Archive for July, 2008

Nudge is a book which, in the 24 hours since I purchased it, has transformed how I think about the world. Co-authored by two University of Chicago professors, behavioral economist Richard Thaler and lawyer Cass Sunstein, Nudge brings a superb policy approach to the table. Although the name is unwieldy, “libertarian paternalism” has solved a major internal debate of mine.

Representative democracy is great. The devolution of power allows for freedoms which are often restricted in other forms of government. People’s ability to choose and influence government allows impersonal institutions to respond to personal needs. I’m a fervent believer in personal choice and support many civil libertarian causes.

At the same time, people can make some really dumb choices. Often, when I hear or witness some particularly uniformed opinions or decision, I’ll catch myself snottily thinking “…and these people get to vote? Great.” I’ll frequently voice support of a technocracy where the most skilled and brightest make decisions, insulated from the ignorant masses.

Yet, these two approaches are opposed to each other and I’ve struggled to make sense of my dual support. Luckily, Thaler and Sunstein have lent their considerable intellect to this problem and brought resolution in the form of libertarian paternalism which uses “architects of choice” to “nudge” people towards better decisions. The bad decisions people make are often the result of conditions outside their control: time restraints, financial limitations and a host of psychological phenomena which foster poor choices. Libertarian paternalism aims to create situations where it is easier to make the best choice while not limiting other options (as mandates would do).

Nudging recognizes that people respond to much more than incentives, as traditional economics would have you believe. Nudges recognize the complex array of options which make simple tax cuts or prison penalties unlikely to create the best outcomes. Nudges come down to designing systems which help people reach the best outcome. Full of examples, the book shows that seemingly innocent differences in order or defaults can have profound differences in outcomes.

Nudge is divided into three parts: an explanation of the theory, a series of policy recommendations, and responses to critics. The first portion is definitely my favorite as it lays the intellectual foundation for this idea which can play a part in many policy debates. Perhaps since I fall prey to a number of the blunders they outline (I’m young, I’ve got nothing to worry about!), I was not as enthralled with their discussions of how to improve credit markets or pharmaceutical plans, but I certainly hope that the right people do read those parts because the plans outlined to help millions are incredibly important additions to the national debate on issues as broad as environmental protection to investing to school choices.

Libertarian paternalism recognizes that humans are fallible and need help. It knows that experts have the experience to help. But it contrast to traditional paternalism, it recognizes the failings of government mandate and that knowledge is dispersed and people, if given appropriate settings, can make the best decisions for themselves.  So, allow me to nudge you towards their website or Amazon page where you can purchase it for yourself.

[Also by Sunstein is Infotopia.]

I just finished Nicholas Sullivan’s account of GrameenPhone’s birth and development, a formation which revolutionized telecommunications and how developing countries use technology. “You Can Hear Me Know” is both a case study of GrameenPhone and a wider look at how technology transforms developing nations.

GrameenPhone is the brainchild of Iqbal Quadir, an American educated Bangladeshi who, while working as a venture capitalist in New York City, realized that “connectivity is productivity.” Thinking back to his home country, Quadir recognized a missing web of connectivity due to the lack of information communication technologies (ICTs). His battler to bring cell phones to Bangladesh provides fascinating insight into development and international finance.

Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries, was already home to an innovative development approach. Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Prize in 2006, is widely credited with starting microfinance, the approach which gives small loans (less than a couple hundred dollars) to people without a credit history or much collateral. The amazing success (hardly any defaults and increased income) of microfinance has seen the system spread income to the historically ignored 2 billion people who live on less than $2 a day.

The typical example of Grameen Bank, Yunus’s venture, is a loan given to a rural woman to buy a cow who sells milk to pay off her debt. Quadir’s insight was that a cell phone could function as a cow. Pushing past dissenters who though cell phones were only for the rich, Quadir developed a model through which village “phone ladies” would sell minutes to others and, in turn, make a profit and provide an important service to people who otherwise had no conectivity. The phone calls are used to check market prices, connect with expatriate family or check the availability of medicine 5 miles away.

As mobile phones have spread like wildfire through developing nations, an entire ecosystem of advanced applications, many financial, have created even new opportunities. Sullivan’s book is filled with wonderful examples and statistics showing just how revolutionary the cell phone can be.

