News sites in China are now being required to obtain the true identities of their commenters, likely in an attempt to suppress and deter so-called “subversive” behavior. Previously, commenters had been offered a bit more anonymity where they could either post without registering at all or with much less personal information.

The new policy took effect last month and requires a real name and government issued identification number. This would positively identify every commenter on top of their already traceable IP address.

It appears from news reports that the government has tried to keep its involvement in the change under wraps, working to suppress reports on the matter in the media. It has worked for much of this decade on bringing a “real name” system to the Chinese Internet, and those in China say this is likely just the beginning.

There’s also another reason why the government didn’t want this publicized: it is unpopular and previous attempts have gotten a lot of blowback. China tried in 2006 to implement the policy on blogs, but after prominent bloggers in the country came out against the new policy and the public also overwhelmingly opposed it, the country backed off.

Local officials tried it too: Hangzhou officials wanted a similar policy for all who post on sites in the city earlier this year, however again public criticism killed the government’s plans.

It is certainly disappointing to see China once again working to curtail their citizens rights. The “subversion” tactic is something they use frequently: in most cases it’s an excuse to prevent free speech. Truly, there isn’t much that can be said that could truly disrupt the country.

What they’re paranoid of is the fact that there is a large portion of their population that wants freedom of speech and to be able to speak out. What China’s learning now is that in the digital age, that’s going to be much harder than ever to control.

Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, says it is. In fact, the publisher is hosting a conference in Washington, DC next week where tech luminaries will begin discussing how best technology can play a role in government. This doesn’t necessarily mean incorporating Web 2.0 into daily business, it’s envisioning government as a platform, he argued.

“If there’s one thing we learn from the technology industry, it’s that every big winner has been a platform company: someone whose success has enabled others, who’ve built on their work and multiplied its impact,” O’Reilly argued in a guest post on TechCrunch. “In each case, the platform provider raised the bar, and created opportunities for others to exploit.”

O’Reilly points to data.gov as an example  of this thinking. With people now having easier access to the multitude of government data that is floating around out there, this data can now be to good use.

Certainly, I can agree with O’Reilly’s thought process here. As he also argues, too often we just pay our taxes and expect services back. So participating in government is limited to kibbitzing when we don’t get what we expect. I think adopting a platform strategy is another way to get citizens involved.

Free from the grind which is the governance of the country, we as citizens have the time to think of new ways of using the mounds of valuable data out there that the government is producing. As data.gov shows, there is plenty of it out there waiting for somebody to take advantage of it.

I think the works of JFK ring true in this instance: “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Let’s look away from what we can get out of the vending machine and instead look what we could fill that vending machine with.

As we all know, in some cases private industry can do things better than government can. I think technology is one of those areas. Lets put our heads together and see what we can come up with, eh?

Flickr has altered its policy for removal of images reported as infringements of copyright, which still removes the image although replaces it with a message alerting visitors of the complaint. This will preserve any discussion surrounding the image, and if the claim is found false, make it easier to repost.

The move is obviously in direct response to the dustup over its removal of the Obama-as-Joker image, which we still seem to not know who made the copyright infringement claim. When it was found that it was likely that the claim was made by a party with no real legal right to do so, it gave the appearance that Flickr acted out of political reasons.

Flickr’s new policy as reported by Director of Community Heather Champ goes as follows, and is actually the suggestion of a member of the community:

Upon receipt of a complete NOI (notice of infringement), the U.S. Copyright Team will replace the image with a new static image that bears the following copy: “This image has been removed due to a claim of copyright infringement.”

Whether Flickr acted out of politics will probably never be known, however now full deletion of an image will not be as easy on the service, allowing it to make sure DMCA claims are legit. I think its a good move considering the avalanche of bad press it got over the Obama dustup.

A coalition of ten privacy groups have launched an effort to lobby Congress for new legislation which would limit how web sites and ad networks can collect personal data and browsing habits to target advertising to those users. It is argued that in many cases consumers don’t even realize they are being tracked, and these groups hope its efforts will give consumers more control over their own online lives.

The procedure — which has become increasingly more popular as of late — is drawing increasing criticism as its detractors see it as a breach of privacy. However, advertisers in efforts to improve their results see it as an effective way to ensure their ads are seen by the right eyes.

In a list of recommendations to legislators, the groups said that Congress should mandate an opt-in policy that all sites using the practice must offer users within 24 hours of collecting their first bits of information. Additionally, they want to limit the types of data that can be collected, barring information on race, sexual orientation, finances, or personal health.

