My good friend, Marvin Ammori, is hosting the University of Nebraska Space & Telecom Law Program's Telecom and Space Conference in DC tomorrow. It's an all-star lineup and certain to contain a good amount of interesting debate. I'll be there for an afternoon panel and look forward to the day's discussions.

“Looking Back at the Past Eight Years, Looking Toward the Next Four”

November 13, 2008
Washington Court Hotel
525 New Jersey Avenue
Washington, D.C.

8:45 a.m. Welcome (Matt Schaefer, Director, UNL Space & Telecom Law Program)

8:50 a.m. Opening Remarks FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein

9:00 a.m. Morning Keynote Discussion
* Richard Wiley, Partner, Wiley Rein, former Chairman, FCC
* Ben Scott, Policy Director, Free Press
* Cecilia Kang, Washington Post (moderator)

10:00-11:00 a.m. Wireless Issues
* Fred Campbell, President, Wireless Communications Association & former Wireless Bureau Chief, FCC
* William Webb, Head, Ofcom Research & Development (U.K.)
* Terri Natoli, Vice-President, Regulatory Affairs, Clearwire
* Robert Pepper, Cisco (invited)

11:20 a.m. - 12:20 p.m. Network Neutrality
* Marvin Ammori, Professor of Law, U. of Nebraska College of Law & former General Counsel, Free Press (moderator)
* Frannie Wellings, Telecom Counsel, US Sen. Byron Dorgan
* Rebecca Arbogast, Principal, Stifel Nicolaus,
* Markham Erickson, Executive Director, Open Internet Coalition
* James Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs, AT&T

12:30 p.m. Lunch

2:00-3:00 p.m. International Issues
* Tricia Paoletta, Harris, Wiltshire, & Grannis
* Ambassador Richard Russell, US Ambassador to ITU WRC-07
* Helen Domenici, International Bureau Chief, FCC
* Jonathan McHale, USTR

3:20-4:20 p.m. Broadband Policy/Universal Access
* Sascha Meinrath, Research Director, Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation (moderator)
* Derek Turner, Research Director, Free Press
* Christopher Libertelli, Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs, Skype
* Link Hoewing, Vice President – Public Policy Development and Corporate Responsibility, Verizon
* Scott Reiter, Director of Industry Affairs, National Telecommunications Cooperative Association—The Voice of Rural Telecommunications

I've been on the coordinating committee for the upcoming Computers, Freedom, & Privacy Conference which is taking place up in New Haven, CT later this month. The schedule is now just about finalized and it has shaped up to be an amazing group of intellectuals and experts.

Here's more information for anyone who's interested in these issues:

COMPUTERS, FREEDOM, AND PRIVACY: TECHNOLOGY POLICY '08
http://cfp2008.org/
18th Annual CFP conference
May 20-23, 2008
Omni Hotel
New Haven, CT

Conference Blog: http://cfp08.blogspot.com/
Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?id=683858084
Conference Wiki: http://cfp.wikia.com/wiki/CFP08
LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/61857/7885844E0F9D

Hotel Conference Discount Deadline: May 1, 2008
Early Bird Registration: Fri., May 2, 2008
YJoLT Tech Policy Essay Contest: Mon., May 5, 2008

ABOUT CFP: TECHNOLOGY POLICY `08

What should the technology policy priorities of the next administration be?

As the choice of presidential candidates becomes clearer and election year moves towards a comparison of the candidates' platforms on the issues, technology policy is increasingly relevant to the forefront of public debate. In the areas of privacy, intellectual property, cybersecurity, telecommunications, and freedom of speech, topics that were once confined to experts now appear in the mainstream of political issues. We now know that our decisions about technology policy are being made at a time as the architectures of our information and communication technologies are still being built.

This year, the 18th annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference is focusing on those issues at the forefront of technology policy this election year. With plenary panels on the "National Security State and the Next Administration" and "The 21st Century Panopticon?" the discussions taking place look towards our present and future priorities.

CFP: Technology Policy '08 is an opportunity to participate in shaping those issues being made into laws and regulations and those technological infrastructures being developed. Policies ranging from spyware and national security, to ISP filtering and patent reform, e-voting to electronic medical records, and more will be addressed by expert panels of technologists, policymakers, business leaders, and activists. The panel topics are listed below and full panel descriptions are available on the conference website at:

http://www.cfp2008.org/wiki/index.php/Program.