In discussing development, the author uses what he calls the “external combustion” model which relies on introducing ICTs, through native entrepreneurs, with the backing of foreign investors. The exogenous shock of this combination is what made GrameenPhone so successful (as of 2006, had more than 10 million subscribers, revenue pushing $1 billion and profits above $200 million). And, while many worried that foreign capitalists would suck out value like modern day colonialists, the opposite has been true: the mobile phone industry in Bangladesh has created $812 million in value and GrameenPhone has reinvested $1 billion in Bangladesh. When the African telecom CelTel sold for $3.4 billion, it created 50 new millionaires, many of them Africans. What Sullivan calls “inclusive capitalism” creates both external income (development) and internal profits.

Quadir is now exploring energy options for the developing world through his start-up Emergence Bio-Energy which is using adaptable engines to power villages. Energy is a big problem not only in the developed world, but in the global South where it is unreliable and halts economic growth. In Brazil, the Sun Shines for All has used solar power and microfinance to electrify the countryside. Grameen Shakti is apparently trying a similar approach. A major obstacle that Quadir points out is that, unlike telecommunications, Moore’s Law doesn’t apply to energy production.

I’ve been on a National Geographic Magazine binge; so many of their feature articles are fascinating investigations of society through the lens of science, conservation or travel. One, entitled The Genius of Swarms, takes a look at the ability of certain groups to be smarter than their individual components.

“Ants aren’t smart,” Gordon says. “Ant colonies are.” A colony can solve problems unthinkable for individual ants, such as finding the shortest path to the best food source, allocating workers to different tasks, or defending a territory from neighbors. As individuals, ants might be tiny dummies, but as colonies they respond quickly and effectively to their environment. They do it with something called swarm intelligence.

The tendency manifests itself in diverse species who seem to act as one even though no one is giving orders.

Even with half a million ants, a colony functions just fine with no management at all—at least none that we would recognize. It relies instead upon countless interactions between individual ants, each of which is following simple rules of thumb. Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing.

Instead, ant colonies, caribou herds and bee hives all rely on the signals and actions of their peers. Relying on local information and simple principles, groups exhibit the capacity to solve complex problems.

Businesses and governments are taking note. Firms with complicated logistical challenges, say delivering expensive, flammable gas in the least expensive and safe manner, are learning from ants and reaping the rewards of facsimile. The military is having success with “Centibots project, an investigation to see if as many as a hundred robots could collaborate on a mission.”

Wikipedia, everyone’s favorite example, has used swarm intelligence to create a resource of immense value and seen through biological understandings, it is clear why principles like NPOV have come to be enshrined in Wikipedian policy: they are the simple rules of thumb which help shape collective action.

The NGM article is really only a small piece of the growing literature on what James Surowiecki calls the “Wisdom of the Crowds” and what Cass Sunstein investigated in “Infotopia.” I’d be interested in seeing some research into the methods of governance for swarms: although they are distributed actions, what are the norms and principles which govern them? How do these come into being? How are wild mobs without reason replaced by thoughtful decision-making groups? The article passes briefly over this,

Crowds tend to be wise only if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions. A group won’t be smart if its members imitate one another, slavishly follow fads, or wait for someone to tell them what to do. When a group is being intelligent, whether it’s made up of ants or attorneys, it relies on its members to do their own part. For those of us who sometimes wonder if it’s really worth recycling that extra bottle to lighten our impact on the planet, the bottom line is that our actions matter, even if we don’t see how.

But the answer to avoiding fads or market bubbles remain elusive.

In January, Bill Gates delivered a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos calling upon the audience to embrace a “system innovation” to deliver the bottom billion, those poorest people, from poverty. In his reckoning, capitalism harnesses one major human motivator, self-interest, while government and philanthropy apply the other, care for others. Gates thinks a hybrid system is needed to address the dire needs of the impoverished.

“I like to call this new system creative capitalism – an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world’s inequities.”

Creative capitalism would use dual incentives to solve hunger and disease: profits and altruism. Profit-driven firms would be more accountable while focusing on traditionally under-served markets. Take the example of “a Dutch company, which holds the rights to a cholera vaccine, retains the rights in the developed world, but shares those rights with manufacturers in developing countries. The result is a cholera vaccine made in Vietnam that costs less than $1 a dose – and that includes delivery and the costs of an immunization campaign.”

