<< Hack 9 ]] 10 Government Hacks — Slides From a Talk at OSCON 2006 [[ Hack 1 >>

Access to knowledge is a fundamental right, a right that has been sadly perverted by our copyright and patent systems. Joining copyright and patent as the third estate of the privatization of the commons is spectrum. In 2002, I ran cross a speech by Dr. Preston Marshall, head of the Advanced Technology Office at DARPA. Dr. Marshall said "according to our initial measurements, on average, only 2 percent of the spectrum is actually in use in the United States at any given moment, even though all spectrum is allocated."

It is amazing to me that our government has never met a natural resource that it won't exploit to extinction or planetary doom, yet the world's most valuable renewable natural resource, our electromagnetic spectrum, lays fallow.

What if people knew that amazing fact, that only 2% of our spectrum was ever used? Maybe they'd start asking "why is that?" Maybe the "use it or lose it" whitespace bills that occasionally get bandied about in Congress might have a shot at passing if members saw what a bread-and-butter issue this really is. Spectrum reform is about the right to communicate and the right to innovate. It's the ultimate net neutrality issue.

This hack is hard, but it seems that people could map actual spectrum use as a distributed open source effort. Spectrum analyzers can be built on open source tools such as GNU Radio. If we mapped actual spectrum use across the country and people could see uniformly dismal utilization rates, perhaps policy makers would feel pressure to reform (and if nothing else, we could at least figure out which cell company has good coverage where we live or where to get free Wi-Fi). Access to spectrum should be based on protocols not property rights.

My talk at OSCON whirled through 10 hacks in 15 minutes. I left myself 23 seconds to sum it up. The hacks all have a point, and that point is that government should be less about private interests and more about the public interest. The skills we use in the open source world are tools of civic engagement, tools of citizenship. And, if we apply those skills of engagement to our government, it is possible, at least sometimes, to drag the political system (kicking and screaming perhaps) towards the common good.

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