Brian Fung

Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley investor and the creator of the first widely used Web browser, thinks it won't be long until most places have three, four or even five ways to connect to the Internet.

You've got your traditional broadband providers in the cable companies. Then you've got your other traditional providers in the telecom industry. You've got your wireless companies, some of whom envision serving mobile data to you at speeds comparable to fixed wireline cable.

And then you've got new entrants like Google Fiber, which has the luxury of having seen how all the other providers approached the problem and can now think of ways to do it differently. In fact, Google Fiber could become so good at rethinking the broadband industry that it winds up being a global phenomenon, says Andreessen. Still, despite the prospect of Google someday becoming another connectivity behemoth like Comcast or Verizon, one thing sets it apart.

For now, at least, it has no interest in creating Internet "fast lanes" or signing paid interconnection agreements with companies like Netflix. As Google Fiber spreads, chances are it will try to promote those values as a way of standing out from the crowd.

A Q&A with Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape. The investor and Web browser pioneer thinks we'll all look back in 20 years and conclude that Bitcoin was as influential a platform for innovation as the Internet itself was.

He says that tech companies think their meetings with President Barack Obama on privacy are a waste of time. And he calls net neutrality a "lose-lose."

In a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post, Andreessen painted a picture of a future that's distributed, messy and fraught with tension and the “balkanization of the Internet.” He added that Bitcoin originally came from the fringes, but is being mainstreamed today. And regulators are still trying to catalog it. “You've got people at the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury Department and IRS that are figuring it out,” he said.

Almost a year after he released a flurry of documents showing the National Security Agency was collecting data on everyone from foreign leaders to US citizens, Edward Snowden is still the predominant Washington story in the minds of tech executives who believe the controversy has caused damage to their businesses.

That's according to the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who said in a wide-ranging interview that Silicon Valley's repeated meetings with the Obama administration were mostly for show and have produced "not even a little" progress on privacy and surveillance issues. Chief executives from leading companies including Netflix, Google and Facebook met with senior White House officials in December, and again in March. While the Obama Administration said at the time that the meetings helped clear the air on intelligence reforms, Andreessen argued that the White House has not done enough to mitigate the NSA's impact on tech companies' reputations, particularly overseas.

"The level of trust in US companies has been seriously damaged, especially but not exclusively outside the US," said Andreessen. "Every time a new shoe drops -- and there are 10,000 of them -- it serves a blow to the US." Some estimates suggest the news about the NSA's surveillance practices may have cost tech companies tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue.

In what seems certain to become a wider battle, Comcast is eyeing the wireless industry as a possible market for expansion.

Someday soon, Comcast might be counted among the likes of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, the businesses that now provide millions of Americans with mobile voice and data services. Thanks to a growing network of Wi-Fi hotspots, Comcast is arguing that it, or another company piggybacking off of its technology, could shake up the wireless industry by delivering cheaper cellular service to consumers and introducing another competitor to the market.

Comcast is already rolling out the infrastructure it would need for such a push; it operates 1 million Wi-Fi hotspots around the country and plans to expand that to 8 million by the end of 2014.

Comcast says that it has no imminent intention to launch a cellular service. But in April, the cable company raised that possibility as one of several arguments to support its Time Warner Cable purchase. "A ubiquitous Wi-Fi network built by Comcast could make a 'Wi-Fi-first' service, which combines commercial mobile radio service with Wi-Fi, a more viable alternative," Comcast wrote in its public interest filing to federal regulators.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission just agreed to consider a set of proposed rules that would tacitly allow Internet providers to speed up some types of Web traffic at the expense of other types.

If adopted, it could fundamentally change how the Web works at a basic level.

Naturally, people have a lot of questions about what's going to happen. For one thing, Netflix could become more expensive. If it keeps signing deals with broadband companies like Comcast, just so that it can provide you with smoother service, it might consider jacking up your subscription fee to cover any extra expense it incurs.

The longer analysis is that the Netflix deal is not exactly the same as the types of deals we might see under the FCC's proposed rule, because its agreement with Comcast is about bringing data to Comcast's door -- not how Comcast routes that traffic to the end user over "last-mile" pipes.

As for how the Internet itself could change, it seems inevitable that Internet providers could speed up some traffic. However, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler did say that under the proposal (which is just a proposal!) broadband providers would not be allowed to slow down traffic to below what a user has bought and paid for. So if you have a 75 Mbps connection at home, for example, services should always be delivered at that speed.

Because of the potentially higher costs to Web-based businesses that may arise from the proposed rules, some smaller companies may languish in the slow lane because they can't afford to pay the fees assessed on large companies to reach broadband providers' subscribers. So, yes, small startups could be harmed by this outcome.

