July 2014

New America is pleased to announce the appointment of the following 2015 Fellows who will join us on September 1, under the new leadership of Peter Bergen:

Virginia Eubanks will research and write about the impact of public service information technologies on poor and working people in the United States. She is currently an associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. She also writes for The American Prospect and Equal Future and runs two social justice organizations, the Popular Technology Workshops and Our Knowledge, Our Power.

Yascha Mounk will write about technological solutions to the political and environmental challenges of the 21st century, and how confused attitudes about nature are making us overly hesitant to embrace them.

Ari Ratner will write a book on reforming bureaucracy for a new generation based on the experiences of young people in government during the Obama presidency. Ratner is currently a strategic communications consultant and has been collaborating with Alec Ross on a book on the next wave of globalized innovation in science and technology, to be published by Simon & Schuster. Previously, Ratner was appointed to serve at the State Department as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment and as Congressional Liaison for Near Eastern Affairs.

Daniel Rothenberg will write a book on the role of narrative in explaining why people defend politically significant ideas where clear evidence undermines their position. Rothenberg is currently Professor of Practice in the School of Politics and Global Studies and the Lincoln Fellow for Ethics and International Human Rights Law at Arizona State University.

According to experts canvassed by Pew Internet and American Life Project, the biggest threats aren't a rise in hacking attacks or new waves of Internet crime. They're government and big online corporations.

Control and consolidation were the top threats for experts canvassed by Pew's Internet and American Life Project. Pew asked more than 1,400 experts -- academics, theorists and those who work in the technology industry -- to weigh in on what risks the Internet faces through 2025. The majority pointed to government surveillance, restrictive regulation and corporate greed as the things most likely to kill the idea that the Web is a free-flowing network of information. Plenty expressed concern that the Internet will fracture due to government policies, such as those that limit access to the Web as some governments did during the Arab Spring, aggressive intellectual property laws or even well-meaning policies in Canada and Australia that aggressively filter all Internet traffic to combat child pornography. These efforts, experts said, cross the line -- or at least flirt with it.

The These Experts Fear are:

• Actions by nation-states to maintain security and political control will lead to more blocking, filtering, segmentation, and balkanization of the Internet.
• Trust will evaporate in the wake of revelations about government and corporate surveillance and likely greater surveillance in the future.
• Commercial pressures affecting everything from Internet architecture to the flow of information will endanger the open structure of online life.
• Efforts to fix the TMI (too much information) problem might over-compensate and actually thwart content sharing.

Is the National Security Agency keeping us safe? That was the question that MSNBC used to frame a debate at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which The Atlantic co-hosts with The Aspen Institute.

The debate featured General Keith Alexander, former head of the National Security Agency; former Congresswoman Jane Harman; and former solicitor general Neal Katyal spoke in defense of the signals intelligence agency.

Anthony Romero of the ACLU, academic Jeffrey Rosen and former Congressman Mickey Edwards acknowledged the need for the NSA, but argued that it transgresses against our rights with unnecessary programs that violate the Constitution. The two teams also spent time arguing about Edward Snowden and whether his leaks were justified. By the end of the 90 minute session the civil libertarian team handily beat the national security state team in audience voting.

Anthony Romero of the ACLU was at his strongest when pressing the other team to explain why the American people shouldn't have a right to privacy in their metadata, given how revealing it can be. He rejected the notion that the phone dragnet is permissible because, although the NSA keeps records of virtually every phone call made, it only searches that database under a narrow set of conditions.

[Commentary] New, convenient and often cheaper market entrants are encouraging consumers to abandon traditional service providers. Digital disruption isn’t just a consumer story. It is also reshaping how businesses buy goods and services from other businesses.

An Accenture survey of 500 business leaders from 10 economies found that 80 percent planned to pursue growth opportunities outside of their own industry -- in collaboration with other industries, the public sector, or the nonprofit sector. As a result, the approach to regulation that has been built around traditional models of industry -- from telecoms and taxis to banks and hotels -- needs to be adapted to address these emerging “digitally contestable markets.”

As regulators attempt to keep pace with these digitally contestable markets, they will be seeking to not constrain the benefits of innovation or protect existing practice providers from disruption. What may appear today to be a phenomenon led by technology upstarts will become embedded across old and new companies in multiple sectors as they learn to embrace new digital business models at an increasingly rapid rate.

[Robinson and Cooper work for Accenture Institute for High Performance]