In response to Gates’s call to action, a number of prominent economists and lawyers have developed an online conversation about creative capitalism’s promise and its weaknesses. Participants include Nobel laureate Gary Becker, Judge Richard Posner and aid skeptic William Easterly. Many of the essays are critical.

Easterly writes, “Mr. Gates’ speech attacks the system that has historically done the most to alleviate poverty—traditional capitalism—in favor of an untried and implausible alternative—an illusory Third Way that mixes profits and altruism.” Posner opines that creative capitalism is nothing more than traditional PR-based charity which actually fits nicely with traditional capitalism.

After browsing the critiques, I think much of the trouble comes down to Gates’s nomenclature. The examples in his speech or C.K. Prahalad’s wonderful book, “Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” are not truly a new system. Prahalad demonstrates the massive profits and opportunities open to firms which are willing to understand and enter the market of the poor.

The problem comes down to capitalism’s tendency to lead to thoughtless profit pursuit. What is needed is not creative capitalism (as Greg Mankiw said “I though capitalism WAS creative.”). What is needed is conscious capitalism. Mortgage brokers, borrowers and Wall Street investment bankers got a taste of unconscious capitalism with the subprime fiasco.

Part of the problem comes down to the way corporate governance is conducted: being under pressure to out-perform the last quarter every 3 months places an insane focus on short-term thinking. Judgement Day for those corporate officers with fidicuary responsibility to shareholders comes not once a lifetime, but 4 times a year. Accountability is good, but long-term thinking often falls by the wayside.

Joi Ito, a Japanese venture capitalist and CEO of Creative Commons, noted something similar at a recent panel. Money makes people short-sighted and when coupled with the Internet’s efficiencies, he believes “fluctuation amplification occurs.” His hope is that capitalism will be injected with long-term thinking about issues like the commons.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ox02qM_yuc]

As it relates to the Internet, Joi worries that a rush to mobile-based connectivity will promote carriers who do not reinvest in the ecology of the Internet and who swallow profits for short-term gain.

The same could be said of Gates’s goal. The same wholistic approach which must be taken to defend the Internet’s openness is the approach which must be taken to invest in the poorest in our world. It requires awareness of the difficulties and opportunities of capitalism. By recognizing that today’s poor are next decade’s consumers, capitalism will continue to lift out of poverty millions, but only if it is done consciously.

[Image credit]

It’s official: China is now the largest Internet market with 253 million users. The number is only 19% of the Chinese population, well behind the 70% of Americans who are Internet users. Recent years have seen a noted increase in Internet penetration, especially among younger citizens. The rapid economic development of China has led to a significant segment of the population which has both the time and the money to be online.

There are many obstacles to the realization of international connectivity; among them:

• the difficulties of deploying digital infrastructure,
• the high cost of connections,
• language barriers, and
• cultural differences.

The first two barriers are certainly complex tasks which rely on technical, political and economic variables, but my gut feeling is that they are not as important as the other, less tangible hurdles. Undoubtedly someone with a more sophisticated understanding of network deployment could tell me why the Internet’s global penetration is not a guarantee, but on this topic I am optimistic. There is a hearty demand for the information-bearing networks and, in tow, a swarm of would-be ISPs, web services and advertisers seeking to support the demand. With development, we will see the digital divide crumble.

The cultural divide is what worries me.

The instantaneous, global spread of ideas is unprecedented in human history. Sure, the Silk Road is a fascinating example of the globalization of products and diseases; even a few ideas made the journey. Sure, by some measures the world was just as globalized prior to WWI. But the scale and extent of the current global information society dwarfs historical comparisons. For the first time in history, ordinary citizens have the capabilities to connect across the globe to people of wildly different backgrounds, histories and interests. It was supposed to be a sovereign realm unto itself where “governments of the industrial world… have no sovereignty.” Nationalism was supposed to disappear, to dwell in history with the horrific wars and conflicts it supported.

The reality, is quite different. The Economist notes that, “the very people whom the Internet might have liberated from the shackles of state-sponsored ideologies—are using the wonders of electronics to stoke hatred between countries, races or religions.” How can these painful distortions of humanity be limited in the digital realm? The answer, of course, isn’t clear, but my intuition is that it will not depend on hardware or software. A future free from conflict – digital and physical – will be paved by breaking down the cultural differences and coming to understand the reasons for differences of opinion.

