Posted by Liz Eraker, Policy Analyst

Last week we welcomed another one of Silicon Valley’s representatives to the Googleplex, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), for a fireside chat with our CEO Eric Schmidt. Covering the 16th district just south of our Mountain View headquarters (Rep. Lofgren thanked Eric for keeping so many of her constituents employed), she has been a longstanding champion of many of the tech policy issues Google cares about.

Eric and Rep. Lofgren discussed a range of hot topics facing Congress right now. Especially noteworthy were her comments -- and continuing efforts -- around reforming immigration policy for highly skilled labor, a troubling roadblock for Google's and other tech companies' efforts to hire the best and brightest regardless of where they're from. As one of our favorite immigration lawyer-turned-Congresswoman pointed out, when we’ve invested in graduate-level educations for foreign nationals who want to stay here and contribute to our economy, what sense does it make to send them immediately home?

Lofgren has been a steadfast a critic of the president's warrantless wiretapping program, and much of the lively conversation focused on whether Congress should give retroactive immunity to telcos who broke the law by participating in the program. Lofgren engaged with the perspectives of Googlers in the audience, including one from our Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, who formerly worked at carrier MCI.

For more on the immigration issue and other insights from Rep. Lofgren, check out the full conversation:

Posted by John Burchett, State Policy Counsel

The nation's governors converged on Washington this weekend for their '08 winter meeting, making it a good time for us to take stock of some of our ongoing partnerships with state governments throughout the country. We've partnered with seven states so far to help them open up their government websites to outside search engines, and through the Climate Savers Computing Initiative we've taken a leading role in helping states to reduce energy consumption.

One of our most gratifying and exciting ventures, however, has been our work helping state governments to address some of their most pressing emergency management and homeland security needs with Google Earth Enterprise.

In recognition of our efforts, yesterday the National Governors Association presented Google with its second annual Public-Private Partnership Award, which recognizes companies that have partnered with a governor's office to implement a project that positively affects a state's citizens. Google was nominated by Governor Bob Riley for our work in partnership with the state of Alabama on the Virtual Alabama project.

The first system of its kind in the country, Virtual Alabama combines the technology of Google Earth Enterprise with the state's aerial photography, imagery, and other data, providing government employees across the state with the common operational picture necessary for emergency preparedness and disaster management operations. Or, as Alabama Department of Homeland Security Director Jim Walker put it, "This tool is going to save a firefighter's life in Alabama."

Posted by Alma Whitten, Software Engineer

To protect privacy, you first have to identify what data is personal. That’s why there has been a lot of discussion in recent months around the world to try to define “personal data” (as it is referred to in Europe), or “personally identifiable information” (as it’s called in the U.S.).

The discussion is a broad one: as the world’s information moves online, how should we protect our privacy? What pieces of data can identify us as individuals, directly or indirectly? For instance, your name, address, phone number, social security number and your fingerprints are all personal data, since all of them can be used to identify you as an individual. But many people have raised the question of whether an IP address is personal data. To decide whether this is the case, it's helpful to first understand the technical workings.

An Internet Protocol (IP) address is an address for a computer on the Internet, which exists to allow data to be delivered to that computer. When you enter a website's name - like http://www.google.com - that is actually a handy shortcut for the website's IP address - right now, one of Google's is http://72.14.207.99/. So when a website needs to send your computer something (for instance, your Google search results), it needs your IP address to send it to the right computer.

The situation gets a bit more complex, though, because the IP addresses that people use can change frequently. For instance, your Internet service provider (ISP) may have a block of 20,000 IP addresses and 40,000 customers. Since not everyone is connected at the same time, the ISP assigns a different IP address to each computer that connects, and reassigns it when they disconnect (the actual system is a bit more complex, but this is representative of how it works). Most ISPs and businesses use a variation of this "dynamic" type of assigning IP addresses, for the simple reason that it allows them to optimize their resources.

Because of this, the IP address assigned to your computer one day may get assigned to several other computers before a week has passed. If you, like me, have a laptop that you use at work, at home, and at your corner café, you are changing IP addresses constantly. And if you share your computer or even just your connection to your ISP with your family, then multiple people are sharing one IP address.

So, back to our initial question: is an IP address personal data, or, in other words, can you figure out who someone is from an IP address? A black-and-white declaration that all IP addresses are always personal data incorrectly suggests that every IP address can be associated with a specific individual. In some contexts this is more true: if you're an ISP and you assign an IP address to a computer that connects under a particular subscriber's account, and you know the name and address of the person who holds that account, then that IP address is more like personal data, even though multiple people could still be using it. On the other hand, the IP addresses recorded by every website on the planet without additional information should not be considered personal data, because these websites usually cannot identify the human beings behind these number strings.

