It’s an odd concept but there is a movement to nominate “the Internet” for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

There’s even a Web site, InternetForPeace.org, to advocate that the “Nobel Peace Prize should go to the Net. A Nobel for each and every one of us.”

There are some heavyweights behind the idea, including Iranian human rights activist and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, fashion designer Giorgio Armani and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT Media Lab and One Laptop per Child.

The group has a “manifesto,” arguing that “digital culture has laid the foundations for a new kind of society. And this society is advancing dialogue, debate and consensus through communication.” The Internet, it says, “is a tool for peace” and “anyone who uses it can sow the seeds of nonviolence.”

I’m not sure if it’s possible for something as amorphous as the Internet to win the $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize, but the nomination is certainly thought-provoking. The Internet is indeed a unifying force that brings people together, helps activists fight oppression and provides enormous possibilities for communications and global understanding.

It’s the way that people in the United States can learn about what is happening in the Middle East directly from people who live in that region. And despite China’s “Great Firewall,” the Internet helps activists in that country reach across oceans and across their own country to fight censorship and oppression.

The Net is also a tool for gay, lesbian and transgender people to provide one another support and encouragement and combat isolation. And it has been used to prevent suicides, counsel against drug abuse, and encourage countless laudable and even heroic acts by people all over the world.

One company, Global Hosted Operating System, uses the Internet and videoconferencing to link its two offices — one in Jerusalem and the other across the fence in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

But despite all those points in the plus column, there are some aspects of the Internet that seem as contradictory as the career of the prize’s founder, Alfred Nobel, a pacifist who was also the inventor of dynamite and nitroglycerin.

The Internet has been a boon to collectors of illegal child pornography, purveyors of hate sites, and millions of annoying, angry and not-so-peaceful “flame wars,” via e-mail, chat, forums and social networking sites.

Ernie Allen, CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (whose board I’m on), has repeatedly pointed out that postal inspectors had all but eliminated child pornography until the Internet made it easy for criminals to disseminate these images. The Anti-Defamation League’s Web site has an entire section devoted to Internet hate sites.

Bullying has been around forever, but cyberbullying is making it all too easy to harass people 24/7. Just last week, a study by two researchers at Iowa State University found that 54 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth had been cyberbullied within 30 days of the study. Other studies have shown that as many as 30 percent of all American teens have suffered some type of cyberbullying.

Chatroulette.com could be cited for or against the Net getting a peace prize. On the plus side, it brings people from around the world together for a spontaneous online video conversation. I’m sure the Nobel committee would be pleased how easy it is for users to engage fellow global citizens who live on other continents. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of these global citizens seem to be engaged in activities that are more gross than noble.

If the Nobel committee ever did decide to give a prize to the Net, there probably would be a war over who would pick it up. Would it be early pioneers from the late ’60s like Vincent Cerf, Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn or Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited for inventing the World Wide Web in 1990?

Maybe it should be Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who created a platform that, so far, links 400 million people around the world. Perhaps it should be Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams, who have given a 140-character platform to activists around the globe.

They could give it to Al Gore, who reportedly once said, “I took the initiative in creating the Internet,” but he already has a Nobel Peace Prize.

This article originally appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

This article initially appeared on CNET News.com

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out the “broadband plan for children and families” Friday at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

FCC chairman gets help from Elmo in promoting broadband plan for kids. (Credit: FCC video of speech via YouTube)

Referring to children as “our most precious national resource,” Genachowski said “we must do everything we can to educate and prepare them to thrive in the 21st century and keep them safe.” New technologies, he said, “can expose our children to new dangers, and can potentially outpace the ability of parents to guide their children.”

Read more and see video of speech at SafeKids.com

That’s the starting price of Cisco’s CRS-3 router that it announced Tuesday with great fanfare. The device can deliver a whopping 322 terabits of data. That, according to CEO John Chambers, is 3 times the speed of the company’s existing CRS-1 router and 12 times faster than what the competition offers.

It took a bit of web surfing, but I did find out that CRS stands for Carrier Routing System. As far as I can tell there isn’t a CRS-2 router.

Cisco made a really big deal out of this announcement, claiming in advance that it would “forever change the Internet.” It was a big enough deal for a radio reporter to wake me up at 5:30 AM to talk about it and for me to tune into a webcast announcement at 8:00 AM followed by a 9:00 AM visit from a TV camera crew to so that TV viewers could be filled in about this incredible new development. In retrospect, I wish I had stayed in bed.

