(If you'd prefer to watch the author read this article, instead of reading it yourself, or in addition to reading it yourself, click here.
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her deputies in the U.S. State Department have been going crazy lately supporting the rights of people worldwide to use the Internet to more widely “distribute leadership” (in the words of Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State). She is speaking, of course, of efforts by Tunisians, Egyptians, and Iranians to organize peaceful protests against despotic regimes. She is very supportive of the use of Twitter and Facebook to schedule demonstrations, distribute video footage of these protests, and convey the spirit of peoples in revolt.
Not part of Secretary Clinton’s exhortations is the fact that the Internet can also be used, once democracy is achieved, to directly channel the will of the people into legislation that will determine how these people themselves will be governed. “Smart Initiatives” is a system whereby the citizens in a democracy can electronically sign officially-recognized petitions that call for the submission to a vote of proposed legislation.
The Next Step in the Evolution of Internet Political Activism
The European Union (EU) has already adopted Smart Initiatives, in the form of the European Citizens’ Initiative, which requires the consideration of proposed legislation by the European Commission and the European Parliament when one million Europeans electronically and/or manually sign that proposed legislation.
No individual country, including none of the nascent democracies in North Africa or the Middle East, has yet adopted Smart Initiatives for its own people. But, in the wake of the surging democratic tide breaking over this region, powered by the Internet, it may be only a matter of time before the concept of Smart Initiatives begins to permeate these digital crowds and they start clamoring for the right, not just to overthrow authoritarian regimes using the indispensable modern technology of the Internet, but to use this same Internet as a means for formulating the laws under which they are governed.
Obstacles to this Evolution in the U.S.
Back in the U.S., little despots are doing what they can to block the way forward to a Internet-powered democratic future. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are working hard trying to block the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s recently-issued and limited regulations designed to insure “net neutrality,” a code word for open and non-discriminatory access to the broadband information superhighway.
In Utah, members of the State Senate, frightened that a legislative ethics reform initiative sponsored by Utahns for Ethical Government will qualify for the ballot if electronic signatures collected in its support are counted, are pushing S.B. 55, which would curtail the use of electronic signatures throughout government in that State, including, they hope, on initiative petitions.
In a recent interview with the Etopia News Channel, Utahns for Ethical Government founder and spokesperson David Irvine said he thought the motivations behind authoritarian governments’ efforts to curtail the use of the Internet to organize their populations were the same as those behind the efforts of legislators in his state to stifle the use of the Internet to organize that state’s population in support of what he considers to be badly-needed ethics legislation.
In fact, it is hard to see the difference in intent between Utah legislators trying to prevent their own reform by limiting the use of the Internet and the efforts by national dictators elsewhere to prevent their own reform by limiting the use of the Internet.
Wait and Hope
Meanwhile, we can only wait and hope for the large numbers of Internet-users rising up against repressive regimes to take the next conceptual step and realize that the same tool they are using to gain their freedom can be effectively used to exercise it going forward, in the shape of their own indigenous forms of Smart Initiatives.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Utah Senate committee amends and favorably recommends S.B. 55; opposing attorney still opposed.
S.B. 55, a bill that would fundamentally restructure Utah’s approach to electronic signatures, was today amended and favorably recommended on a 6-0-2 vote of the Utah State Senate’s Business and Labor Committee.
Voting to favorably recommend the measure were: Senators Gene Davis, David Hinkins, Karen Mayne, Stephen Urquhart (the bill’s primary sponsor), John Valentine (committee chairman), and Kevin Van Tassell. Absent from the vote were Senators Daniel Liljenquist and Curtis Bramble. No one voted against the favorable recommendation.
Responding to criticism of the original bill’s provisions voiced by Utah attorney Brent Manning in a February 10, 2011, Etopia News article, the amended version of the proposed law now excludes state courts, the legislature, and political sub-divisions of the state from its electronic signature rule-making requirements.
Manning, who argued the case for Farley Anderson in the Anderson v. Bell case that this law is intended to overturn, is still opposed to the bill in its present form. As now written, he says, “It will not overturn Anderson v. Bell,” but it will still do a lot of collateral damage. Its supporters, he claims, “are aiming at a target that they’ll miss,” but will nevertheless place “extra burdens on electronic commerce” in Utah, a state that, he points out, once led the way in the adoption and use of electronic signatures.
