Call for Action!

I don't mean to throw a bucket of cold water on our enthusiastic discussions of all things wifi of yesterday, but a quick look at how the technology fares in a country like Russia makes me sober up in seconds.
What to do?...

With regards to what follows: the Federal Security Service is the successor of the KGB - same thing, just renamed.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080416-russian-government-enacts-...
Russian government enacts Byzantine WiFi regulations
By Ryan Paul | Published: April 16, 2008 - 08:45AM CT
It is often said that the opposite of progress is paperwork. The incomprehensibly self-defeating wastefulness and inefficiency of the legislatosaurus never ceases to depress me, but for once, America's idiocracy has been outdumbed by a Russian government agency which has proposed one of the most breathtakingly inane policies that I have ever had the misfortune of witnessing: mandatory registration of all WiFi devices.

According to Fontanka.ru, a Russian news source, the government agency responsible for regulating mass media, communications, and cultural protection has stated that users will have to register every WiFi-enabled device with the government and receive special permission in order to use the hardware. The agency says that registration could take as long as ten days for standard devices like PDAs and laptops and that it intends to confiscate devices that are used without registration. Users who wish to operate a wireless access point or WiFi-enabled home router are expected to go through an even more onerous process that will involve submitting documentation and obtaining a license. In certain regions, like Moscow and St. Petersburg, users will also have to receive special approval from the Federal Security Service.

The policy, which was explained to Fontanka.ru by the Russian agency's deputy director Vladimir Karpov, could reverse existing policies like a 2004 government panel decision to provide blanket permission for indoor wireless access point operation and a 2007 policy which allowed use of mobile WiFi devices without registration. According to The Other Russia, which provides an overview of the Fontanka.ru article in English as well as some additional details, the Russian government agency which is responsible for issuing the new policy was created when the Russian media and telecommunications regulatory bodies were merged last year.

The policy would likely be impossible to enforce and some question whether the government agency even has the authority to enforce it. WiFi technology is a powerful enabler of mobile connectivity and technological innovation. If regulatory policies broadly erode the availability of connectivity, the results could be disastrous for Russia's tech-savvy population. The policy reflects an abysmal understanding of WiFi's pervasiveness and utility and seems like arbitrary bureaucratic decision with no inherent purpose. Perhaps in Russia, unregulated WiFi is one of those accoutrements of capitalist imperialism that must be opposed with vigorous shoe-banging and similarly vigorous legislative action.

The Fontanka.ru article quotes an industry specialist who points out that the government agency behind the policy is run by a former metallurgic engineer who likely has no clue about many of the technical issues overseen by his organization. In this respect, Russia has much in common with the US, where lack of relevant experience often seems to be a prerequisite for public office, especially when it comes to regulating the series of tubes that make up the interwebs.

http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/04/15/russian-agency-demands-registra...
Russian Agency Demands Registration for all Wi-Fi Devices
April 15th, 2008

Wireless internet in Russia is spreading at lightning speed, with nearly every new notebook computer, mobile telephone and PDA coming equipped with the necessary technology. Wi-Fi hotspots are popping up in major cities, and some 40 million Russians have regular internet access. Yet as Fontanka.ru online newspaper reports on April 14th, officials of Russia’s media and communications agency believe that every wireless user must obtain permission and register their Wi-Fi devices before they can go online. The agency, Rossvyazokhrankultura (short for the Russian Mass Media, Communications and Cultural Protection Service), believes that it can lawfully confiscate wireless devices from anyone violating this directive.

Vladimir Karpov, the deputy director of the agency’s communications monitoring division, told the newspaper that wireless internet users must obtain permission to use the radio frequency involved in Wi-Fi transmitting, and must register any electronics that use Wi-Fi technology. Wifi hotspots, personal home networks, and even laptop computers, smart-phones and Wi-Fi enabled PDAs would be affected.

Most countries currently allow free and open access to Wi-Fi networking, without any mandatory licenses or limits. Local authorities generally put limits on the maximum signal strength of the transmitters, thereby setting a maximum broadcast range. Loose agreement on spectrum licensing has allowed wireless technology to become one of the most standardized services in the world (Unlike, for instance, mobile telephones, which use different types of networks in different countries).

Up until now, the technology has had tacit acceptance in Russia, with the government taking steps to legalize a slice of the radio band specifically for free Wi-Fi. In 2004, the State panel for Radio Frequencies gave indoor wireless networks open rights to a narrow band of spectrum. And in July 2007, the Government of Russia excluded mobile wireless devices from the list of electronics requiring registration.