Clearly, this is a serious product which, someday, could have a significant impact on the ability for service providers to deliver high speed data. Cisco says that the product is mostly about delivering video, claiming that the routers could make it possible for “every man woman and child in China to make a video call simultaneously.” The company also said that every printed work in the Library of Congress could be downloaded in just over a second and that every movie ever made could be downloaded in less than 4 seconds, which might be really good news for media pirates.

In addition to the vast demands of entertainment and video conferencing, the technology could help play a role in telemedicine and, of course, education. It comes as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is in the process of rolling out the Obama Administrations’ National Broadband Plan. On Friday, March 12th, Genachowski “will deliver a major policy speech outlining how the new National Broadband Plan will benefit children and families,” according to the FCC.
The Cisco announcement also comes on the heels of Google’s announced plans to build out a high speed fiber network in selected communities across the country. Unlike the Cisco router, the Google networks will deliver that data directly into homes. The Cisco product is really about the backbone plumbing. It’s kind of like a series of freeway interchanges that are necessary to speed traffic between highways but no substitute for local roads.

AT&T Labs chief Keith Cambron appeared with Chambers on the Webcast saying that his company has been testing the device on a 100 gigabit network backbone but he also indicated that it could play a role in the delivery of mobile data. I wonder if it will help out all those iPhone users in San Francisco who are having trouble with their 3G data plans?

As a reasonably heavy consumer of data, I’m all for progress at the infrastructure level. After all, how could I continue to be able to stream my Amazon and Netflix videos if the Internet gets too clogged up to handle all that traffic? It truly is important for companies like Cisco to innovate and keep things moving.

Still, I can’t help feel a little bit used by the company’s PR flacks. “Forever change the Internet” seems like a bit of hyperbole to me and, trust me, I’ve heard plenty of hyperbole after three decades covering technology companies in Silicon Valley.

My biggest problem with the Cisco press conference was trying to stay awake. After two cups of coffee and the anticipating of learning about something incredible, I found myself inundated with technical terms that even I don’t understand.

As talented as Cisco CEO John Chambers may be, he is no match for that other master of overstatement, Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs too exaggerates but he does it with such flare that you want to believe him even when you know that the product he’s announcing – as good as it might be – can’t possibly be all that good. Still, Jobs does it with infectious enthusiasm that Chamber can’t possibly match.

The new Cisco router will be available late this year. For the few who care, details about the Cisco router are on the company’s website.

This article originally appeared in CNET News.com

Internet filters have been around since the early days of the Web and they can play an important role in preventing young children from accessing inappropriate content. But they’re not a replacement for parental involvements — and they’re not for everyone.

Before installing and configuring a filter, parents need to decide if their child needs to have software controlling how they can use the Internet and, if so, how the filter should be configured.

I don’t recommend routine use of filters for teens, especially high-schoolers. For one thing, there are lots of ways for them to get around filters, including accessing the Web from their cell phones, game consoles or other people’s PCs. And since teens are on a fast path to becoming young adults, it’s better to help them develop the filter that runs between their ears. You can’t protect them forever, so help them learn self-control. Of course, there are always exceptions, and some teens do need extra supervision.

Read more at SafeKids.com

Netbooks have been the rage for the last couple of years for very good reasons. These small laptops, which typically cost between $300 and $400, can do most things most people want to do with a laptop computer yet are cheaper, smaller and lighter than typical laptops.

It’s ironic that smaller machines are now cheaper than bigger laptops. Until a few years ago, users who wanted a small notebook PC would pay a premium. It wasn’t uncommon for machines under three or four pounds to cost two or three times as much as heavier notebook PCs. Netbooks turned the cost/weight equation upside down.

Consider this: For $269.99 (after rebate) you can order a Compaq Mini CQ10 machine that comes with Windows XP, a gigabyte of memory (enough for basic usage) and a 160 GB hard drive, which should be more than enough storage for many people.

The device, which I haven’t tested, has an Intel Atom N270 processor running at 1.60 GHz. I’ve tested similar netbooks from Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Gateway and find them to be adequate for most common tasks, such as Web surfing and e-mail. They’re also OK for viewing Web video, though I wouldn’t rely on such a low-power device to edit video.

The Compaq Mini has a 10.1-inch screen, which is small but big enough to be useful. The keyboard on this and many other netbooks is 92 percent the size of a typical notebook PC keyboard. That doesn’t bother some people but I’m a touch-typist who rarely looks at the

keyboard, and the smaller size bothers me a lot. I can handle it for Web surfing but for word processing or even writing e-mail, I strongly prefer a full-size keyboard.

But one of the good things about netbooks is that they’ve put downward pressure on the pricing of larger and faster notebook PCs.

