White Papers and Reports

Abstract. Federal law enforcement officials in the United States have recently renewed their periodic demands for legislation to regulate encryption. While they offer few technical specifics, their general proposal—that vendors must retain the ability to decrypt for law enforcement the devices they manufacture or communications their services transmit—presents intractable problems that would-be regulators must not ignore.  Read more about The Risks of “Responsible Encryption”

The FCC is poised to rescind the Open Internet Order—the set of strong, enforceable net neutrality rules that prohibit internet service providers (ISPs) from interfering with web traffic that travels across their networks. One unintentional victim of that action is likely to be small television stations, newspaper publishers, and websites devoted to local news. Local news outlets play a vital civic role, but they face a crisis of declining revenue and audience, largely driven by internet competition. Read more about Slowing Down the Presses: The Relationship Between Net Neutrality and Local News

Mozilla has suggested that the FCC should classify a newly defined service, which it calls “remote edge provider delivery service,” as a telecommunications service. This service, as defined by Mozilla, is offered by broadband Internet access providers to providers of Internet applications, content or services (“edge providers”) and encompasses the transport of an individual edge provider’s data across the ISP’s access network to and from all of an ISP’s subscribers. According to Mozilla, this classification would allow the FCC to adopt rules banning blocking, discrimination, and access fees under Title II of the Communications Act. Read more about Comments on Mozilla's Proposal