Yet Rossvyazokhrankultura seems to have its own opinion on the matter, and the question of jurisdiction may make the situation all the more confusing.

The agency was formed from a 2007 merger of two distinct regulatory bodies (Rosokhrankultura, which oversaw media and Rossvyaznadvor, which oversaw telecommunications). It now appears interested in strictly licensing each and every wireless transmitter and device.

According to Karpov’s statement, registering a PDA or telephone would take 10 days. Then, only the owner of the device would be licensed to use it. Registering a Wi-Fi hotspot, on the other hand, would be more difficult. Anyone wishing to set up as much as a personal home-network would need to file a complete set of documents, as well as technological certifications. Networks in Moscow or St. Petersburg would also need approval from the Federal Security Guard Service (FSO) and the Federal Security Service (FSB).

An industry specialist, who wished to remain anonymous, was not surprised at the agency’s statement: “Similar conclusions speak to the complete professional deterioration of a unified regulatory agency. It is now engaged in all manner of fields – protecting cultural riches, registering mass-media outlets, control of legal compliance on personal data, monitoring communications, allocation of radio frequencies and so on. The organization is led by a metallurgic engineer by background. It is unlikely that he can simultaneously manage communications personnel, fine art experts, journalists and attorneys.”

Wi-Fi technology (short for Wireless Fidelity), comes built-in in nearly every new laptop computer, PDA, and mobile telephone, and allows for the easy set up of a local internet network without the need to install a mass of cables. The access point, or hot-spot, can be set up anywhere, and every computer store sells special Wi-Fi transmitters called routers. The typical router has an indoor range of around 150 feet, but can reach up to 300 feet if located outdoors. Hotspots, both free and paid are located around the world, in places like hotels, airports, cafes, and parks. There is even an international organization called the Wi-Fi Alliance, which oversees the standard implementation of global wireless technology.

UPDATE:

After this issue flew around the Russian internet and much of the world, Fontanka.ru issued a follow-up to its original article (RUS). Rossvyazokhrankultura has now denied that wi-fi devices will need to be registered. Wi-fi providers (hot-spots) that charge for the service will need a license, but free networks under a certain range will be exempted. However, the registration agency did not answer many of the newspaper’s questions, and the editors believe that vagaries remain within the wi-fi regulations.

The Audubons and all those among us interested in mobile technology-enhanced global activism will be interested in this recent report from Technology Review on the extended capacities that can be applied to cell phones, namely facilitating access to casual jobs.
Who knows, maybe this will herald a new era of mobile labor practices...

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/21983/?a=f
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Crowd-Sourcing the World
A startup hopes to tap into the expertise of developing nations via cell phones.
By Kate Greene

As smart as computers may seem, they can't match humans in certain tasks: describing the contents of an image, rating the quality of Web search results, or transcribing and translating text from another language, to name a few. Tapping into human expertise to tackle problems that computers struggle with is also a growing business: Google lets customers refine its search results, and Amazon uses a system called the Mechanical Turk to off-load all manner of simple tasks to humans around the world; people will work on these tasks, even for pennies.

Now Nathan Eagle, a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico, is launching a project similar to Amazon's Mechanical Turk but that distributes tasks via cell phones. The goal of his project, called txteagle, is to leverage an underused work force in some of the poorest parts of the world.

Eagle says that distributing questions to participants in such developing countries via text messages or audio clips could make certain tasks more economical, such as the translation of documents into other languages, or rating the local relevance of search results. It could also provide a welcome source of income for those involved.

"We're trying to . . . tap into a group of people to complete these tasks who haven't been tapped before," says Eagle. "And we're using mobile phones, which have a high penetration rate. More people are mobile-phone subscribers in developing countries than in the developing world, so we can get a user base of billions of people."

The Finnish cell-phone company Nokia is a partner in the project, and Eagle says that it provides a good example of a Western company that could benefit from txteagle workers. Eagle explains that Nokia is interested in "software localization," or translating its software for specific regions of a country. "In Kenya, there are over 60 unique, fundamentally different languages," he says. "You're lucky to get a phone with a Swahili interface, but even that might be somebody's third language. Nokia would love to have phones for everyone's mother tongues, but it has no idea how to translate words like 'address book' into all of these languages."