Bargain notebooks with full-sized keyboards

For example, Lenovo just loaned me a ThinkPad Edge with a 13-inch display and a full-size keyboard. A version with AMD dual-core processor and 2 gigabytes of memory starts at $599. The one they sent me has a 1.3 GHz duo-core Intel processor and 4 GB of memory and sells for $799. It also has 3 USB ports, an HMDI slot so you can plug it into a high-definition TV, and a really good keyboard.

The Edge weighs 3.6 pounds, which is only about 11 ounces heavier than the ThinkPad 301, which costs $2,154 with the same amount of memory. For that price, the 301 comes with a 128 GB solid state drive, which is fast. But the far-cheaper Edge comes with a 320 GB hard drive. If money weren’t an issue, I guess I’d go for the slightly lighter 301. But considering the cost difference, I’d definitely buy the less expensive machine. I’m a fairly demanding road warrior — I carry my machine with me everywhere I go — and I’m certainly happy enough with this model.

On HP’s and Dell’s Web sites, I found plenty of impressive full-featured notebook PCs for under $700. If you need just the basics — and most people will do just fine with that — you can get a well-equipped Dell Inspiron 15 for $379 that comes with a dual-core processor, a CD/DVD burner, 4 GB of memory and a 320 GB hard drive. This machine has everything most PC users would need. At 5.8 pounds, it’s a bit heavy for my tastes, but if you don’t plan to carry it around all day, weight may not matter.

With the exception of netbooks, almost all the laptops I looked at feature Windows 7, which I’ve been using long enough to feel good about. I not only find it easier to use than XP and Vista, but it’s more reliable. Although system crashes still aren’t out of the question, they are infrequent.

Of course, there is that “other” camp, which also has some great laptops. Apple’s MacBook, which starts at $999, is a fine machine. If you want a Mac with same 4 GB of memory and 320 gigabytes of storage you’d get on the $799 Lenovo or the $399 Dell Inspiron 15, you’ll pay $1,149 — and that’s just for a MacBook. If you want the much cooler MacBook Pro with those specifications, it will cost you $1,399.

I’m not deriding the Macintosh, and I realize that some people would never consider buying a computer that doesn’t have an Apple logo on it. But in a tough economy, these low-cost Windows laptops are definitely worth considering.

This article originally appeared in the San Jose Mercury News

A recent survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 73 percent of online teens use social-networking sites. Updating their Facebook or MySpace page has become a regular activity for teens as is using these services to catch up on what their peers are doing. But, for the most part, teens are using social networking while they are away from school. Many schools actually ban access to services like Facebook and Twitter and often configure filtering programs to block students from accessing them.

While I can understand why it might not be educationally relevant for schools to allow students to polish their online profiles while in school, I worry that schools are disallowing the very technology that kids are using for their informal communications and learning. As my ConnectSafely.org co-director Anne Collier blogged on NetFamilyNews, “Gutenberg’s press, was pretty controversial back in the day (15th c.) and probably didn’t make it into ’school’ for a while.”

Today, of course, books are a staple in school but, as any trip to a bookstore will illustrate, not all books are appropriate for classrooms. Should educators ban books because some books are “bad?” Of course not. Educators select appropriate books for use in class and incorporate them into the educational process.

The same should be true of social networking. While I’m not convinced that school filters should prevent kids from accessing sites like Facebook and MySpace from school computers during breaks, I can understand why educators would mostly avoid them for classroom use. Of course, there are pages on these sites with educational value, so it makes sense more sense for teachers to be granular by allowing access to appropriate social-networking pages rather than banning them entirely.

Social networking designed for schools
But it also makes sense to think about ways to incorporate specialized social networking tools in class. The Flat Classroom Project is one example where educators have built social-networking sites (mostly using Ning) specifically for use in class and home assignments. Not only does this allow for educationally relevant communication for students in the classroom, but for them to interact with students in far away classrooms both in the U.S. and abroad so students around the world can reach and learn from each other.

Fortunately, the idea of school-based social networking is starting to take hold. It has caught the attention of Mary McCaffrey, CEO of SchoolCenter. School Center, which bills itself as a “Web solutions company in the education market,” is in the process of developing social-networking tools marketed specially to schools. These tools will encourage students to interact with each other, using many of the same techniques they do when away from school but focused on their educational mission.

I spoke with McCaffrey not only about what her company plans to offer but about what many schools are currently missing.