If possible to discern the age of the Web user, information collection for those under 18 would be illegal according to the group’s recommendations. If a user wants to opt-out of all behavioral targeting, they should be able to under something akin to the do-not-call list.

Not everybody’s buying the need for such legislation, with at least one industry executive saying it could do a lot of damage.

“Financial services and pharma/health are two of the leading categories for online advertising; the youth demographic is highly attractive to many advertisers, and limiting behavioral targeting to one day without an opt in severely restricts the usefulness of the data,” Lightspeed Venture Partners managing director Jeremy Liew argued.

I do think that some type of regulation on behavioral targeting is needed. I do also think it’s only fair that we know when (and what) we’re being tracked. However, I can see the point that too far-reaching legislation could potentially be harmful, especially to the advertising industry.

Hey, many websites (including this one) are funded by advertising. So, it’s in our interest to keep those advertisers around.

I think BusinessWeek’s Rob Hof says it best:

The key will be coming up with a workable mechanism for consumers to make this trade more consciously—one that isn’t so intrusive that it impedes use of the Internet. If such a mechanism emerges from the coming battle over privacy legislation, that seems likely to be a good thing for all concerned.

The Web is not the answer to increased civic participation, according to the results of a study released Tuesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Instead, as in offline activities, those engaged are still basically order and more wealthy than the citzenry at large.

For example, 35 percent of adults making more than $100,000 a year had participated in some kind of online political activity over the past year. Contrast this with those making under $20,000 — only 8 percent participation was recorded there. Pew noted that this was the same gap seen offline as well.

The bottom line seems to be that the more money you make, the more likely you’re going to be civically involved, regardless of whether it’s online or not.

“Contrary to the hopes of some advocates, the internet is not changing the socio-economic character of civic engagement in America,” Pew research specialist Aaron Smith said. He did acknowledge that access to the Internet does also correlate to socio-economic status, but added there was still a “strong positive relationship” between socio-economic status and political activism.

The news is certainly a blow to those who have been lifting the Web up as a way for a broader swath of the citizenry to get involved — heck, our own President is one of it’s biggest cheerleaders. But the may be a light at the end of the tunnel: social networking.

Pew found that those on social networking sites did not follow the patterns they found elsewhere, and thus one’s financial situation meant less to whether or not they were politically active.

“The impact of these new tools on the future of online political involvement depends in large part upon what happens as this younger cohort of “digital natives” gets older. Are we witnessing a generational change or a life-cycle phenomenon that will change as these younger users age? Will the civic divide close, or will rapidly evolving technologies continue to leave behind those with lower levels of education and income,” Smith asked.

I guess we’ll find out.

Wireless industry group CTIA said Tuesday that it would throw its support behind legislation aimed at ending a 20-year old tax on the personal use of business-supplied cellular phones. At the time the policy was instituted in 1989, cell phones were a luxury item seldom used because of their prohibitive expense.

Now that cell phones are near-ubiquitous, and on top of that much cheaper to use, the law makes little sense any more. Still, users are required to keep detailed logs of their phone usage to comply with these rules. This is because that law considers personal use of these phones as income, which is then subject to federal taxes.

The IRS is currently collecting comments on the policy, as it considers a repeal. Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Representatives Sam Johnson (R-Texas) and Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) also have introduced legislation which would eliminate the tax.

Under the so-called MOBILE Act, a full repeal would be instituted. The IRS is considering a similar repeal, although logging would still be required. CTIA supports the legislation, urging Congress to act on it this year.

While I can understand the IRS’ desire to list a company-provided cell phone as a luxury item subject to tax — at the same time, the benefit of its use is far less than it was in 1989. 20 years ago, if you had a cell phone, it sure was a benefit.

These days, everybody has one. It’s almost like taxing only a select few for something that everybody else has. Simply put, it has become an unfair tax.

In fact, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman may have put it best when he called for a a repeal of the tax himself: he called it “obsolete.. burdensome, poorly understood by taxpayers, and difficult for the IRS to administer consistently.”

Seems to me that if you have somebody from the IRS itself calling for a policy to go, they would probably know best if its worth the trouble or not, no?

Some 2,200 groups have made requests for stimulus funds intended to expand the reach of broadband in the US, the government has reported. While only $4 billion in funds have been initially earmarked for these projects, together the requests total some $28 billion.

