A recent report published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s Internet Monitor project examines the emergence of religious skeptics in Arab cyberspace.

The report, “Arab Religious Skeptics Online: Anonymity, Autonomy, and Discourse in a Hostile Environment,” authored by Helmi Noman, a research affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, analyzes the content, discourse, and structure of three prominent Arab atheist web forums and examines the relationship between the networked information economy and religious skeptics.

via Internet Monitor report examines religious skeptics in Arab cyberspace | Harvard Law Today.

Dear Prime Minister Cameron,

You recently proposed that all internet apps – and their users’ communications – be compelled to make themselves accessible to state authorities. I want to explain why this is a very bad idea even though it might seem like a no-brainer.

via An open letter to the British Prime Minister: 20th-century solutions won’t help 21st-century surveillance.

On Monday, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society announced that it was taking part in a collaborative effort to gather information about secret federal legal notices that demand corporate and user data from web service providers.

The Berkman Center worked alongside two digital rights groups, the Calyx Institute and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as New York University’s Technology Law and Policy Clinic, to create CanaryWatch.org, a site designed to collect and monitor all of the Internet’s warrant canaries.

via Backed by Berkman Center, Canarywatch will monitor data requests from feds | BetaBoston.

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and computer science at Harvard University, says: “Everybody can keep powder dry.  I don’t think there are any immediate changes.”

FCC officials seem to be just focusing on net neutrality, Zittrain says. “These are not wild-eyed radicals somehow wanting to blow up the system,” he says.

Zittrain says these are all things the FCC could do, if it wanted to – and that’s a big if.

via The what-ifs of net neutrality | Marketplace.org.

Justin Reich, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the author of the EdTech Researcher blog on edweek.org, said he’s glad to see “pockets of people experimenting with these ideas.”

There’s little evidence that either strategy is effective, Mr. Reich said, though there appears to be more indication that extended learning time may hold promise. Often, blended learning and extended learning time are implemented along with other measures, and it’s difficult to tease out what may have had the most impact, he said.

via Schools Test Impact of Blending Technology, Longer School Days – Education Week.

The differing messages don’t necessarily result from a difference of opinion, but from a difference of audience, says Susan Crawford, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.”When they’re talking to Wall Street, they say different things than when they’re talking to the press about what the FCC might like to do,” she says. “They trot out these really simple and nonsensical platitudes, like ‘regulation inevitably leads to lower investment.’ That’s just not true.”

via Would FCC Plan Harm Telecom Investment? Even Industry Opinion Is Mixed : All Tech Considered : NPR.