Listen now


This post originally appeared on CNET News.com

But for anyone with a Webcam (and Webcams are now built in to many laptops and desktops), the question is whether you are vulnerable to having your Webcam remotely turned on. The answer is yes, though the newest version of the software used by the district to monitor its computers can no longer be used to activate Webcams or even track stolen computers.

According to Harriton High School student Phil Hayes, officials at the Lower Merion School District used a program called LANRev to manage and track the Macintosh laptops issued to students. The product was published by Pole Position Software, which was acquired last year by Vancouver, B.C.-based Absolute Software. An Absolute Software spokesman verified that it is also his understanding that the school used LANRev software.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Mike Perbix, a network technician from the district, had recorded a Webcast where he talked about his use of LANRev. In a YouTube video attributed to Perbix, he says, “I’ve actually had some laptops we thought were stolen which actually were still in a classroom because they were misplaced, and by the time we found out that they were back I had to turn the tracking off and I had a good 20 snapshots of the teacher and the students using the machines in the classroom.”

In one portion of the Webcast (not in the YouTube video), Perbix says, “You can go into curtain mode, so if you’re controlling someone’s machine and you don’t want them to see what you’re doing you just click on the curtain mode icon…you can take a snapshot of the screen by clicking on the little camera icon.” Scroll down to the end of this post to listen to a 28-second audio excerpt from the Webcast, in which Perbix talks about “curtain mode.”

The blog Stryde Hax has more detail about Perbix’s reported activities.

End users can no longer track machines
Absolute has changed the name of the program to Absolute Manager and will be marketing it for remote management of PCs, Macs, and iPhones, but the product will no longer be used for theft or loss recovery. For those functions, Absolute offers Computrace for enterprise customers (including schools) and LoJack for Laptops for consumers.

Unlike LANRev, Absolute’s current theft recovery products can’t be activated by end users, according to Vice President for Global Marketing Stephen Midgley. I interviewed Midgley by phone from his office in Vancouver.

Both the Computrace and LoJack products can be used to turn on a Webcam and photograph the user in the event of a theft investigation. But unlike the old LANRev, only Absolute engineers can track devices and activate recovery features. Company policy, according to Midgley, prohibits them for doing that until a police report is filed. “For us to begin a theft recovery process, we need a case file from the police,” he said.

Two of the recovery methods are GPS and Internet Protocol location tracking. Absolute tracks the location of devices every 24 hours, but once a device is reported stolen it increases to once every 15 minutes, according to Midgley. “That allows us to pinpoint the location of the device…we then provide the details over to the local law enforcement, who then go in and recover the device.” Midgely said the recovery team is made up of former law enforcement officers and that the company has relationships with well more than 1,000 law enforcement agencies across North America.

Midgley said the company doesn’t typically use Webcam photography, even if it’s available. “The photography doesn’t always take a picture of the criminal, and it’s not always permissible in a court of law,” he said. Often, the person who is photographed using the laptop is not the person who stole it. By the time it’s been reported, the laptop has been sold, and the person using it isn’t the same person who stole it, “so taking a photograph of them really proves no value. In that case, it’s not a photograph of the criminal. It doesn’t really help find out the location of the device,” he said.

Other ways to control Webcams
There are, however, other ways to remotely turn on a laptop’s Webcam. For one thing, there are many legitimate programs on the market that are used to control “nanny cams,” or Webcams used at vacation homes and other remote locations. If someone has physical access to a computer, it would be possible to install this software and turn it on remotely.

There are also programs such as GoToMyPC that are designed specifically to allow users to remotely control a machine via the Internet. Once connected, the person has complete remote control over the host computer, including the Webcam, microphone, and other features.

This picture was taken via GoToMyPC from a remote computer.

(Credit: Larry Magid/CNET)

To be certain that GoToMyPC can be used for this purpose, I downloaded a copy to a laptop and accessed it from my desktop PC via the Internet and then used my desktop PC to activate the camera on the laptop. To be fair, GoToMyPC puts up a notice on the remotely controlled machine indicating that there is a session in progress, but that notice can be immediately taken down from the remote computer.

You need physical access to a computer to install GoToMyPC, but it’s not uncommon for stalking victims to sometimes be in the same location as the stalker.

Malware can turn on Webcam
There are also Trojan horses and other malware programs that can be used to take remote control of a computer. According to Mike Geide, senior security researcher at cloud security company Zscaler, “there are several exploit kits out there that include rootkit functionality that allow (people) to interact with the operating system however they want, and that includes turning on specific services or running applications in the background that would include applications to report Webcams, record audio, or turn on a built-in internal microphone.”