Another application is the transcription of audio recordings: a user would listen to a short clip, write it down by hand, and then copy it into an SMS reply. Eagle's studies have shown that this task can be completed in less than two minutes, and he believes that a proficient user could earn about $3 an hour doing the work, which would be 60 percent cheaper than today's transcription rates.As smart as computers may seem, they can't match humans in certain tasks: describing the contents of an image, rating the quality of Web search results, or transcribing and translating text from another language, to name a few. Tapping into human expertise to tackle problems that computers struggle with is also a growing business: Google lets customers refine its search results, and Amazon uses a system called the Mechanical Turk to off-load all manner of simple tasks to humans around the world; people will work on these tasks, even for pennies.

Now Nathan Eagle, a research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico, is launching a project similar to Amazon's Mechanical Turk but that distributes tasks via cell phones. The goal of his project, called txteagle, is to leverage an underused work force in some of the poorest parts of the world.

Eagle says that distributing questions to participants in such developing countries via text messages or audio clips could make certain tasks more economical, such as the translation of documents into other languages, or rating the local relevance of search results. It could also provide a welcome source of income for those involved.

"We're trying to . . . tap into a group of people to complete these tasks who haven't been tapped before," says Eagle. "And we're using mobile phones, which have a high penetration rate. More people are mobile-phone subscribers in developing countries than in the developing world, so we can get a user base of billions of people."

The Finnish cell-phone company Nokia is a partner in the project, and Eagle says that it provides a good example of a Western company that could benefit from txteagle workers. Eagle explains that Nokia is interested in "software localization," or translating its software for specific regions of a country. "In Kenya, there are over 60 unique, fundamentally different languages," he says. "You're lucky to get a phone with a Swahili interface, but even that might be somebody's third language. Nokia would love to have phones for everyone's mother tongues, but it has no idea how to translate words like 'address book' into all of these languages."

Another application is the transcription of audio recordings: a user would listen to a short clip, write it down by hand, and then copy it into an SMS reply. Eagle's studies have shown that this task can be completed in less than two minutes, and he believes that a proficient user could earn about $3 an hour doing the work, which would be 60 percent cheaper than today's transcription rates.

Users would be paid either in credit to their mobile accounts or in cash, as facilitated by a service called mPesa, which allows people to send and receive currency via cell phones and use their phones to claim money at mPesa agents and post offices, says Eagle.

One technical issue that he has considered is quality control. Eagle says that he and his colleagues are developing machine-learning algorithms that can determine the accuracy of different workers' responses. Essentially, identical tasks are off-loaded to a number of workers, and if a high percentage of those come back with a particular response, then it can be assumed to be the most accurate, within a certain level of statistical confidence. Also, if a person consistently responds correctly, then the system deems her more trustworthy, providing her with more tasks, and allowing her to make more money. But Eagle admits that there are still some kinks in the system that need to be ironed out, especially for the translation and transcription tasks, whose accuracy can be somewhat subjective.

Txteagle will use a reputation system similar to one developed by a San Francisco startup called Dolores Labs that works with Amazon's Mechanical Turk. CEO Lukas Biewald says that such a system is a powerful tool for txteagle. "You don't have to make assumptions about who can do your work and who can't," he says. "It allows you to take much more risk with the people doing the job," without sacrificing overall accuracy.

Sharon Chiarella, vice president of Amazon's Mechanical Turk project, says that bringing crowd sourcing to developing nations could be a good idea. "One of the things that's powerful about this space is the promise of leveraging a worldwide workforce," she says.

But Chiarella adds that there will be some limitations. The most widely available cell phones, for instance, are generally only able to send and receive text and voice messages. This makes crowd sourcing more complex tasks, such as tagging images, impossible. "The cell-phone screen size somewhat limits the tasks that can be viable via the phone," she says. "But I think that as cell phones continue to evolve, some of those issues will go away."

Eagle agrees but says that his goal is to start small and see if the model works well enough to expand. He hopes to receive grant money that will allow txteagle to roll out the service in Rwanda, Kenya, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic within the next year.

Okay, so it's almost 3am on Monday morning and I have no idea how I'll do all the preparation I had hoped to do, but I also suspect that I've done far more than could possibly fit in 4 days. Recent speaker additions:

+ Sarudzayi Njerere, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights
+ Andrew Lewman from the TOR project, the best-in-class annonymization system
+ Ricardo Dominguez, 'hacktivist' and artist
+ Huma Yusuf, journalist and Pakistan civic journalism observer
+ Technical demonstrations by Dan Ring, MIT dropout

Too cool.

This is a test post.