At Google, we know that user trust is fundamental to our success; users will stop choosing to use Google products and services if they can't trust us with their data. For this reason, we have made moves to safeguard that privacy, like anonymizing our logs and worked with privacy groups on initiatives like shortening cookie length. We have proposed broad global privacy standards, and are strong supporters of the idea that data protection laws should apply to any data that could identify you. The reality is though that in most cases, an IP address without additional information cannot. The policy debate about data protection and IP addresses will continue, but it’s important to have a firm grasp of the technical realities of the debate in order to reach conclusions that make sense.

Posted by Jacob Glick, Canada Policy Counsel

Everyone who advocates one form of copyright reform or another says that they want a "balanced approach." Who is opposed to balance, after all? But what exactly does balance mean? What interests are being balanced?

We view copyright balance as finding ways for copyright holders to receive fair compensation, encouraging them to create new amazing songs, movies, and software, while allowing consumers and businesses the right to use, enjoy, make fun of, mash-up, experiment, play around with, and otherwise innovate with those same copyrighted works.

Here in Canada, where there is an ongoing debate about how to best implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty, Google has joined with a number of other Canadian and international companies who have a shared vision of balanced copyright. The Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright has issued a two-page position paper calling for a "balanced 'package' approach for a strong Canadian copyright regime." Admittedly not the snappiest title, but even so the document includes an important list of issues that the Canadian government ought to consider as integral to copyright reform.

The coalition's proposed package of reforms includes, among other things, expanding Canada's fair dealing provisions – permitting commonly accepted uses of copyrighted works including: parody, mash-ups, time-shifting and place-shifting. More importantly, the coalition is calling for fair dealing to be made more flexible. Canada's current approach to fair dealing ossifies the tiny and exhaustive list of exceptions to copyright and as such stifles cultural and technological innovation.

This balanced approach to copyright reform is the same approach that we follow in practice. Every day Google helps content owners unlock value in their works. Every day Google helps consumers express themselves in unexpected, innovative ways. Flexible exceptions and limitations, which encourage creativity and innovation, are integral to balanced copyright law.

Posted by Derek Slater, Policy Analyst

Today, Rep. Ed Markey and Chip Pickering introduced bipartisan legislation to help preserve Internet freedom and explicitly make "net neutrality" a guiding principle of U.S. broadband policy. The bill would affirm that the Internet should remain an open platform for innovation, competition, and social discourse, free from unreasonable discriminatory practices by network operators. It would also require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to solicit input on the nation's broadband policy from ordinary Americans by conducting eight "broadband summits" around the country and seeking comments online.

As we've discussed before on this blog, innovation has thrived online because the Internet's architecture enables any and all users to generate new ideas and technologies, which are allowed to succeed based on their own merits and benefits. Some major broadband service providers have threatened to act as gatekeepers, playing favorites with particular applications or content providers, demonstrating that this threat is all too real. It's no stretch to say that such discriminatory practices could have prevented Google from getting off the ground -- and they could prevent the next Google from ever coming to be.

While regulations on certain types of discrimination is one way to help preserve the Internet's openness, other remedies including expanding broadband competition and market-based initiatives may be important complements. Rep. Markey's legislation sets a sound course towards properly putting all the options on the table, by adopting the proper general principles and asking the FCC to address the right kinds of questions.

As important, Internet users themselves will get a chance to answer those questions. From the start, the heart and soul of the movement for net neutrality has been the grassroots -- the thousands and thousands of ordinary Americans who have already spoken up for Internet freedom on sites like Save The Internet and beyond.

Net neutrality is too often painted as just about particular companies' competing interests, but that's missing the point. Rather, net neutrality and broadband policy are -- and should be -- about what's ultimately best for people, in terms of economic growth as well as the social benefit of empowering individuals to speak, create, and engage one another online using the wide panoply of innovations available to them. In other words, broadband policy should come from the bottom up.

Posted by Josh Cohen, Google News Team

(Cross-posted at Official Google Blog)

On Super Tuesday, voters couldn't cast their ballots online, but we were excited to see so many people turn to the Internet to participate in the election. Americans and many others from around the world sent a clear message on Tuesday -- and we heard you! Here are some of our favorite highlights:

• "Tweets" from politically-engaged Twitter users spanned a wide range of expressions. You spoke your mind: "In addition to Super Tuesday, today is also Fat Tuesday. Super Fat Tuesday -- finally, a day I can relate to!" (ejacqui, UK); you reported election results: "Can someone please explain why 10% of Californians are voting for Edwards? Don't they read the news?" (paul_irish, Boston, MA); you relayed conditions at the voting booths: "CA Precincts are worried about running out of ballots." (mizlit, Montara, CA).
  