One area technology may help is in breaking down the language barriers which make meaningful conversation difficult. Tools like Google Translate are a good start, but they are far from perfect and understanding the nuance behind political differences requires much more than what is available now. Instead, we must rely on human translation which introduces a level of bias (no matter how innocent the translator) and, oftentimes, shifts discussion to another location, as is the case with Global Voices.

Take the example that the New Yorker did in a recent piece on China’s rising cybernationalists. By all accounts, Tang Jie is on his way to becoming an accomplished academic who has a firm understanding of the West and the current international diplomatic scene. Tang is also the creator of an incredibly popular video which capitalized upon and created a nationalistic uproar earlier this year following the Tibetan protests in March and Olympic torch debacle in Paris. The video, embedded below, is full of crescendos of dramatic music, potent imagery and conspiratorial suggestions of a new Cold War run by a “cabal” against China.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=MSTYhYkASsA]

But below this sensational 6 minutes, as Evan Osnos’s excellent article explains, is a sophisticated, thoughtful thinker who approaches political disputes openly.

When people began rioting in Lhasa in March, Tang followed the news closely. As usual, he was receiving his information from American and European news sites, in addition to China’s official media. Like others his age, he has no hesitation about tunnelling under the government firewall, a vast infrastructure of digital filters and human censors which blocks politically objectionable content from reaching computers in China. He’s baffled that foreigners might imagine that people of his generation are somehow unwise to the distortions of censorship. “Because we are in such a system, we are always asking ourselves whether we are brainwashed,” he said. “We are always eager to get other information from different channels.” Then he added, “But when you are in a so-called free system you never think about whether you are brainwashed.”

However, although Tang and his friends point out valuable discrepancies in how America runs foreign or trade policy, the truth of the matter doesn’t get translated into his video. What has happened is a cultural homoginzation of tools, but underneath remains a cultural deviation of values. Both Students for a Free Tibet and Tang Jie communicate with supporters via online videos, but the underlying differences are masked by the same sensationalism that poisons CNN and Tang’s video.

A screenshot from Tang's video

In a rapid-fire media environment, the sort of enlightened exposure between thoughtful objectors needs to be cultivated – on both sides of the Pacific. Grace Wang is one of those enlightened thinkers, but the crazed online mob got in the way:

At Duke University, Grace Wang, a Chinese freshman, tried to mediate between pro-Tibet and pro-China protesters on campus. But online she was branded a “race traitor.” People ferreted out her mother’s address, in the seaside city of Qingdao, and vandalized their home. Her mother, an accountant, remains in hiding. Of her mother, Grace Wang said, “I really don’t know where she is, and I think it’s better for me not to know.”

Although I’m beginning to sound like a Luddite, I am anything but. For a long time I was outspoken in my belief that China was acting horribly in Tibet. The Internet, and listening openly to others, has given me a deeper, more levelled understanding. I think attentively designed conversations will arise in the amazing information landscape of the Internet. We just need to consciously recognize the technical and cultural inputs to do so. And we need to recognize that they may not be universally embraced. For example, although the American tradition is steeped in recognizing freedom of expression as a foundational element of political discourse, a majority of polled Chinese approve of government control of information. So, I’m reminded of Rebecca MacKinnon’s headline during the recent Tibetan protests: Is discussion possible? It is a question of acute importance whose answer relies on both the technical and cultural.

I’ve been cleaning up my saved RSS feeds – a tedious but rewarding task – and came across an inspired speech by Susan Crawford that was delivered at the Freedom to Connect conference. In it, she takes a critical look at the market forces influencing network providers and decides that a crucial element for the future of the generative Internet is the “countervailing power of users/consumers.”

“User power needs to be organized in response to the network operators’ power.  It needs to be aggregated and made visible.  Without it, we’ll have no votes, no policy changes, and the oligopolists will be able to continue to act with unfettered discretion.”

To this end, Crawford is the founder of OneWebDay which seeks to be an Earth Day for the web. To make manifest the users who can provide a check on oligopolistic ISPs, OneWebDay is soliciting stories about your experience with the Internet.

OneWebDay is September 22nd and there is plenty to check out before then.

The US Constitution and centuries of case law provide strong protection from government searches and seizures. As basic of a right as any in this country is the necesity for reasonable suspicion before a search is allowed by agents of the government. However, recent court rulings have carved out a niche which makes warrantless searches of laptops at borders legal even without reasonable suspicion. That means border agents can now confiscate and search laptops or other computers crossing the border without justification.

