Berkman Buzz: August 9, 2013

This summer, Berkman Center for Internet & Society intern (and Project Assistant) Dana Walters and I were given the opportunity to explore the ecosystem of City Hall in some detail. We were tasked with finding out how Boston’s call center had evolved since its introduction in October 2008, and asked to present this work to a meeting of mayoral chiefs of staff from around the country that took place last week at HKS.

Having such a specific subject to work on was in many ways helpful: We had a clear framework within which to work. But in other ways it was frustrating because we found a significant cultural story about innovation and collaboration in City Hall that went beyond the attributes and history of Boston’s CRM system.

We ended up telling both stories in the form of a case study (available via SSRN) that we hope will be useful to the government innovation field.

Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found unconstitutional. Yet we all carry mobile phones. If the National Security Agency required us to notify it whenever we made a new friend, the nation would rebel. Yet we notify Facebook Inc. (FB) If the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanded copies of all our conversations and correspondence, it would be laughed at. Yet we provide copies of our e-mail to Google Inc. (GOOG), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) or whoever our mail host is; we provide copies of our text messages to Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), AT&T Inc. (T) and Sprint Corp. (S); and we provide copies of other conversations to Twitter Inc., Facebook, LinkedIn (LNKD) Corp. or whatever other site is hosting them.

Congrats producer @blanket (and frequent host @dweinberger) on @verge's naming @RadioBerkman a top tech podcast! http://goo.gl/1grWZl
—Cyberlaw Clinic (@cyberlawclinic)

In the days of unwarranted government surveillance and elaborate data collection, people increasingly rely on anonymizing services to keep their online activities private, such as proxy servers, encrypted cloud storage, and virtual private networks. Virtual private networks, or VPNs, route online communications through a secure and encrypted private network to a remote server (sometimes in a jurisdiction with greater protection for freedom of speech or weaker law enforcement). That computer in turn accesses content on the Internet and passes it back through the private network to the user. From outside the network, the only visible traffic is to and from the remote server, leaving the user anonymous. This ability to anonymize, however, can be used for multiple purposes, including to increase secrecy in unlawful actions but also to allow for unhindered expression and freedom from censorship.

AT&T asked Werner Herzog to make a documentary about texting and driving. The results are what you'd expect: amazing. http://t.co/8czSKrK9rA
—Ethan Zuckerman (@ethanz)

Yesterday, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, effectively ending the Graham family’s 4-generation long stewardship of one of the country’s most accomplished newspapers. Bezos’s purchase matters to journalism because it suggests a new era in the meaning of media ownership — one that requires tracing influence through infrastructure design.

Sharon Millar, blogger, gardener, writer and co-winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, talks about her inspiration, her identity and how blogging helped jump start her fiction writing.