The CFP: Technology Policy `08 conversation has already begun in the virtual spaces connected to the conference. Even if you are unable to attend the conference this year, there are several opportunities to participate remotely. The guiding principles that ought to guide our policies are being debated on the conference blog. Social networking groups on Facebook and LinkedIn are providing new spaces for the CFP community to meet and discuss. The Yale Journal of Law and Technology is hosting a call for essays, on the priorities of the next administration, with more details below.

We look forward to seeing you in New Haven on May 20-23.

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Plenary Sessions
Presidential Technology Policy: Priorities for the Next Executive
The 21st Century Panopticon?
The National Security State and the Next Adminstration

Tutorials
A Short History of Privacy
Constitutional Law in Cyberspace
e-Deceptive Campaign Practices: Elections 2.0
Maintaining Privacy While Accessing On-line Information

Panel Sessions
Activism and Education Using Social Networks
Breaking the Silence: Iranians Find a Voice on the Internet
Charismatic Content: Wikis, Social Networks, and the Future of
User-Generated Content
Filtering Out Copyright Infringement: Possibilities, Practicalities, and
Legalities
Filtering and Censorship in Europe
Hate Speech and Oppression in Cyberspace
Interoperability at the Crossroads?: The "Liberal Order" versus
Fragmentation
Law, Regulation, and Software Licensing for the Electronic Medical Record
Measuring Global Threats to Internet Freedom
Network Neutrality: Beyond the Slogans
New Challenges for Spyware Policy
Patents: The Bleeding Edge of Technology Policy
Privacy, Reputation, and the Management of Online Communities
Rights & Responsibilities for Software Programs?
States as Incubators of Change
"The Transparent Society:" Ten Years Later
Towards Trustworthy e-Voting: An Open Source Approach?

CALL FOR ESSAYS

Yale Journal of Law & Technology Call for Essays on the Technology Policy of the New Administration.
Deadline: Monday, May 5th

The Yale Journal of Law & Technology (YJoLT) is seeking essay-length submissions concerning the technology policy platform of the new American presidential administration. Essays selected for publication will appear in the Fall Issue of YJoLT (publication date November 2008).

Ideal submissions will discuss the priorities and guiding principles that American technology policy should follow. Submissions analyzing a particular technology policy issue in depth will also be accepted.

Essays of less than 5,000 words are preferred. Please submit all essays to yjolt.submissions@gmail.com. Please include the text "CFP Essay" in the subject line of the email. The authors of essays selected for publication will be notified on a rolling basis. Any questions can be directed to Lara Rogers, lara.rogers@yale.edu.

CONFERENCE FUNDING FOR JOURNALISTS

The Yale Law School Law and Media Program (LAMP) announces an opportunity for journalists to receive full funding to attend CFP: Technology Policy 08.

CFP: Technology Policy 08 will begin with a full day of tutorials and programming specifically geared toward journalists writing about information technology and policy, followed by a networking reception for journalists and other participants in the Law and Media Program.

We invite you to take advantage of this opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of US technology policy in the information age.

Journalists writing on privacy, intellectual property, telecommunications and cyberlaw are encouraged to apply for conference funding, which will include travel, hotel, meals and any registration fees for the full conference.

To apply, please send a cover letter explaining your interest in the program, along with your resume and three writing samples (by e-mail and hard copy) to Tracey Parr (tracey.parr@yale.edu), Yale Law School, P.O. Box 208215, New Haven, CT 06520-8215, by March 31, 2008. Up to twenty journalists will receive conference funding. Applicants accepted for conference funding will be notified by April 4, 2008.

Today and tomorrow you can catch me at the Politics Online Conference. Politics online is equal parts politics, technology and geekery. Reading through the program, it seems like folks have just discovered Web2.0 -- I'm hoping the actual presentations and discussions will go far beyond the cliche. One of the problems in these sorts of conferences is that the tech parts are watered down for the wonks and the policy oversimplified for the geeks. It sure would be a breath of fresh air to attend a gathering that managed to solve the problem.

[UPDATE1] Well, we're off to a roaring start -- spending time to talk about and briefly explain such "new" technologies as RFID, IPv6, and UWB. I hate it when my fears of oversimplification are realized (that said, the speakers did do a good job of making the technological explanation accessible to folks who'd never heard of them before). My favorite myth thus far has been that hackers will be able to hack RFID tags to extract data from them that doesn't actually exist (e.g., that a hacker could figure out whether a product with an RFID tag was made using sweatshop labor -- as if there's some sort of "sweatshop" bit embedded on RFID tags). Obviously folks will hack these things (they already are), but not in those ways.

