The city of Topeka, Kansas is trying something rather unorthodox to win a highly prized broadband contract with Google.

In an attempt to become one of a few cities to partner with the search-engine giant on its new, ultra-fast broadband project, Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten signed a proclamation on Monday that would temporarily rename his locale as "Google, Kansas -- the capital city of fiber optics." 

The Topeka City Council approved the switch unanimously on Monday afternoon, according to local media reports. Topeka will thus be known, informally, as "Google" for the duration of the month of March.

(It isn't immediately clear, though, how one might refer to Topeka residents now residing in the new land of Google.)

Nevertheless, the city's lighthearted attempt to stand out among its competitors only highlights the early, high demand to be part of Google's new Internet trial.

The company announced earlier this month that it hoped to incubate new, high-speed broadband lines in one or more "testbed" cities across the country this year, with the stated goal of creating connections 100 times faster than most broadband lines.

Applications for that program are not due until late March, according to reports. However, a number of cities and states have jumped on the opportunity to try the new broadband lines, believing the tech upgrades could foster local economic development.

The White House on Tuesday plans to declassify excerpts of a secret cybersecurity policy drafted in 2008, in part to assuage fears that the administration is unprepared for a nationwide cyberattack.

Howard Schmidt, the Obama administration's top cybersecurity expert, will unveil the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative at a convention in San Francisco later Tuesday, according to reports. The White House will also publish key portions of the proposal on its official blog sometime in the afternoon.

The official release arrives at a time when both congressional lawmakers and industry experts are hammering the White House for a lack of leadership on cybersecurity and cyberwarfare.

Two high-profile attacks in the opening weeks of 2010 -- one primarily targeting Google, another targeting thousands of businesses around the world -- have only frustrated insiders, who charged the United States was without a framework to address emerging online threats.

But the Obama White House's decision to declassify portions of its Initiative, drafted during President George W. Bush's second term, seems to be an attempt to quiet those concerns -- at least until lawmakers take additional action.

According to The New York Times, which spoke with Schmidt about the Initiative, the policy is comprised of 12 programs, one of which deals with cyberwarfare. However, details on that provision in particular will not be available on the White House's Web site late Tuesday, Schmidt told the newspaper, citing national security concerns.

“I don’t think there will be any surprises,” he later told the Times. “Much of what has been going on has been what people would expect us to be doing.”

A Google executive told lawmakers on Tuesday that the company has not yet set a deadline by which it will stop censoring search results in China.

Google first announced its seminal policy change in January, following news that a massive cyberattack on the search engine giant and a handful of other companies originated in the country. But Google Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong told a Senate hearing early Tuesday that her company does not yet "have a specific timetable" for its new protocol.

"Having said that, we are firm in our decision that we will not censor our search results in China," she promptly stressed.

Wong's lack of specificity is sure to upset China's biggest critics, not to mention Internet freedom's most vocal advocates. Both groups have pressed Google to abandon its censorship efforts for years now -- long before security experts discovered a January cyberattack in part targeted human rights activists using Google's Gmail network.

However, Google has mostly dismissed those criticisms, stressing even its limited presence in China has assisted the cause of Web openness. Wong, specifically, said Tuesday that Google had censored only limited content in the most transparent way possible -- telling users what had been removed, and sometimes why.

But it is unclear when that much-debated policy may end. According to Wong, part of the delay stems from Google belief that the policy change is as much of a "human" issue as it is a political consequence.

"We have many employees on the ground... so we recognize both the seriousness and the sensitivity of the decision we are making, and we want to figure out how to get to that end... in a way that is appropriate and responsible," she told lawmakers.

Google is urging federal lawmakers to make global Internet freedom a key feature of the country's free-trade agenda.

As states like China continue to cut off citizens' access to the Web, Google Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong told a Senate hearing it was crucial that U.S. leaders include Internet openness rules in their new trade agreements, primarily to enable global free expression.

