusetts Senate Race FacebookTwitterDiggItTechnoratiDel.icio.us

Net Neutrality Regulations Coming

Posted by Richard Bennett

In FCC Chairman Genachowski’s long-anticipated statement on net neutrality rulemaking today, the Chairman made the claim that the Internet architecture is both unbiased and future-proof. However, as ITIF notes in a forthcoming report,

California Governor’s Race

Posted by Richard Bennett

We’re a year away from the primaries in the California governor’s race, and already candidates are dropping out: Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced on national television today that he would not be running for California governor in 2010 after flirting with a bid for higher office for months. While Antonio cited time with the [...]

Iranian Protests

Posted by Richard Bennett

Andrew Sullivan is the one-man, citizen journalism aggregator of the protests in Iran today. His collection of Tweets and YouTube videos convey the impression of a large-scale uprising that the government is trying to control with riot police, chemical weapons, and propaganda. It certainly appears that the uprising is gathering steam and that the government [...]

What’s happening in Iran?

Posted by Richard Bennett

BusinessWeek isn’t buying the story that Twitter is the essential organizing tool for the protests in Iran over suspicious election results: “I think the idea of a Twitter revolution is very suspect,” says Gaurav Mishra, co-founder of 20:20 WebTech, a company that analyzes the effects of social media. “The amount of people who use these [...]

Finally, nominees for the FCC

Posted by Richard Bennett

Amy Schatz of the WSJ reports that a deal has been struck to move the new nominees into the FCC: Work has slowed to a crawl at the Federal Communications Commission, since President Barack Obama’s pick to be chairman, Julius Genachowski, is still awaiting Senate confirmation. But the logjam could be broken soon: Republicans appear [...]

The Privacy Hearing

Posted by Richard Bennett

Here’s some news on Boucher’s privacy campaign: It’s not clear how broad a law Boucher has in mind, though it’s likely to be some codification of generally accepted data-privacy practices. Those include telling people when you collect data and why, letting them choose to join in or not, using the data only for the reason [...]

What I Did This Morning

Posted by Richard Bennett

While California was sleeping, I enjoyed a bit of broadband politics in the heart of the beast, testifying at the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet on Communications Networks and Consumer Privacy: Recent Developments The Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet held a hearing titled, “Communications Networks and Consumer Privacy: Recent Developments” [...]

Obama’s Missed Opportunity

Posted by Richard Bennett

According to National Journal, Susan Crawford is joining the Obama administration in a significant new role: Internet law expert Susan Crawford has joined President Barack Obama’s lineup of tech policy experts at the White House, according to several sources. She will likely hold the title of special assistant to the president for science, technology, and [...]