Brookings

Summer 2016, the United Nations declared that it considers the Internet to be a human right. Specifically, an addition was made to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Section 32 adds “The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet” and another 15 recommendations that cover the rights of those who work in and rely on Internet access. It also applies to women, girls, and those heavily impacted by the digital divide. In a world where

Internet shutdowns are increasing year to year, it is important that the right steps are taken to improve the relationship between governments and citizens and to uphold all human rights. The UN could advance the cause of universal Internet access by using the sustainable development goals as a stepping stone; those whose livelihoods depend on Internet access or who fear that their access will be terminated will have the most to gain. The 193 signatory countries have already committed to improving Internet quality, sustainability, and accessibility—a first step to Internet access truly being treated as a human right.

The new Internet service provider privacy rules mandate that consumers must affirmatively opt-in to allow ISP sharing of their app and browsing histories, mobile location data, and any other identifiable information that can be gleaned from internet use. Otherwise, ISPs will be prohibited from undertaking such activities. Behavioral information is the fuel for online targeted advertising. This allows advertisers to tailor their messages and sales offers to consumers who best fit their buying profiles. To advertisers, aggregating real-time information online about consumer interest has significant economic value.

For now, better consumer education should inform the general public about when and how to opt in or opt out, and which entities offer which option. Here, an impactful public service advertising campaign coordinated by The Advertising Council, the non-profit organization and the largest producer of public service programs in the United States, may be an important next step.

Brookings Vice President Darrell West announced that Dr Nicol Turner-Lee has joined the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program. Dr Turner-Lee will serve as a fellow in the program’s Center for Technology Innovation and as a contributor to TechTank. Dr Turner-Lee comes to Brookings from the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC). She served as vice president and chief research and policy officer during her tenure, and led the design and implementation of their research, policy, and advocacy agendas. Dr. Turner-Lee’s most notable research was her development of the first national minority broadband adoption study, empirical research that was conducted during her tenure at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and cited in the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan. At the Center for Technology Innovation, Dr. Turner-Lee will research public policy designed to enable more equitable access to technology across the US and to harness its power to create change in communities around the world.

Job creation has been a central issue in 2016’s presidential campaign, particularly how best to increase the number of available higher-paying jobs. This challenge is two-fold. First, federal policies must offer greater support for innovative technology-based sectors where the US can compete effectively in global markets. Clean-tech energy businesses promise to be an important source of new employment, with the tangible benefit of addressing other top national priorities—lowering our dependence on foreign oil, reducing our nation’s carbon footprint, and slowing climate change’s impact on the environment. Second, massive job retraining with significant federal funding will help workers without the necessary skills for employment in growing sectors remain part of an essential middle-class economy.

The importance of workforce retraining is underscored in recent reports from the Pew Research Center. Its analysis of government jobs data found that for the past several decades, employment has been rising faster in jobs requiring higher levels of preparation – that is, more education, training and experience. Policymakers should look at these separate Pew Center analyses in tandem—two critical variables in any equation for sustainable job growth. Unless many more adults move into the “digitally ready” category for e-learning, necessary job retraining may not benefit workers in labor sectors that are being left behind.

In June 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a non-binding resolution condemning the intentional shutdown or disruption of domestic Internet access. Despite the support of many member states, governments such as India, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iraq, Brazil, the Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Syria, Turkey, and Algeria have shut down Internet or mobile service, sometimes for an extended period. In my new paper, I detail the economic costs to countries that intentionally disrupt citizens’ digital access. I found 81 short-term Internet shutdowns that occurred in 19 countries between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016, and estimated that such obstruction cost the global economy at least US$2.4 billion. During the past year, India lost $968 million from Internet shutdowns, Saudi Arabia lost $465 million, Morocco lost $320 million, Iraq lost $209 million, Brazil lost $116 million, and the Republic of the Congo lost $72 million, among other nations.

[Commentary] In recent years, much of our domestic attention on broadband development has focused on residential service, with the National Broadband Plan goal of having 100 million Americans with 100 megabits per second (Mbps) network capability by the year 2020. This aspiration is supported by our nation’s status as one of five countries that I have termed top-tier Net Vitality global leaders (along with France, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom). Their prominence in broadband network metrics, along with achievements in other critical aspects of the broadband ecosystem -applications/content and devices – make them examples worth emulating.

