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The White House has abbreviated citizen signatures on its We the People petition website. The signatures, which used to include a signer’s first name and last initial, now just include first and last initials.

The signature blocks also include the signer’s location and the date of the signature. The change affected both signatures on active petitions and on historic petitions that have already received a White House response. There was no public announcement of the change and the White House declined to comment about it on the record. The change will likely reduce the amount of monitoring and oversight White House staffers must perform on petitions.

AT&T filed comments reaffirming its request to have the Federal Communications Commission conduct geographic trials to oversee the final transition away from the legacy plain old telephone service (POTS) infrastructure that has served this country for more than 100 years.

I say the “final transition” because the reality is that the vast majority of consumers have already made this transition. As US Telecom ably documented in its Switched Voice Non-Dominance Petition, the number of consumers who connect to the POTS infrastructure and the use of that infrastructure have plummeted in the last decade. Consumer access lines and minutes of use (MOUs) are down +70% from peak totals as more and more consumers switch to VoIP alternatives (offered by companies who have physical networks as well as over-the-top virtual network service providers), wireless services and other forms of digital communications.

[Commentary] As the Internet enters its middle years, we users can no longer take it for granted. It’s more than a cloud. It’s people, technology and physical infrastructure. As with any infrastructure, the Internet needs protection and maintenance to survive; otherwise the wires and signals that send digital communications will cease to function. The online community also needs protections — to prevent our ideas from being blocked, our identities from being hijacked and our wallets from being picked.

“Internet freedom” refers to every user’s right to connect openly with anyone and speak freely. Those who don’t think this right is under threat in America need only look at Verizon’s 2012 claim that the First Amendment gives it the authority to edit the Internet, entitled to pick and choose what content travels across its wires and what content does not. The concentration of gatekeeper power has very real, and very negative, consequences. Americans pay far more for far less than people in developed countries whose policymakers have promoted competition instead of profits. It’s time our leaders in Washington, D.C., did the same. Internet users are only now beginning to get organized to ensure that power over the network stays in our hands. It’s a movement that touches almost every aspect of modern life. If more people get involved in the fight to protect this open network, we can transform the lives of many for the better.

[Karr is senior director of strategy for Free Press]

January 28, is Data Privacy Day, when the world recognizes the importance of preserving your online privacy and security. If it’s like most other days, Google—like many companies that provide online services to users—will receive dozens of letters, faxes and emails from government agencies and courts around the world requesting access to our users’ private account information. Typically this happens in connection with government investigations. It’s important for law enforcement agencies to pursue illegal activity and keep the public safe. We’re a law-abiding company, and we don’t want our services to be used in harmful ways. But it’s just as important that laws protect you against overly broad requests for your personal information. To strike this balance, we’re focused on three initiatives that I’d like to share, so you know what Google is doing to protect your privacy and security.

First, for several years we have advocated for updating laws like the U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act, so the same protections that apply to your personal documents that you keep in your home also apply to your email and online documents. We’ll continue this effort strongly in 2013 through our membership in the Digital Due Process coalition and other initiatives.

Second, we’ll continue our long-standing strict process for handling these kinds of requests. When government agencies ask for our users’ personal information—like what you provide when you sign up for a Google Account, or the contents of an email—our team does several things:

• We scrutinize the request carefully to make sure it satisfies the law and our policies. For us to consider complying, it generally must be made in writing, signed by an authorized official of the requesting agency and issued under an appropriate law.
• We evaluate the scope of the request. If it’s overly broad, we may refuse to provide the information or seek to narrow the request. We do this frequently.
• We notify users about legal demands when appropriate so that they can contact the entity requesting it or consult a lawyer. Sometimes we can’t, either because we’re legally prohibited (in which case we sometimes seek to lift gag orders or unseal search warrants) or we don’t have their verified contact information.
• We require that government agencies conducting criminal investigations use a search warrant to compel us to provide a user’s search query information and private content stored in a Google Account—such as Gmail messages, documents, photos and YouTube videos. We believe a warrant is required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure and overrides conflicting provisions in ECPA.

And third, we work hard to provide you with information about government requests.