Under the ruse of the war of terror, this federal policy of searching laptops for security has been used to broadly investigate lesser crimes without the judicial oversight which is fundamental to this country.

Executives have been told that they must hand over their laptop to be analyzed by border police–or be barred from boarding their flight. A report from a U.S.-based marijuana activist says U.S. border guards browsed through her laptop’s contents; British customs agents scan laptops for sexual material; so do their U.S. counterparts.

Not only does this pose problems for business executives with trade secrets stored on their devices, attorneys with privileged information or political activists, it takes advantage of the way in which digital memory is used. Increasingly, digital storage serves as an extension of our brains – the last bastion of privacy. Why bother remembering the details of your client’s case when you can store all of it digitally?

In face of this dramatic change in privacy protection, a number of infotech advisors have suggested ways to protect your privacy at the border.

• The EFF, who is pushing for Congressional oversight of the issue, discusses the imperfection of encryption and the move towards using blank devices for international travel.
• Declan McCullagh explains how to encrypt sensitive data on your machine.
• Chris Soghoian uses web storage or FedEx to cross borders without any data on his computer.

So, next time you are traveling internationally and want to protect the privacy which is enshrined in our Constitution, do so with the techniques listed above.

[Photo Credit]

In the past, I’ve written about censorship on the Internet, especially the Chinese example. It is a touchy subject for many – bringing up both ardent nationalism and unabashed support for free expression. Like many topics of debate which tend to have emotional currents, it is difficult at times to address the substantive issues. That’s why this nuanced point of view on Chinese net censorship is so refreshing. Though I may disagree with the author on some of the points, it provides a good view. Some choice quotes:

“Often, people speak of “censorship” without acknowledging that there is a background of this kind of contest going on. Fundamentally, the assumption behind the intuition that “censorship” is bad is that other people ought to see things just the way we see them. And that may be a laudable goal or a bad goal. But it’s not self-evident. To say that someone else is censoring is to say that they are not seeing things the way we want to see them, and whether the views of those others are “authentic” (in the sense of being liberal or democratic) may be relevant or not to the determination, but again it’s not self-evident.”

and

“You view the Chinese search results as “censored,” but actually, every time I do a search on Tiananmen on Google I feel I’m watching the result of a Google bomb. To me, the iconic image of Tiananmen is the one where Chairman Mao stood up and declared the founding of the People’s Republic. That moment is the dividing line between pre-modern China and modern China, and for many Chinese it is an image that is much more potent than the images of the protests.”

These are genuine, reflective opinions on an issue which is not as binary as it is often made out to be.

Years ago, The Economist ran a special report on the Democratic Republic of the Congo which described the country as “the bleeding heart of Africa.” The description has stuck with me, even if it hasn’t resonated with Western media which typically pays very little attention to the enormous African nation which has seen civil war take more than 5 million lives in the past ten years. The scale of this conflict – more deaths than any other conflict since WWII – defies comprehension and the lack of reporting coming out of the DRC doesn’t help. In fact, because this conflict is so intractable, it makes it difficult for the media to pay any attention to it; it would simply take longer than CNN can afford to sufficiently explain.

Which is what made the recent attention paid to the DRC even more interesting. You see, the DRC is home to one of the largest National Parks in the world. Virunga National Park is a 2 million acre area in the eastern half of the country which borders Rwanda and Uganda. The park is home to many of the remaining mountain gorillas. The park also houses a number of rebel factions, including the FDLR which came about when fleeing Hutu militias from Rwanda teamed up with disaffected members of the Congolese army. In response, a Tutsi Congolese general, Laurent Nkunda, formed the CNDP which has fought, with the backing of Rwanda, the FDLR, turning the south of Virunga National Park into a bloody battlefield. Add to the mix a Congolese army which is known to commit atrocities as frequently as the CNDP and FDLR, and you can begin to understand the horror of the situation.

A situation which went mostly unreported for years. Then, last year, someone killed seven of the mountain gorillas in cold blood. It wasn’t poachers because the animals’ bodies were left untouched. The animals and humans had lived for years in cohabitation, so why were they killed? The answer, as you might expect, involved many rebels, black-market economies and the politics of a failed state.

Western media jumped on the case. The striking photographs of the magnificent slain animals and the desperate people of the Congo were splashed across TV screens and newspapers. Suddenly, America cared about the DR Congo.

