Cyber-security heating up on both sides of the Atlantic

In the US, another version of CISPA was reintroduced yesterday in the House of Representatives. The White House has also issued an executive order on the same topic. Similarly in Europe, the European Commission recently published two documents which articulate a strategy for cybersecurity – Cybersecurity Strategy of the European Union and the Proposed Directive on Network and Information Security. Info sharing programs to improve Internet security may be one of the most important global technology policy issues this year. We’re currently looking at these proposals to develop a view and understand if and how they may impact the Mozilla mission. If you would like to contribute to this effort, we welcome your participation.

Full post on the Mozilla privacy blog.

Beauty by Cole Zehren

Beauty

The sweet sound of jazz.
First of a kind.
Body side-to-side.
Where we rest, we shall all walk
But in beauty or sorrow, we have dreams
But it is your dream that comes true.

 

 

Copyright Cole Zehren 2013

Dreams by Cole Zehren

Dreams…

My dream
It comes naturally
A lovely new sight
Making the world wonderful
A woken dream for you and me
Nothing like it
We must see it
A deep drive into beauty
In beauty we shall all walk.

Copyright Cole Zehren 2013

Don’t Leave Before the Miracle Happens

This week friends and family celebrated the life of Veronica McCarthy. While she may have died of cancer, she lived of joy and grace. I went to the funeral this week which was at first surreal and upsetting, but it turned out different. I was struck by an overwhelming sense of gratitude. I looked down the pew and saw all these men and woman who she had touched in profound and material ways. Some of these men I’ve known for over two decades and they are different because of her. Different (as in better) in ways you can’t begin to measure or put a price on. All I could think was what a blessing she was and how lucky we were to know her. She did for some of us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. She instilled a faith and sense of possibility that I couldn’t see at the time, but she could. She also did it in a way that made you feel special, like she was only talking to you. I guess that’s one of those grandma tricks, where all the kids feel most special. When I think of Veronica, or St Veronica as some of us called her, I can only say – Thank you.

Windows EU Ballot Screen Technical Glitch

We’re encouraged by the European Commission’s efforts to ensure that users have meaningful browser choice in the Windows PC environment. The 2009 Commitments adopted by Microsoft were a foundational part of the remedy developed by the Commission to resolve Microsoft’s competition violations in EC countries. A key part of the remedy was Microsoft’s commitment to present the browser ballot screen to Windows users through vehicles like the Windows 7 Service Pack 1. Earlier this year, we learned that Microsoft failed to fully comply with the browser choice ballot screen obligation for nearly 15 months.

Most recently the EC sent a statement of objections to Microsoft for failing to include the browser-choice screen as promised. Our data suggests that the absence of the browser choice screen had the following impact:

• Daily Firefox downloads decreased by 63% to a low of 20,000 just prior to the fix;
• After the fix, Firefox downloads increased 150% to approximately 50,000 per day; and
• Cumulatively 6 to 9 million Firefox browser downloads were lost during this period.

After accounting for the aggregate impact on all the browser vendors, it seems like this technical glitch decreased downloads and diminished the effectiveness of the remedy ordered in the 2009 Commitments.

Draft Framework for Policy Engagement – Why, When, and How

Over the past few years we’ve become more engaged in public policy issues driven by proposed legislative and regulatory actions that threaten core tenants of the open web. These threats are global in nature and manifest themselves in national legislative bodies, judicial venues, trade organizations, and international treaty setting bodies among others. After engaging in a number of policy issues such as SOPA, ACTA, DNT, jailbreaking, and further seeing a forecast of “more rain” we set out to craft a draft framework that could guide our approach on these issues.

The framework is not meant to be exhaustive nor be a detailed roadmap,  but rather directional in nature.  Hopefully it’s a level set and creates a common point of reference for our community. As time goes on, we’ll naturally iterate and develop the ideas further. At this point we want to test it, incorporate feedback, and see if the approach makes sense. Please add any comments to the governance thread here.

Some key assumptions that inform the framework are:
•    Tech policy can help or hurt the web
•    Key attributes of the open web need to be nurtured and protected
•    All tech policy issues are not the same
•    We can make a difference
•    The nature of the threat will dictate different kinds of responses
•    We remain a project that is primarily focused on building stuff
•    Don’t build what already exists

The framework reflects our current thinking and should answers key questions like:
•    What’s the goal? What are we trying to protect?
•    Can we make a difference?
•    Why do we get involved?
•    When do we get involved and when don’t we?
•    How do we engage?

If you want more color on some of these ideas, take a look at the presentations below where we have begun discussing the broader notions of threats to the open web.

* Open Forum Europe summit presentation by Mitchell Baker
* World Economic Forum presentation by Gary Kovacs
* FISL 2012 presentation “powerful v. empowered” by Harvey Anderson

FISL Talk “Powerful v. Empowered”

During the FISL12 conference last week, I had the opportunity to present a keynote entitled “Powerful v. Empowered – Threats to the Open Web.” The talk examines the threats, the drivers,  and how we can make a difference. The prezo can be found here: FISL Prezo Final. The FISL community was pretty awesome. There’s something about their approach and perspective that had a delicate and thoughtful quality that was really impressive.