Accordingly, he still opposes the legislation, because, he says, it interferes with long-standing principles governing the use of signatures that are “so well-established in Anglo-American law,” and because he opposes any effort to “limit the ability of citizens to petition” their government. He calls S.B. 55 “unwise legislation,” and says he hopes “that sounder minds will prevail” before it is passed by the Legislature.
Voting to favorably recommend the measure were: Senators Gene Davis, David Hinkins, Karen Mayne, Stephen Urquhart (the bill’s primary sponsor), John Valentine (committee chairman), and Kevin Van Tassell. Absent from the vote were Senators Daniel Liljenquist and Curtis Bramble. No one voted against the favorable recommendation.
Responding to criticism of the original bill’s provisions voiced by Utah attorney Brent Manning in a February 10, 2011, Etopia News article, the amended version of the proposed law now excludes state courts, the legislature, and political sub-divisions of the state from its electronic signature rule-making requirements.
Manning, who argued the case for Farley Anderson in the Anderson v. Bell case that this law is intended to overturn, is still opposed to the bill in its present form. As now written, he says, “It will not overturn Anderson v. Bell,” but it will still do a lot of collateral damage. Its supporters, he claims, “are aiming at a target that they’ll miss,” but will nevertheless place “extra burdens on electronic commerce” in Utah, a state that, he points out, once led the way in the adoption and use of electronic signatures.
Accordingly, he still opposes the legislation, because, he says, it interferes with long-standing principles governing the use of signatures that are “so well-established in Anglo-American law,” and because he opposes any effort to “limit the ability of citizens to petition” their government. He calls S.B. 55 “unwise legislation,” and says he hopes “that sounder minds will prevail” before it is passed by the Legislature.
Monday, February 14, 2011
S.B. 55 author won’t comment on his own bill
Utah State Senator Steve Urquhart, author of S.B. 55, which would reverse the Utah Supreme Court’s decision allowing independent gubernatorial candidates to get on the ballot by collecting petition signatures electronically, today declined to comment on his plans for his bill.
The legislation had been scheduled for a hearing in the Utah State Senate Business and Labor Committee on February 3, 2011, but, according to minutes of that meeting, “Chair Valentine called the meeting to order at 2:44 p.m. and announced that at the requests of the sponsors, S.B. 109 and S.B. 55, would not be considered at today's meeting.”
The sponsor of S.B. 55, Senator Urquhart, finally responded to repeated requests for comments on his plans for this legislation by saying today, through a spokesperson, that he would have no comment.
The bill has been re-scheduled for a hearing tomorrow, in the Business and Labor Committee, according to a published agenda of that committee. The hearing is scheduled for 4:00 pm MST in at 215 Senate Building, Utah State Capitol Complex.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Utah is opposed to this bill.
It is also opposed by Utah attorney Brent Manning, who argued the original case giving independent gubernatorial candidates the right to collect electronic signatures on their ballot access petitions. Manning said that the bill was "improperly motivated" and that it would “absolutely compromise commerce and the government in Utah.”
The legislation had been scheduled for a hearing in the Utah State Senate Business and Labor Committee on February 3, 2011, but, according to minutes of that meeting, “Chair Valentine called the meeting to order at 2:44 p.m. and announced that at the requests of the sponsors, S.B. 109 and S.B. 55, would not be considered at today's meeting.”
The sponsor of S.B. 55, Senator Urquhart, finally responded to repeated requests for comments on his plans for this legislation by saying today, through a spokesperson, that he would have no comment.
The bill has been re-scheduled for a hearing tomorrow, in the Business and Labor Committee, according to a published agenda of that committee. The hearing is scheduled for 4:00 pm MST in at 215 Senate Building, Utah State Capitol Complex.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Utah is opposed to this bill.
It is also opposed by Utah attorney Brent Manning, who argued the original case giving independent gubernatorial candidates the right to collect electronic signatures on their ballot access petitions. Manning said that the bill was "improperly motivated" and that it would “absolutely compromise commerce and the government in Utah.”
