Wealth and Internet Usage What Pew Can Tell Us

Internet connections have become increasingly mobile. Broadband Internet in the home is no longer an accurate demographic measure for access. Here is what the most recent Pew study can tell us about our internet use.

A study measurement called “intensity of use” points to some disparities at differing income levels. For instance, higher income levels are checking email (93% of them do so), accessing news online (80%), paying bills (71%), and research products (88%). On the other hand, only 34% of those at the lowest income brackets get their news online.

Ninety five percent of households earning over $75,000 a year use the Internet at least occasionally, compared with 70% of those living in households below that income level.

Why do we want to know these things? Mostly because our daily lives are being herded into and through the virtual world. These findings seem to indicate more than anything that society needs to take initiative to shape our methods, practices and lives and not sit back to have the corporate culture with the help of elected government hand us the future.

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Better-off-households.aspx

'Should Corporations Decide Our Elections'-Part 4-Lawrence Lessig-- 10/15/10--NYC

'Should Corporations Decide Our Elections'-Part 4-Lawrence Lessig-- 10/15/10--NYC from Big Apple Coffee Party on Vimeo.

The information contained in this video is vital for everyone to who cares about our democracy.

Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, discusses 'Should Corporations Decide Our Elections' and how the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision affects elections, lobbying, and the mixture of money and politics.

The event was sponsored by the Big Apple Coffee Party and their co-sponsors.

F.B.I. Seeks Wider Wiretap Law for Web

An interagency task force of Obama administration officials is progressing on a plan to develop new legislation to submit to Congress early next year that expands the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. Andrew Noyes, Facebook's public policy manager confirmed that F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller has visited Facebook and presumably other internet companies in Silicon Valley.

Law enforement officials want the 1994 law to also cover Internet companies because people increasingly communicate online. The law requires phone and broadband network access providers like Verizon and Comcast to make sure they can immediately comply when presented with a court wiretapping order.

Under the proposal, firms would have to design systems to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages. Services based overseas would have to route communication through a server on United States soil where they could be wiretapped.

The Commerce Department and State Department are questioning whether the proposed law would inhibit innovation. Among many other concerns, is whether repressive regimes might attempt to harness these same capabilities to identify political dissidents?

Comments from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other advocacy groups are anticipated relating to what protections if any could balance or outweigh a justifiable concern for what seems a continuing infringment of fundamental constitutional freedoms.


Source article from New York Times, November 16, 2010 by Charlie Savage.

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