As much as the death of those seven creatures is tragic, no one could think it is more tragic than the millions of displaced or murdered Congolese over the past ten years. Shouldn’t that have created an uproar? Shouldn’t that lead to lengthy investigative journalism or talk shows centered around the DRC?

Normatively, very few people, I think, would disagree. But the answer as to why it doesn’t happen is complicated, but I think it comes down to a “circle of not-caring”. David Weinberger, in his recent newsletter, took a look at this issue with the help of Ethan Zuckerman who spends much of his time working to correct media miscoverage. David’s question was why are Nigeria and Japan, countries whose populations are roughly equal, so disproportionately represented in Western media. His answer comes down to ninjas.

“One reason we care about Japan more than Nigeria (generally) is that Japan has a cool culture. We’ve heard about that culture because some Westerners wrote bestselling books about ninjas, and then Hollywood made ninja movies. Love them ninjas! Nigeria undoubtedly has something as cool as ninjas. Ok, something almost as cool as ninjas. If we had some blockblusters about the Nigerian equivalent of ninjas, we’d start to be interested Nigeria.”

Generally, the DR Congo suffers from the same problem that Nigeria does – it doesn’t have ninjas. To resonate with an audience, news must be reified. Ninjas make Japan concrete. Gorillas made the Congo concrete. We’ve all seen gorillas in movies, zoos or on the Discovery Channel. We’ve stood in awe of their size and power. The murder of a gorilla is shocking, both because they are huge animals and because it is unique. Uncomfortable as it is, rebel warfare and African strife are hard for the average American to separate or distinguish. Gorillas? Murdered? Well, that’s something everyone can understand.

The story was understandable. As Ethan wrote in his response to the Ninja Gap theory, in order to break the “circle of not-caring,” “tell good stories in a compelling way. And it wouldn’t hurt to throw a ninja or two in there while you’re at it.”

Mark Jenkins, one of my favorite journalists, did that in the most recent issue of National Geographic. His article, “Who Murdered the Virunga Gorillas” is part war-journalism, part environmental exposé. But more than anything, it is a compelling story about the often overlooked conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Charlie Rose, too, takes the time to understand the conflict and tells the story (albeit in a slightly less compelling manner).

However, has the creation of compelling stories (thanks to ninjas) helped? Has outside attention on the DRC resulted in progress towards stability and peace? Understandably, helping the Congo would be a lengthy journey involving many peace talks and much healing, but has this happened? It may be too soon, but it doesn’t seem like it. Does this mean the Ninja Gap theory is bunk? I don’t think so – the net effect is still probably positive. More people now know that the DRC is in trouble (and knowing it exists is probably new for some). This is a step in the right direction and hopefully the right people are paying attention now more than before.

[For a skeptical look at the Ninja Gap, check this out.]

While cleaning out my old feeds yesterday, I came across an article from May about a new group which hopes to become “the CDC of cyber security.”

“The group calls itself the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber-Terrorism (IMPACT), and its advisory board features tech luminaries like Google’s Vint Cerf and Symantec CEO John Thompson.”

As the Ars Technica writer points out, this CDC-like approach of cooperating and sharing information and strategy to avoid catastrophic network-based attacks is probably a smarter approach to cybersecurity than the “nation-state-centric “cyber warfare” paradigm that is also emerging.” Although I’m still wary that an organization like IMPACT, which doesn’t include China and Russia, will be too centralized, it is certainly closer to the “rough consensus and running code” approach which characterizes the net.

Another approach to Internet security I recently learned about is OpenDNS which aims to speed up web-surfing and block malware sites. Unfortunately, because it is marketed as a solution to businesses, libraries and schools, administrators can also block innocuous sites like popular social networks. However, they have had great success so far (commercially) and use an intriguing community-based model to label suspicious websites – something which is much better than the secret blocklists of many filtering companies.

Finally, another approach which has gained some traction is StopBadware.org which is a partnership between academia, private enterprise and non-profits to identify “badware sites.” Most interesting is their partnership with Google who now warns search users that they may be visiting a badware site. In the coming months, expect more out of StopBadware.org, including the Herdict project which seeks to crowdsource security.

[See previous thoughts on cybercrime here.]

Update: See Cory Doctorow’s word of caution regarding unintended consequences of fighting malware (in this case spam).

Update II: More news on Federal involvement in cybersecurity.