And while Chairman Wheeler has a connection to cable industry and brings an industry perspective into his thinking, it's probably unfair to say that he's been bought and paid for.

As for municipal networks, there are about 20 states with laws on the books that hinder cities from competing with big Internet providers by offering their own, public Internet service. The FCC has indicated, along with its net neutrality proposal that it wants to start preempting some of these state laws.

Q&A with George Takei, famous for playing Captain Hikaru Sulu on "Star Trek," now host for the award-winning Web series "Takei's Take," a show underwritten by AARP meant to help introduce technology to seniors, youngsters and everyone in between.

Asked if there policy debates that he's into, such as network neutrality, he said that issues like policy and privacy are complex.

Takei also said that his audience was not built by Internet service providers. Instead, it came about “by our efforts, by our creativity. And once we have that audience built, they want to charge us for it? […] They can't unilaterally say, 'All right, it's our platform, we're going to charge you for it.'”

The Federal Communications Commission split along partisan lines in its vote on net neutrality rules: All three Democrats voted for the proposal, while the two Republicans opposed it.

That may be not be surprising, considering the issue at hand pits large businesses against grass-roots consumer advocates. But the vote is also evidence of the internal frictions between the FCC's Democratic majority and Republican minority.

The nation's top telecommunications regulator is composed of five members, each nominated by the president and approved by Congress.

Generally, the only time we get to see those members interact is when they appear before the public at the commission's monthly open meeting. In recent weeks, though, we've had brief glimpses of their behind-the-scenes relationship, thanks to unusually public statements about the inner workings of the agency.

Republican commissioner Ajit Pai complained that the Democrats recently sent him a revised draft of a proposal at the last minute, forcing him to compare both drafts in the wee hours of the night to see what had changed. There apparently are divisions within the majority party, too. Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel opened her remarks by flatly: "I support the open Internet, but I would've done this differently."

Broadband providers could still create Internet fast lanes even if federal regulators adopt stronger rules for the Web, as net neutrality advocates are hoping.

That's what the cable industry is arguing in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission. The letter, filed by the National Cable Television Association, opposes the labeling of broadband companies as utilities -- a move that would give the FCC much greater authority over Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon.

At issue is whether the FCC should regulate those firms like phone companies under Title II of the Communications Act, the law that serves as the commission's charter. The FCC's current proposal would regulate broadband companies under Title I, Section 706 -- a part of the law with murkier implications.

"Subjecting broadband access providers to regulation under Title II would not even accomplish the goal that reclassification proponents apparently seek," the letter reads. "Reclassification would not support a categorical prohibition on Internet 'fast lanes' any more than Section 706 would."

Demonstrators are calling on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler to abandon a proposal that allows broadband providers to charge content companies like Dropbox and Google extra for speedy and reliable service.

They set up shop on a small strip of concrete and grass outside the FCC building on Maine Avenue in Southwest. Orange and white tents from REI dotted the perimeter. It was hard to see whether anyone was inside them taking refuge from the heat. Drawing inspiration from the Occupy Wall Street protests, the demonstrators are asking the agency to reclassify broadband providers as utility companies, which would allow the government to issue a ban on speeding up or slowing down types of Internet traffic. The FCC is considering rules that would prohibit companies from blocking traffic but could give them the freedom to offer faster service to Internet companies like Netflix and Google that chose to pay a fee.

Privacy International, an international nonprofit is suing the British counterpart to the National Security Agency in what the group says is the country's first-ever legal challenge to device-hacking by intelligence services.

The watchdog says that while former NSA contractor Edward Snowden drew a great deal of attention to the Government Communications Headquarters' (GCHQ) attempts to eavesdrop on people's communications, the spy agency's efforts to break into electronic devices is far more pernicious.

In a 21-page complaint filed to a British special court and obtained by The Washington Post, Privacy International has accused GCHQ of installing malware on unsuspecting targets' mobile phones, computers and Web cams that can capture keystrokes, secretly activate microphones and obtain sensitive information such as usernames and passwords and even the content of communications, such as text messages and e-mails stored on a device.

"If the interception of communications is the modern equivalent of wiretapping," according to the complaint, "then the activity at issue in this complaint is the modern equivalent of entering someone’s house, searching through his filing cabinets, diaries and correspondence, and planting devices to permit constant surveillance in future, and, if mobile devices are involved, obtaining historical information including every location he visited in the past year."

The filing invokes the European Convention on Human Rights. If a private citizen were to try doing what GCHQ does routinely, Privacy International alleges, it would run afoul of British cybercrime law.