May 2009

President Obama is expected to announce late this week that he will create a "cyber czar," a senior White House official who will have broad authority to develop strategy to protect the nation's government-run and private computer networks, according to people who have been briefed on the plan. The adviser will have the most comprehensive mandate granted to such an official to date and will probably be a member of the National Security Council but will report to the national security adviser as well as the senior White House economic adviser, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are not final. The announcement will coincide with the long-anticipated release of a 40-page report that evaluates the government's cybersecurity initiatives and policies. The report is intended to outline a "strategic vision" and the range of issues the new adviser must handle, but it will not delve into details. The document will not resolve the politically charged issue of what role the National Security Agency, the premier electronic surveillance agency, will have in protecting private-sector networks. The issue is a key concern in policy circles, and experts say it requires a full and open debate over legal authorities and the protection of citizens' e-mails and phone calls.

[Commentary] The degree to which the travails of papers are a threat to an informed democracy can be exaggerated, particularly by journalists. The Internet has made print less profitable but has also made new forms of information-gathering and commentary possible. Bloggers get a bad press but low-cost publishing helps new sources to emerge. The profitability of papers in the late 20th century, when they had a monopoly of classified advertising, was an anomaly. Before that, newspaper barons owned them more to wield power than nurture democracy, while the 18th-century press was as partisan and rambunctious as any bunch of bloggers. Perhaps some of the reporting done up to now by for-profit papers will in future be funded by foundations or trusts. But the industry should not lose faith in the free market. When people really want or need something, they will pay for it, one way or another. If today's publishers cannot convince their readers to do so, they will be overtaken by others that can.

Spurred by the unlimited texting plans offered by carriers, teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier. The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists, who say it is leading to anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation. The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop. "Among the jobs of adolescence are to separate from your parents, and to find the peace and quiet to become the person you decide you want to be," she said. "Texting hits directly at both those jobs."

On May 21, the Senate confirmed Aneesh Chopra as the nation's first chief technology officer. Also confirmed were 1) Cameron Kerry to be General Counsel of the Department of Commerce and 2) Rebecca Blank to be Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. Notably absent from the list of confirmations is Larry Strickling, nominated to head up the National Telecommunications & Information Administration. The Senate Commerce Committee endorsed his nomination, by he still awaits a vote on the Senate floor.