Two points on cybersecurity tonight. The first is that Harry Reid and Barack Obama aren’t on the same page. The latter is still working toward a (probably illegal) executive order, while the former is talking about trying again to pass the rejected Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act. Meanwhile we backers of the Marlin Stutzman campaign have been vindicated, as Dan Coats is siding with Harry Reid on this, the Internet Kill Switch bill, with the IKS removed but everything else left intact.
With Republicans like that, who needs Democrats?
If only we had a strong, respected President who could put his foot down on terrible ITU ideas such as Internet tariffs, which these ‘fees’ on international traffic amount to begin. Tariffs aimed at US firms, even. But Barack Obama is a wimp who bows to foreign leaders rather than standing up for American interests and American values such as liberty and free enterprise.
The President is simply too much of a gutless wonder to stop the ITU from doing something bad. Can you imagine any other President looking so helpless? Maybe Carter, but beyond him… it’s amazing how weak willed he is on the international stage. He bows, he doesn’t lead.
It’s funny when digital libertarians align themselves with theocratic terrorist Guy Fawkes, who sought to impose dictatorship on Britain, and was seeking to commit terrorist mass murder to achieve that aim.
Last week I suggested Darrell Issa’s bipartisan tech coalition was straining. It is, but it’s not gone yet. Jared Polis is calling out the Obama FTC on its stupid Google investigations. Look: Google is popular, but it has no ability to control the search market, it’s not using what market power it has in anti-competitive ways, and the things it does do with search are not anti-consumer. There’s not here, there. You can dislike Google and dislike antitrust law, but still think Google isn’t even breaking the law. Remember Altavista? Remember Yahoo?
SoftBank to buy 70% of Sprint Nextel. Wow. That they would need to sell so much tells me Sprint simply wasn’t competitive with the top guys, and regulation or lack of it had nothing to do with it. AT&T was a red herring, guys. Told you so.
Are we still using PDF annotations to censor documents? Seriously, Denmark? Your Air Force made a mistake that bad? Come on.
People who don’t understand how the Internet works can’t understand the innovation that goes on in it. when Susan Crawford dismisses innovation in telecoms, she just exposes her ignorance of the technologies involved, and the challenges ISPs face.