Friday, February 11, 2011
A spectre is haunting more than Europe--the spectre of Smart Initiatives
Smart Initiatives is an electoral process in which citizens can use the Internet, not just to tweet about demonstrations, or to build Facebook pages for a cause, but to actually use the Internet to electronically sign petitions to put proposals for new laws before voters, or before the European Parliament, to demand the right to vote on already-passed legislation, to recall elected officials they’ve lost faith in, or to qualify a candidate for a place on the ballot.
The European Union (EU), with a population of 500 million people, has already adopted Smart Initiatives, in the form of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), which will go into effect early in 2012. The ECI will let EU citizens propose laws for consideration by the European Parliament by collecting one million signatures, distributed across the several countries of the EU, including by electronic means.
The latest issue regarding this process involves whether or not European citizens who wish to sign these ECI’s electronically will need to submit their national ID numbers in order to do so. This issue is addressed in a recent article entitled “A Serious (but Removable) Obstacle: ID Card Numbers and the ECI.”
In the United States, adoption of Smart Initiatives has not proceeded this far, but there are signs that it is becoming more and more prominent as an item on the political agenda.
Utah’s Supreme Court decided in September, 2010, that “Electronic signatures are as valid as handwritten signatures in qualifying independent candidates who seek to get their names on the general election ballot,” according to an article by Cathy McKitrick in The Salt Lake Tribune.
Showing how important this small step was, efforts are already underway by opponents of this court decision to reverse it by passing new legislation (S.B. 55) regarding the acceptability of electronic signatures in Utah. According to Paul Neuenschwander, Chief of Staff to Utah’s Lieutenant Governor Greg Bell, who was the defendant who lost in the original case, “the Lieutenant Governor’s office would not be accepting electronic signatures for ballot access if the bill passed.”.
Slightly further east in the U.S., Nebraska State Senator Paul Schumacher has introduced Legislative Bill 566 (LB 566), which would bring Smart Initiatives to the Cornhusker State by allowing citizens there to use “state-qualified data” to identify and authenticate themselves while electronically signing initiative, referendum, and recall petitions. Senator Schumacher thinks his bill is “essential,” but doesn’t think it will pass. The Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry has taken no position on the bill, but is “monitoring” its status.
And, just north of Utah, members of the Independent American Party of Idaho are hoping to gain access to that state’s ballot as a recognized party by collecting some of the required signatures electronically.
Much ink and electrons have been spilled in recent days debating the impact of the Internet as a tool for social and political change, especially in terms of its ability to motivate and coordinate protesters in Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt. Lost in the discussion is the fact that, at least in Europe, the Internet can also, and already, be used to directly facilitate the making of public policy, through the process of the European Citizens’ Initiative and the right it affords to sign official initiative petitions electronically online.
Adoption of the Smart Initiative process is not yet so far advanced in the United States. But as attention is riveted on the bloggers and others in Tahrir Square, one can note the Internet is not just useful for organizing mass movements, but, once those movements have brought democracy to a country, that it can be used for mobilizing the intelligence and will of that country’s people in the actual formulation and implementation of public policy, through the use of some form of Smart Initiatives.
Perhaps both of these roles will be realized someday with the adoption and routine use of Smart Initiatives in Egypt and other Middle Eastern and North African democracies.
The European Union (EU), with a population of 500 million people, has already adopted Smart Initiatives, in the form of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), which will go into effect early in 2012. The ECI will let EU citizens propose laws for consideration by the European Parliament by collecting one million signatures, distributed across the several countries of the EU, including by electronic means.
The latest issue regarding this process involves whether or not European citizens who wish to sign these ECI’s electronically will need to submit their national ID numbers in order to do so. This issue is addressed in a recent article entitled “A Serious (but Removable) Obstacle: ID Card Numbers and the ECI.”
In the United States, adoption of Smart Initiatives has not proceeded this far, but there are signs that it is becoming more and more prominent as an item on the political agenda.
Utah’s Supreme Court decided in September, 2010, that “Electronic signatures are as valid as handwritten signatures in qualifying independent candidates who seek to get their names on the general election ballot,” according to an article by Cathy McKitrick in The Salt Lake Tribune.
