Google has gotten better at forgetting. A year ago, a European court ruled that Google search results in the European Union were subject to European data-protection rules. That meant that while private individuals might not be able to force a newspaper to retract an irrelevant or outdated story about them, they could ask Google to remove links to the story. Despite a slow start, the search giant has now caught up with the requests. In the meantime, Americans, Japanese, Koreans, and others around the world are proposing the adoption of similar privacy-protection policies.
Continue reading Google’s Year of Forgetting
Category Archives: IEEE Spectrum
How Nicaraguan Villagers Built Their Own Electric Grid
On a dirt road high in Nicaragua’s northern mountains, a small knot of men and two precocious young boys uncoil electrical cable from the back of a pickup truck. Other workers swing machetes at overhanging tree branches. Along the cleared shoulder of the road, another crew tightens a cable on a freshly planted utility pole. Continue reading How Nicaraguan Villagers Built Their Own Electric Grid
Remote Mexican Villages Build Their Own Cell Networks
The sound of a mobile phone is routine in much of the world. But it’s a recent arrival here in Talea de Castro, a mountain town in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico.
This radio report first aired on NPR’s Here and Now in partnership with IEEE Spectrum: [html] [mp3]. See also a related news story for The Economist’s Tech Quarterly: [html].
Continue reading Remote Mexican Villages Build Their Own Cell Networks
When U.S. Telecoms Come Calling, Will Cuba Pick Up The Phone?
This month, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration began opening the long-closed diplomatic door to Cuba. Among other things the President’s plan makes way for is the ability of U.S. companies to sell telecommunications equipment to the island. Legislation imposing a broad economic embargo still stands, but the administration has some leeway over activity that improves the flow of information under the banner of “spreading democracy.”
(Exceptions to the old embargo abound: the U.S. National Science Foundation actually provided Cuba’s first Internet connection in 1996 as part of a broader connectivity drive for developing countries.)
What remains unclear, says computer scientist and Cuba telecom blogger Larry Press of California State University in Dominguez Hills, is what use the Cuban government has for U.S. telecom equipment. Continue reading When U.S. Telecoms Come Calling, Will Cuba Pick Up The Phone?