This week I'm in Washington, DC for the Freedom to Connect Conference and to talk with congressional staff about the need for research projects like COMMONS. I just finished up a panel where I gave a presentation on cooperative networking (AKA the COMMONS Project).

Today is the Media Policy Research Pre-Conference in Memphis Tennessee. I'm leading the Net Neutrality and Internet Regulation Working Group and will be moderating a session this afternoon. In addition, my colleague, Victor Pickard, and I will be presenting our paper The New Network Neutrality during the morning plenary session.

I've spent the last couple days at the MuniWireless.com conference. A group of us got around to critiquing the technologies and practices of the crème de la crème in this market. As is often the case, the focus was on encryption and security (or the entire lack there-of) in most people's everyday practices. As an example, one conference participant decided to run Ethereal and see what was being sent in plain text over the network.

As someone who has often been mocked for running my e-mail through an ssh tunnel and using OTR on my instant messager client. But after seeing the results from just 28 minutes of Ethereal, it was downright scary...

Logins and passwords, various chats, names, private info, jokes about threatening the families of vendors clients if they didn't buy their product. You name it, it was there -- thousands and thousands of pieces of private information.

At a time when everyone is talking about security this and security that, so few of the conference participants were actually being secure in their (often very) private Internet use.

Today & tomorrow, I'm blogging from the Alternative Telecom Policy Forum in Ottawa Canada. I gave a plenary session last night on Community and Municipal Wireless Networking and the COMMONS Project (to create a collaborative fiber peering network among participating networks) -- hope to have the slides online soon. Meanwhile, we just heard from Sheila Copps, former minister of Canadian Heritage -- my good friend Michael Lenczner blogs about it here.

If you'd like to "join" the forum -- live video, audio and (occassionally snarky) commentary is publicly available here.

UPDATE01: Alison Powell just put up some great thoughts on Copp's comments here.

UPDATE02: Sheila Copp's presentation is available for download at http://www.privaterra.org/~rguerra/copps-ottawa.ppt and below.

UPDATE 03: Monica Aure from the Canadian Conference of the Arts reminds us that current telecom regulatory processes that might help the public interest mirror the twelve-step procedure of the U.K.’s Sir
Humphrey Appleby when trying to delay initiatives until after the election -- Appleby advised his Minister that the best way to delay taking action on a file was to initiate:

1. informal discussions
2. a draft proposal
3. preliminary study
4. a discussion document
5. in-depth study
6. a revised proposal
7. a policy statement
8. a strategy statement
9. discussion of a strategy
10. circulation of an implementation plan
11. revision of the implementation plan
12. Cabinet agreement.

UPDATE04: Sascha's presentation, "LANs, MANs, and Beyond: The COMMONS Project," is now available online.

I'll be kicking off the Alternative Telecommunications Policy Forum in Ottawa, Canada this Thursday, October 19, 2006. Alt Telecom is a self-styled summit of "policy experts, community groups, public interest advocates, and academics" gathering together "to discuss and debate the future of telecommunications policy and regulation," and it's shaping up to be a wicked-good time. Right afterwards I'm heading to the MuniWireless Conference in Minneapolis -- the highlight for me is going to be the Sunday Digital Inclusion Day.

Here's a synopsis of Alt Telecom:

Alternative Telecommunications Policy Forum: A citizen-centred, community-oriented perspective on telecommunications policy and regulation.

As the federal government considers the TPRP recommendations, a window of opportunity exists to influence proposed changes to Canada's telecommunications policy and regulatory landscape.

The two-day Alternative Telecommunications Policy Forum will bring together telecommunications policy experts, community groups, public interest advocates, trade unionists, and academics to discuss and debate the future of telecommunications policy and regulation as they impact on the lives of Canadians and their communities.

The Forum will offer informative panels and discussions on a variety of topics, and will provide an opportunity for representatives from diverse telecommunications counter-publics to network and organize as we go forward. The Forum will produce a final report to be forwarded to the Minister of Industry, Hon. Maxime Bernier.

Among the topics to be addressed by keynotes and panelists are:

- Telecommunications and the Public Good: Are market forces the answer?
- Municipal broadband: An idea whose times has come?
- The 'Net Neutrality' debate and what it means for Canada
- Digital opportunities for whom? Creating ICT programs that work for Canadian Communities
- From consultation to engagement: how can we get Ottawa to listen?
- Foreign ownership limits in Canadian telecommunications
- Rethinking institutions of regulation: Democratizing the institutions of telecommunications regulation and governance

The Alternative Telecommunications Policy Forum will be of interest to community networks; voluntary sector organizations; civil servants and parliamentarians; labour unions; women's groups; journalists; disability advocates; telecommunications consumer groups, telecommunications researchers; academics and municipalities.