Geide recently blogged about a Chinese government Web site that had been hacked to post malware to utilize an Internet Explorer 6 vulnerability to plant Backdoor:W32/Hupigon which, according to F-Secure, is “a remote-administration utility which bypasses normal security mechanisms to secretly control a program, computer, or network,” and “allows for recording with the user’s Webcam.”

TrendMicro education director David Perry stressed the importance of being aware of vulnerabilities. “It would do a public service, if we could make the public more aware that when you hook something like a Webcam up to your system that making it secure is your responsibility,” Perry said. “By default, it’s insecure.”

In October 2008, TGDaily reported on a “game” that could “mislead people into clicking on a link that can then remotely control the user’s Webcam and microphone.” This YouTube video shows a proof of concept of a simple game that could cause a user to turn on the remote camera for an attacker.

While security software can protect you against much of the malware, it can’t necessarily protect you against the misuse of legitimate programs designed to remotely enable a Webcam or remotely operate a PC. For that, the user has to be aware of what is running on the machine. While a sophisticated PC or Mac user may be savvy enough to determine if there are remote-control programs running on their systems, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t have a clue.

I spoke with a student at Harriton who said some students are employing a very low-tech solution to block their Webcams: they’re pasting black tape over the lens. Now all they need to do is figure out how to disable the microphone.

Click below to listen to a 28-second portion of Mike Perbix’s Webcast, where he talks about “curtain mode.” Audio taken from a longer Webcast downloaded from MacEnterprise.org.

Listen now: Download today’s podcast

This post originally appeared at CNET News.com

In a civil complaint (PDF) filed in federal court, a student at the school, Blake Robbins, said he received a notice from an assistant principal informing him that “the school district was of the belief that minor plaintiff was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the Webcam.”

The district said in a statement that the “security feature was installed to help locate a laptop in the event it was reported lost, missing or stolen so that the laptop could be returned to the student.” The district further explained that “upon a report of a suspected lost, stolen or missing laptop, the feature was activated by the district’s security and technology departments. The tracking-security feature was limited to taking a still image of the operator and the operator’s screen.” The district claims it has “not used the tracking feature or Webcam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever.”

Subsequently, district Superintendent of Schools Christopher W. McGinley sent a letter to parents saying that the security tracking feature is being disabled and that there will be “a thorough review of the existing policies for student laptop use” and a “review of security procedures to help safeguard the protection of privacy, including a review of the instances in which the security software was activated.”

In the mean time, the Associated Press is reporting that the FBI is investigating the district and “will explore whether Lower Merion School District officials broke any federal wiretap or computer-intrusion laws,” according to an unnamed official who spoke to the AP.

In an interview with CBS Evening News, plaintiff Blake Robbins said he was unaware that the camera could be activated at his house. “I thought that there was no way that they could do that at my home,” Robbins said, adding that the assistant principal “thought I was selling drugs, which is completely false.”

On the CBS Early Show, Harriton High sophomore Savannah Williams said she keeps the laptop in her bedroom and says that its on while she is “getting changed, doing my homework, taking a shower, everything.” She said she takes it into the bathroom with her to listen to music while showering. “I was shocked,” she added. She said “everyone is talking about it at school…everyone was really worried about ‘what are they watching me doing.’”

At least one student at Harriton isn’t particularly worried about the administration spying on students. In a podcast interview, 16-year-old junior Jon Brodo said “I don’t think anyone knows the true story…the problem is in this case is that there are so many rumors going around.” He said that he is somewhat concerned, but “I do trust that the school district knows its bounds.” Brodo said that most students, however ,”it’s been pretty hectic. It’s the conversation of everybody. I’ve seen the kid (plaintiff Blake Robbins) in the hallways. The atmosphere is definitely pro the kid and antischool district.”

On its Web site, Lower Merion School District says that it was one of the first districts in the country to issue laptops to all high-school students. And that is an extremely laudable effort on the part of the district to bring learning into the 21st century. It’s also commendable that the school put some thought into a recovery system to help locate lost and stolen laptops but it’s quite unfortunate that they used a system that enables administrators to take photographs of students using the machines away from school.

Of course, no judge has yet ruled on the plaintiff’s claim and the school has denied that it has used the cameras for anything other than helping recover missing machines. But even if that turns to be the case, the mere fact that staff members had the ability to turn on the camera remotely is problematic. While it’s fair to assume that the school could monitor what students do with district owned equipment (just as employers can with equipment used by employees even when they’re away from the office), I can understand why students and their parents would be shocked to learn that officials could remotely turn on the camera.

Listen to interview with student Jon Brodo

This article first appeared on CNET News.com