The U.S. Government is relatively quietly proposing a major change in its online privacy policy from a Government ban on Government using "cookies" to track citizens' use of U.S. Government websites to allowing the Government to track some citizen online behavior with some restrictions.

• A Washington Post article highlighted privacy groups concerns about the policy shift. Also see comments by EPIC, CDT/EFF, and ACLU.  

This policy shift is a quintessential example of the shift away from a default expectation of online privacy, to the default "publicacy" approach increasingly taken by many web 2.0 entities.

• ("Publicacy" is the opposite of privacy. "Publicacy" also describes the Web 2.0 movement that seeks to have transparency largely supplant privacy online.) 

I have written about the growing tension between privacy and publicacy thirteen times this year, because I believe it is one of the biggest changes that is occurring online that average users are not aware of, but should be. 

Evidence of the Open Internet's growing security problem only continues to mount. There also appears to be a growing and troubling disconnect between the seriousness of the actual problem and the seriousness of attention paid to the growing Internet security problem.  

• For example, despite President Obama making cybersecurity a national security priority in his cybersecurity address 5-29-09, none of the FCC's 18 currently planned public workshops designed to help develop a National Broadband Plan are on cybersecurity.   

"Twitter, Facebook Sites Disrupted by Web Attack"  WSJ

• "Multiple Internet sites, including popular hangouts Twitter and Facebook, were temporarily disrupted Thursday after they were struck by apparently coordinated computer attacks..."
• "The companies traced the problem to what the computer industry calls "denial-of-service" attacks, which are designed to make sites inaccessible by overwhelming them with a flood of traffic. Though such attacks are fairly routine, simultaneous action against multiple consumer Internet companies is rare."

"Most users clueless about cybersecurity, FBI says" PC World

Sometimes the simplest solution can somehow elude people for a period of time.

• After long pushing hard for net neutrality legislation and wireless net neutrality regulation, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, finally had an epiphany and figured out that he could become a fully satisfied consumer by simply choosing to take his business elsewhere -- from the AT&T Apple iPhone to the T-Mobile Google Android mytouch 3G phone. 

Competitive differentiated choice -- what a concept -- why didn't anyone think of this before?

Precursorblog is on hiatus for vacation.

A central policy question concerning the future of the Internet, cloud computing, and the National Broadband Plan is whether there should be Internet priorities or a priority-less Internet?

• The crux of the grand conflict over the direction of Internet policy is that proponents of a mandated a neutral/open Internet insist that only users can prioritize Internet traffic, not any other entity. 

To grasp the inherent problem and impracticality with a mandated neutral or priority-less Internet, it is helpful to ask if the Internet, which is comprised of hundreds of millions of individual users, has a mutual "hierarchy of needs" just like individuals have a "hierarchy of needs," per Maslow's famed, common sense "Hierarchy of Needs" theory.

New evidence of very serious Internet security problems sheds new light on why Senate Chairman Rockefeller has taken such a forceful leadership role on cybersecurity and why President Obama made increasing cybersecurity a national security priority in his 5-29 cybersecurity address.

The core question at the heart of the DOJ's review of the proposed Yahoo-Microsoft search partnership is where else will competition to Google's increasing dominance come from, if not from the proposed Yahoo-Microsoft search partnership? 

The DOJ has deep and current expertise in this market given their investigation of the Google-Yahoo ad partnership last fall and DOJ's current investigation of the Google Book Settlement. The DOJ also appreciates the facts that:

"Security is part of Google's DNA" is Google's slogan to soothe security concerns about its services much like "competition is one click away" is Google's antitrust slogan to soothe antitrust concerns about its dominance. 

While Google claims security is metaphorically in the "DNA" or "genetic code" of their many cloud applications, "DNA" is also Google code for "Do Not Ask."

"Do Not Ask" is Google's unspoken MO -- method of operation.  

"People are not approaching this from the perspective of helping us analyze what the trade-offs are" said FCC Broadband Coordinator Blair Levin about public comments to the National Broadband Plan -- per Multichannel News.  

• Industry's comments have attempted to be very focused on helping the FCC understand and appreciate the many explicit trade-offs involved in this very important proceeding.

A recap of the key trade-offs facing the FCC:

Choice, having the benefit of a selection of different alternatives to choose from, springs from the risk and opportunity of market competition  -- not from Government economic regulation.