Obviously, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Rural Utilities Service — the two agencies responsible with selecting winners — will not be able to honor every request. Over the next few months, officials will look over the applications and announce winners in November.

Those who lose out will have two additional opportunities to compete for additional funding after the initial awards. It is not clear how much the government intends to make available in those rounds, although another $3.2 billion will be available.

A quick survey of the requests show the bulk of them deal with Internet buildouts to underserved areas. Other requests aim to promote Internet use among groups who typically do not use the net, and offering Internet in public spaces and schools.

Don’t envy the job of those in charge of selecting who wins — USA Today reported that some of these applications total 500 pages or more.

The more that comes out of the flap over Flickr’s move to delete the Obama-as-Joker parody image, the more it appears that the photo site may not be telling the truth. A report on Tuesday by Photo District News shows that nobody contacted Flickr about the image as far as a copyright claim goes.

Time? Said it never made a request for the image to be taken down. DC Comics, owner of the Joker character? No, they didn’t ask either. How about the photographer who took the picture? They didn’t even know there was any controversy surrounding the image.

So who asked for the image to be taken down, as the site gave in a response a week ago? Apparently nobody with a legal right to. With PDN’s reporting, it is now almost completely clear the site acted on its own to remove the imagery.

What makes it bad here is now the site looks like it has lied. Add to this folks like Thomas Hawk have jumped on it like a hawk (no pun intended), and it is quickly becoming a public relations nightmare for the company.

As Hawk writes:

I will say though that if Flickr staff knows that the DMCA takedown request is bogus and is now using it to deflect criticism against them over their censorship act that this would actually not be an open and honest way to communicate with their users at all, that this would in fact be a disingenuous and dishonest way to communicate with them.

It’s time for Flickr to speak. Allowing this to degenerate further into a morass of speculation only feeds the idea that Flickr may be in the Adminstration’s back pocket cause of it’s use of the site’s services.

By the way, PDN points out that at least three copies of the original image have now surfaced on Flickr since the controversy began over the deletion of the image. Why aren’t these coming down?

The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that it had filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), demanding records from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) policy of searching laptops at border crossings without any suspicion of wrongdoing.

CBP instituted the policy last year, saying it had the right to look at the contents of traveler’s laptops without any need for a warrant. Obviously, the agency is framing this as an anti-terrorism measure, hoping to prevent terrorists and other criminals from entering the country.

However, the scope of what they can search is quite expansive. According to the ACLU, personal financial information, web site histories, and photgraphs are fair game, as well as “documents, books, pamphlets and other printed material, as well as computers, disks, hard drives and other electronic or digital storage devices.”

It is irrelevant whether or not the traveler is a US citizen or not: everyone is subject to search at the CBP’s discretion. The ACLU argues that this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

“Under CBP’s policy, innumerable international travelers have had their most personal information searched by government officials and retained by the government indefinitely,” ACLU attorney Larry Schwartztol said. He said the group was using the lawsuit to see if the CBP may be violating the Constitution under this policy.

While I can understand the Border Patrol’s desire to use this policy as an anti-terrorism tool, its expansiveness as to what it can include makes me leery. There is too much of an opportunity here for abuse, and it seems to violate in some way our rights to privacy, especially for American citizens that may have been subjected to these searches.

The CBP did not respond to requests for comment on the ACLU’s action.

UK ISPs are balking at provisions of a government policy to cut off the Internet access of those suspected of file sharing, saying such a policy would not work, the BBC reported Tuesday. While the providers support efforts to combat the problem, they feel the new policies go too far.

Officials had originally planned to develop and deploy a policy by 2012. However, it was thought that was “too long to wait.” Thus, plans have been accelerated despite the complaints by the ISP industry.

ISPs worry that the IP address method of marking users could unfairly target those who share an Internet connection, and the costs of implementing the governments recommendations could be prohibitive. Additionally, ISPs feel it is not their job to monitor web usage.

Governments worldwide are struggling to find a effective way to combat piracy. The US has turned to the courts, supporting efforts by rights owners to collect restitution for their pirated works.

In France, legislation has been passed calling for a similar cut off of Internet access by repeat offenders. Similar legislation is being considered in Australia and New Zealand. In any case, no one’s found an effective method yet to stem the increasing tide of piracy.

It’s not out of the realm of possibility that we never will — people will break the law regardless, don’t you think?