The Forum is being organized by the Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN), a multi-year project funded by SSHRC whose goals are to bring together community informatics researchers, community networking practitioners and government policy specialists from across Canada to document and assess the achievements of community-based ICT initiatives in the context of, among other things, the main Canadian government programs promoting the development, public accessibility and use of internet services.

I'm one of the organizers for the upcoming MuniWireless Conference -- it's going to be a fantastic time. Here's some info (on the conference generally and on some of the sessions I've organized):

Join us at the Muniwireless Silicon Valley conference on June 19-21, 2006 in Santa Clara, California. We will be focusing on the learnings from cities and counties whose networks have gone live, the applications that local governments can use on these networks, the ways they can bridge the digital divide, and rich ecosystem that is forming around these networks.

We have in-depth pre-conference seminars on June 19 for those who wish to delve into the details of planning and deploying networks, drafting RFPs and integrating local government applications into the networks. On the main conference day, we will address privacy issues, free versus paid Internet access, community networks, federal policy, the entry of new players such as cable companies and telecoms operators, digital inclusion, and others.

Go to http://www.mw06sv.com to register. More conference highlights are available here.

Here are some of the sessions I've been organizing:

Open Source, Open Hardware
An "open" discussion on state of the art Open technologies.

Moderator:
Sascha Meinrath, Founder & Project Coordinator, CUWiN

Panelists:
Richard MacKinnon, Founder, Austin Wireless
Michael Lenczner, Founder, Ile Sans Fil/WiFiDog
Sanjit Biswas, Network Administrator, MIT Roofnet & Co-Founder and President, Meraki Networks
Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager, Google

Community Wireless Initiatives
How do community and municipal wireless initiatives differ? What common traits do they share? What can we learn from highly successful community wireless initiatives that help us to develop, implement, and expand municipal wireless networks? Innovators in community wireless networking will share their experiences, best practices, and lessons learned.

Moderator:
Jeff Perlstein, Executive Director, Media Alliance

Panelists:
Becca Daggett, Director of the Municipal Telecommunications Project, Institute for Local Self-Reliance
Richard MacKinnon, Founder, Austin Wireless
Matt Rantanen, Director of Technology, Tribal Digital Village
Josh Breitbart, Communications Director, Media Tank

Social Networking and Multimedia Services
Wireless networks don't just network geographic locations, they connect individuals to one-another -- allowing unparalleled networking and multimedia service opportunities. From geolocational applications to peer-to-peer information dissemination to participatory multi-media production -- leaders from the field will discuss the social and economic implications of these new technologies.

Moderator:
Andrew Rasiej, Advisory Board, FON

Speakers:
Michael Lenczner, Founder, Ile Sans Fil/WiFiDog
Paul Bragiel, CEO, Meetro
Sean Savage, CEO, Placesite

Broadband Policy in the Public Interest
How can national telecom policies and regulations better serve US residents? What are the latest developments in Washington, DC? What initiatives and coalitions exist who are working on behalf of the general public? What are the next steps and actionable items that we should be working on to protect our right to freely communicate?

Moderator:
Michael Calabrese, Vice President, New America Foundation

Panelists:
Harold Feld, Senior Vice President, Media Access Project
Adam Green, Civic Communications Director, MoveOn.org Civic Action
Tim Karr, Campaign Director, Free Press
Nicole Turner-Lee, Vice President, One Economy

I think you'll agree that the MuniWireless Conference is shaping up to be an extraordinary event.

Yesterday and today I've been at two one-day conferences here in Springfield, Illinois. Speaking about the Community Wireless Emergency Response Initiative, public policy, broadband and community Internet projects. Meeting up with a number of great folks and having great conversations with folks: Gaston from the Illinois Department of Human Services, Jim and Brad from Heartland Communications, Steven from the Lt. Gov's Office, Bruce from SimDesk, Andy from the Digital Workforce Education Society, Bob from Net2Community, Michael from the Association for Community Networks, Layton from Midwest Technology Access Group, and many others.

The Illinois Community Technology Conference is an interesting mix of policy-makers and practitioners. Though the sessions themselves are a bit dry (and the presenters guarded in their analyses), the after-the-public presentation discussions have been fascinating. In many ways, if you want to get a feel for how state-level broadband policies and initiatives are developed and launched, find your state's equivalent of these sorts of discussions. It's one of the few places where one can get "quality time" with decision-makers without the marketing hype of industry mouth-pieces and sock puppets.

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