Showing how important this small step was, efforts are already underway by opponents of this court decision to reverse it by passing new legislation (S.B. 55) regarding the acceptability of electronic signatures in Utah. According to Paul Neuenschwander, Chief of Staff to Utah’s Lieutenant Governor Greg Bell, who was the defendant who lost in the original case, “the Lieutenant Governor’s office would not be accepting electronic signatures for ballot access if the bill passed.”.
Slightly further east in the U.S., Nebraska State Senator Paul Schumacher has introduced Legislative Bill 566 (LB 566), which would bring Smart Initiatives to the Cornhusker State by allowing citizens there to use “state-qualified data” to identify and authenticate themselves while electronically signing initiative, referendum, and recall petitions. Senator Schumacher thinks his bill is “essential,” but doesn’t think it will pass. The Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry has taken no position on the bill, but is “monitoring” its status.
And, just north of Utah, members of the Independent American Party of Idaho are hoping to gain access to that state’s ballot as a recognized party by collecting some of the required signatures electronically.
Much ink and electrons have been spilled in recent days debating the impact of the Internet as a tool for social and political change, especially in terms of its ability to motivate and coordinate protesters in Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt. Lost in the discussion is the fact that, at least in Europe, the Internet can also, and already, be used to directly facilitate the making of public policy, through the process of the European Citizens’ Initiative and the right it affords to sign official initiative petitions electronically online.
Adoption of the Smart Initiative process is not yet so far advanced in the United States. But as attention is riveted on the bloggers and others in Tahrir Square, one can note the Internet is not just useful for organizing mass movements, but, once those movements have brought democracy to a country, that it can be used for mobilizing the intelligence and will of that country’s people in the actual formulation and implementation of public policy, through the use of some form of Smart Initiatives.
Perhaps both of these roles will be realized someday with the adoption and routine use of Smart Initiatives in Egypt and other Middle Eastern and North African democracies.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Utah attorney calls SB 55 “improperly motivated” and says it will “absolutely compromise commerce and the government in Utah.”
In September, 2010, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that “Electronic signatures are as valid as handwritten signatures in qualifying independent candidates who seek to get their names on the general election ballot,” according to an article in The Salt Lake Tribute.
Now a Utah State Senator, Stephen Urquhart, is seeking to overturn this decision through the introduction in the legislature of S.B. 55 , which “requires a governmental agency to adopt a policy concerning electronic signatures before the governmental agency may accept an electronic signature.”
According to Brent Manning, a Utah attorney with Manning Curtis Bradshaw & Bednar LLC who successfully litigated Anderson v. Bell, the aforementioned case which the state Supreme Court decided in favor of his client, Farley Anderson, this proposed “statute is improperly motivated to stop citizens getting on the ballot and would absolutely compromise commerce and the government in Utah.”
He argues that passage of this legislation would overturn “thousands of years” of accepted legal practice in what constitutes a “signature,” any mark made by a person with the intent to express their consent to an agreement, including “X”’s made by the unlettered, clicks on “I agree” buttons on web sites, and electronic codes used to transfer vast sums of money between financial institutions.
Manning argued, in a phone interview with Etopia News, that, under the terms of S.B. 55, in order for a Utah court to enforce a contract sealed with an electronic signature, it would need to engage in a “rule-making process” which, as a court, it is not able to do, since its function is to decide cases, not make rules. Thus, no electronic signature, or online purchase, or other electronically-agreed-to contract could be enforced in Utah courts.
S.B. 55 “would completely invalidate all electronic transactions in Utah,” concludes Manning. “Every government department would have to engage in rule-making that would paralyze the process,” he said.
Senator Urquhart, author of S.B. 55, did not return a call made last week asking for his comment on his bill.
But Paul Neuenschwander, Lieutenant Governor Greg Bell’s Chief of Staff, did talk to Etopia News about the bill this afternoon. He said that S.B. 55 would return regulation of electronic signatures “back to the way it was” before the Supreme Court’s decision in Anderson v. Bell.
Asked if Lieutenant Governor Bell had a role in originating the bill, his chief of staff said that “he may have talked to Senator Urquhart. I don’t know.”
He said that passage of S.B. 55 would create “an opt-in, not an opt-out” system for electronic signatures for state agencies. The main issue with electronic signatures, he said, was “how to control their validity and accuracy.”