  Of course, we had a favorite:

• Searches for [super tuesday results] hit the top of our Hot Trends list early in the afternoon and stayed number one through much of the night. Related terms like [primary results], [where do i vote] and [super tuesday exit polls] were also in the top ten for significant chunks of time. Senator Obama turned out to be the most widely-searched candidate of the day, and [health care] emerged as the most popular policy issue.

• Voters, news organizations, and candidates submitted hundreds of videos to YouTube's YouChoose08 Super Tuesday site, providing for an interesting integration of unique content all on one platform. Check out some of the top videos uploaded by voters, news organizations, and the candidates themselves. And here's one of the videos we thought captured the moment well:
  
  

Posted by Iarla Flynn, European Policy Manager - Ireland

Data retention requirements have been controversial in Ireland and will likely remain so as the Irish government moves to introduce new legislation shortly.

At present, data retention for telecomms providers in Ireland is governed by the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act 2005. The basic requirements are that, subject to a request from the police, service providers (fixed or mobile) must retain traffic and/or location data for a period of 3 years. The police request must be for the purpose of fighting crime. The content of this legislation has been controversial here, with the Data Protection Commissioner airing concerns about the length of retention periods.

New EU data retention legislation was agreed on in 2006 and seeks to harmonise the obligations on service providers to retain certain data for the purpose of fighting serious crime. The directive also expands the scope of data retention requirements to include a number of internet services. The period of retention is to be not less than six months and not more than two years. Member states were required to implement the legislation no later than 15 September 2007, although many availed of a derogation period.

We have previously blogged about the directive and raised concerns with its scope (which services are covered and which are not), the potential for inconsistent implementation and the difficulties this would raise for a global internet player like Google, and how the costs of compliance are going to be covered.

The Irish government took a legal challenge against the directive to the European Court of Justice, arguing that the wrong process was used to pass the directive. To make matters even more complicated an Irish privacy advocacy group (Digital Rights Ireland) has filed a legal case against both the current Irish law and the EU directive.

With the Irish government's legal challenge underway and a lack of progress across the EU on transposition, the Directive seemed to be going nowhere fast. But recent media reports state that the Irish government is now set to convert the directive into Irish law. This has caught many observers by surprise and has drawn criticism from the Data Protection Commissioner and the ISP Association of Ireland.

Ireland looks set to be amongst the first countries to transpose the directive. Concerns have been expressed that sufficient time may not be available for a full debate to discuss the very complex issues involved. There is also a real risk that a rushed transposition process could produce legislation which negatively impacts on consumer privacy and is harmful to the internet and telecomms sector. Our view is that it is vital that the reasonable concerns of privacy advocates and industry are taken into account. Google is going to take advantage of the current window of opportunity to get our views across, and we hope that other interested parties will do likewise.

Posted by Brittany Bohnet, Google Elections Team

(Cross-posted at Official Google Blog)

They don't call it Super Tuesday for nothing! Today marks an exciting day in the race to the U.S. Presidency: voters in 24 states will choose their party candidates. This will be the largest number of primaries taking place at one time in the history of the U.S. electoral system.

We've joined forces with Twitter to give you instant updates on Super Tuesday. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, you can send a simple text message about your voting experience. Huge turnout? Taking too long in line? Did you just vote for the first time? We want it all, if you can keep to 140 characters or less. (And if candidates can keep their posts to 140 characters, anyone can.)

Throughout the day, you can watch Twitter updates from across the country:



Twitter posts are only one piece of the Google Super Tuesday Map, a one-stop shop to follow the action today. You can find the latest YouChoose '08 videos, Google News election headlines and primary state results down to the county level. The Google News team is also in on the action. In addition to all the latest stories from thousands of sources in our new election section, they've also put together a gadget that tracks the progress of the candidates in each of the 24 states (of course, the numbers here are not real; they're meant to show you how it may look after the polls close).



Super Tuesday gives us a chance to try out new features and to see how people are using technology to participate in elections. This coming Thursday, we'll post a roundup of highlights. Send suggestions our way to elections at google dotcom.

Update: Gadget results in example are not real numbers or projections.