August 2016

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced the appointment of Henning Schulzrinne as Senior Advisor for Technology, based in the agency’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis. Dr. Schulzrinne will take over as FCC Chief Technologist at the end of 2016, when the current Chief Technologist, Scott Jordan, leaves the agency.

Dr. Schulzrinne previously served as FCC Chief Technologist from 2011 to 2014, and has continued to serve the FCC as a part time advisor. He is Levy professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University. Schulzrinne received his undergraduate degree in economics and electrical engineering from the Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, his MSEE degree as a Fulbright scholar from the University of Cincinnati (OH) and his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst (MA). He helped develop key protocols that enable voice-over-IP (VoIP) and other multimedia applications including the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Dr. Jordan, who will remain as FCC Chief Technologist until he leaves the agency in December, joined the FCC in 2014 from the University of California, Irvine, where he is a professor of computer science. He received his undergraduate degrees, as well as his Master’s Degree and Ph.D in electrical engineering and computer science, from the University of California, Berkeley. His research has focused on communications platforms, and differentiated services on the Internet.

[Commentary] On July 28, Facebook issued a Safety Check in response to a shooting in a Chicago (IL) neighborhood, asking its users located in the area to verify if they were safe. Rather than wait for one of its employees to issue a Safety Check in the wake of a crisis, Facebook has recently begun using community-generated Safety Checks. These alerts are generated when a spike in user statuses tells the algorithm that there’s a crisis underway, which Facebook can follow-up with an employee-initiated Safety Check. As Facebook strives to make its crisis alert features faster and more precise, it gains use as a real-time crisis management tool rather than simply a crisis news source.

Using Facebook’s unique platform, Safety Check offers a clear advantage over inadequate government crisis alert mechanisms. First, “check in” messages instantly relay a tacit “stay away” to nearby citizens, increasing their emergency situational awareness. Second, Safety Check offers an alternative to telephone networks, which often jam up during crises. Third, today’s crises affect victims from many different nations, which makes reporting even more chaotic. With its centralized network of over 1.13 billion daily users, Facebook fills the need for a global crisis communication tool. By allowing users to quickly communicate that they are okay to loved ones or friends, Facebook can absorb some of the work of overburdened government crisis-response programs, allowing them to focus on other critical tasks like searching for missing persons. Such help would be welcomed by the government: in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, the State Department urged citizens to check in with family, not to contact the US Embassy. In the immediate wake of a crisis, the government lacks Facebook’s capacity to update billions of people on a person’s status.