But it’s important to highlight the smaller steps of lesser-developed countries since they are more likely to be perceived as role models by other countries in the same category. Net Vitality can and should be a scalable concept. Some countries, including the United States, may be able to take giant strides over an extended period of time. Others, like Kenya, may take smaller, more rapid steps toward broadband ecosystem development. In a localized context, this may represent nothing short of a significant leap ahead.

[Brotman is a nonresident senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation within Governance Studies at Brookings]

By the end of September, both the United States and the world at large will reach an important Internet milestone—the handoff of American oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions that are needed to maintain the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS). Legislative intervention still may be pursued with so little time left, but the burden of proof on why these conclusions are incorrect should now be shifted to those who assert that the US is acting hastily or irresponsibly in making this rational change.

[Commentary] On July 28, Facebook issued a Safety Check in response to a shooting in a Chicago (IL) neighborhood, asking its users located in the area to verify if they were safe. Rather than wait for one of its employees to issue a Safety Check in the wake of a crisis, Facebook has recently begun using community-generated Safety Checks. These alerts are generated when a spike in user statuses tells the algorithm that there’s a crisis underway, which Facebook can follow-up with an employee-initiated Safety Check. As Facebook strives to make its crisis alert features faster and more precise, it gains use as a real-time crisis management tool rather than simply a crisis news source.

Using Facebook’s unique platform, Safety Check offers a clear advantage over inadequate government crisis alert mechanisms. First, “check in” messages instantly relay a tacit “stay away” to nearby citizens, increasing their emergency situational awareness. Second, Safety Check offers an alternative to telephone networks, which often jam up during crises. Third, today’s crises affect victims from many different nations, which makes reporting even more chaotic. With its centralized network of over 1.13 billion daily users, Facebook fills the need for a global crisis communication tool. By allowing users to quickly communicate that they are okay to loved ones or friends, Facebook can absorb some of the work of overburdened government crisis-response programs, allowing them to focus on other critical tasks like searching for missing persons. Such help would be welcomed by the government: in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, the State Department urged citizens to check in with family, not to contact the US Embassy. In the immediate wake of a crisis, the government lacks Facebook’s capacity to update billions of people on a person’s status.

The words and language used every day reveal who we are and what we want. They translate our internal thoughts and emotions to others as means of communication. In our previous posts, we analyzed candidates’ Facebook data to understand topics being discussed and how candidates interacted with the public. Here’s a discussion of the evolution of the leading Republican and Democratic candidates’ campaign on their Facebook pages since they announced their candidacy.

We have deepened our analysis to include linguistic cues to understand the personal and psychological attributes of commenters. Reactions, linguistic, and psychological indices of candidates’ commenters reveal interesting findings. Democrats’ commenters scored the highest scores in analytical and anxiety indices. Republicans’ commenters scored the highest scores on clout, authenticity, anger, and sadness indices. The value in understanding these commenter attributes is to shed light on the type of supporters each candidate attracts, campaign strategies that affect supporters of opposition (i.e. email controversy and tax returns) and lastly, which events trigger the commenters’ tone. This gives us a clue of what to expect going into the final period of the 2016 elections.

[Commentary] As metropolitan economies of all shapes and sizes prepare for a future with gigabit-speed broadband, one of the biggest costs to deploying a fiber network is preparing utility poles to carry a new fiber line. Since multiple cables typically attach to poles—think about cable television, telephone, etc.—a professional must reorganize them before attaching a new cable. This process, known as “make ready”, has become the next policy battleground in the fiber-dependent “game of gigs.”

Why is this issue important to cities? Most mayors, in my experience, would like to ensure that all their businesses and residents have access to affordable, abundant bandwidth. The issue is that most don’t believe their cities have such broadband today. And while some might consider the city offering its own broadband service to meet that need, most look to market forces and private capital to do so. What cities need to improve local broadband is a new math: one that better balances the high costs of deployment and operations against the risk of returns that don’t match costs. Revisiting the relationship between access to poles and multiple dwelling units and the deployment of next generation networks, as I have noted before, ought to be on the agenda for the next administration. But cities don’t need to wait. They should carefully follow the pioneering efforts of Louisville and Nashville to enable more efficient pole access. Moreover, to the extent they have jurisdiction, all cities should be exploring any methods that can lower the cost of deploying and operating future-proof broadband networks.