But she also touted those rules as crucial for international commerce, as Web censorship in a handful of countries has "serious economic implications" that ultimately hurt "businesses in every sector," she said.

She thus urged lawmakers in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Human Rights and the Law subcommittee to make Internet openness a "major plank" of the country's foreign policy.

"Opaque censorship restrictions can also be very damaging to the 'host nation,' because they undermine the rule of law and make it very hard for foreign companies to navigate within the law, which has negative consequences in terms of foreign direct investment," according to Wong's prepared testimony.

"We should continue to look for effective ways to address unfair foreign trade barriers in the online world: to use trade agreements, trade tools and trade diplomacy to promote the free flow of information on the Internet," she added.

U.S. trade negotiators have already incorporated some elements of Wong's request into their trade strategy. As she pointed out during her remarks, the Obama administration has sought Internet freedom provisions in its recent free-trade agreement with South Korea -- a condition Google has long applauded.

But Internet freedom is hardly a permanent tenant of U.S. free-trade strategy.

Daniel Weitzner, a top administrator in the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA), told lawmakers earlier in the hearing he was unable to make such a blanket trade commitment.

However, he did later describe that approach as "certainly appropriate," now that Internet freedom has become a pressing political issue.

Internet companies that fail to take "reasonable steps" to safeguard human rights in foreign countries could face sanctions.

Read more...

Donating money to your favorite political candidate just got easier.

So if you're ever, say, waiting for a bus or trying to pass the time in a boring meeting, you can whip out your iPhone or BlackBerry to make a donation on the spot.

The Visible Vote smartphone application is responding to the recent Supreme Court decision that lifts limits on corporate contributions.

The goal is to make it so simple and convenient for voters to make small donations that the total given will outweigh corporate influence, said Paul Everton, who created Visible Vote a year and a half ago.

The application builds on the records set in the 2008 presidential election, when President Barack Obama and rival Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) raised a total of $213 million in small contributions from individuals. Read more...

A leading U.S. security company will sit out a Senate hearing this week on global internet freedom.

Read more...

MONDAY TECH ROUNDUP:
Misdials help 'crammers' ring up millions in phone bill scam - David Cho, Washington Post
New scrutiny on censorship issues for U.S. companies in China - Dan Levin, New York Times
For online left, leadership vacuum looks a lot like an opening - Nancy Scola, techpresident
EU privacy body wants changes to Google Street View - Reuters
Groups seek FCC scrutiny of 'special access' rates - Sara Jerome, Tech Daily Dose
Four indicted for $25M online ticket fraud scheme - Sharon Gaudin, ComputerWorld
New EU rules limit Internet charges for cell phones - Leslie Patton, AP

OTHER NEWS
Republicans have 'Twitter day' - The Hill
Bandwidth troubles could threaten Pentagon's new social networking rules - The Hill
Microsoft reveals role in recent Google, Europe antitrust dispute - The Hill

President Barack Obama's savvy use of technology during the 2008 campaign helped pave the way to the White House, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) acknowledged during an interview with The Hill.

When asked what Obama did right on the campaign trail that he wished he had done, McCain said, "I think President Obama did many things right. I think one was that he's an incredibly articulate speaker, and motivational, and I think that was extremely helpful to him, not only in the general election but in his primary."

"The second thing I would give him credit for — and there are many things I would give him credit for — is the very excellent use of modern technology. I mean, people would text-message immediately. Everybody was connected by e-mail. They used Twitter. They used Facebook. They did a very excellent job of modern telecommunications," McCain said.

Asked if there are things he wishes he had done differently during the campaign, McCain said, "Books have been written, and they'll continue to be written. The one that wins runs a perfect campaign. The one that loses, 'Oh, it was a disaster.' It's always the same."

"But I have to give him credit for running an excellent campaign," he continued. "I'm not saying he wouldn't have won anyway, but they really ran an excellent campaign."