Developing a system by which electronic signatures could be accepted, he argued, would take time and money, and he made the point that, given budget constraints, money would not be easy to find for this purpose. The state would proceed in this matter, he said, “carefully, slowly, and in a measured way.”
“Will Utah be leading the way in electronic signatures?” he asked rhetorically, answering that question by saying, “I don’t think so.”
He indicated that the Lieutenant Governor’s office would not be accepting electronic signatures for ballot access if the bill passed.
He said that it wasn’t the intention of S.B. 55 to shut down electronic commerce in Utah, as predicted by Mr. Manning. He said that Mr. Manning could present his views to the committee hearing the bill and “if he can show the committee” that that was a likely result, they would take his views into account.
“We don’t want to shut down electronic commerce in Utah,” he insisted.
Now a Utah State Senator, Stephen Urquhart, is seeking to overturn this decision through the introduction in the legislature of S.B. 55 , which “requires a governmental agency to adopt a policy concerning electronic signatures before the governmental agency may accept an electronic signature.”
According to Brent Manning, a Utah attorney with Manning Curtis Bradshaw & Bednar LLC who successfully litigated Anderson v. Bell, the aforementioned case which the state Supreme Court decided in favor of his client, Farley Anderson, this proposed “statute is improperly motivated to stop citizens getting on the ballot and would absolutely compromise commerce and the government in Utah.”
He argues that passage of this legislation would overturn “thousands of years” of accepted legal practice in what constitutes a “signature,” any mark made by a person with the intent to express their consent to an agreement, including “X”’s made by the unlettered, clicks on “I agree” buttons on web sites, and electronic codes used to transfer vast sums of money between financial institutions.
Manning argued, in a phone interview with Etopia News, that, under the terms of S.B. 55, in order for a Utah court to enforce a contract sealed with an electronic signature, it would need to engage in a “rule-making process” which, as a court, it is not able to do, since its function is to decide cases, not make rules. Thus, no electronic signature, or online purchase, or other electronically-agreed-to contract could be enforced in Utah courts.
S.B. 55 “would completely invalidate all electronic transactions in Utah,” concludes Manning. “Every government department would have to engage in rule-making that would paralyze the process,” he said.
Senator Urquhart, author of S.B. 55, did not return a call made last week asking for his comment on his bill.
But Paul Neuenschwander, Lieutenant Governor Greg Bell’s Chief of Staff, did talk to Etopia News about the bill this afternoon. He said that S.B. 55 would return regulation of electronic signatures “back to the way it was” before the Supreme Court’s decision in Anderson v. Bell.
Asked if Lieutenant Governor Bell had a role in originating the bill, his chief of staff said that “he may have talked to Senator Urquhart. I don’t know.”
He said that passage of S.B. 55 would create “an opt-in, not an opt-out” system for electronic signatures for state agencies. The main issue with electronic signatures, he said, was “how to control their validity and accuracy.”
Developing a system by which electronic signatures could be accepted, he argued, would take time and money, and he made the point that, given budget constraints, money would not be easy to find for this purpose. The state would proceed in this matter, he said, “carefully, slowly, and in a measured way.”
“Will Utah be leading the way in electronic signatures?” he asked rhetorically, answering that question by saying, “I don’t think so.”
He indicated that the Lieutenant Governor’s office would not be accepting electronic signatures for ballot access if the bill passed.
He said that it wasn’t the intention of S.B. 55 to shut down electronic commerce in Utah, as predicted by Mr. Manning. He said that Mr. Manning could present his views to the committee hearing the bill and “if he can show the committee” that that was a likely result, they would take his views into account.
“We don’t want to shut down electronic commerce in Utah,” he insisted.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Terry Cooke updates the China-U.S. renewable energy story
Terry Cooke, 2010 Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, talks about the recent visit to the U.S. of Chinese President Hu Jintao and the current status of U.S.-China cooperation in renewable energy, recorded from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 7, 2011
Travis Bradford on "Solar Revolution"
Travis Bradford, Founder, President, and Director of the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, talks about the ideas in his 2006 book "Solar Revolution," recorded from Chicago, Illinois, on February 8, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
