So I’ve been gone a while. Sorry about that. After Summer Games Done Quick and the Redstate Gathering, I was supposed to be back in action. But a case of the shingles took me down fast. I was a sleepless zombie in pain for a week. No fun. Was actually alright on Friday, but I had so much reading to do I couldn’t catch up in time to post on Friday, so here we are. Hang on.
So let’s start with Time-Warner and CBS. The two had their negotiations fall through with respect to carrying CBS on Cable, and so a blackout began. The left wants this as the pretext to more government, but let’s be clear about this. Government created this pickle. The way out of it was proposed way back when, and backed in Tech at Night, when Jim DeMint and Steve Scalise proposed legislation. It’s still the right answer.
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For months I’ve been dreaming of the day that NSA could crack TOR. Well, it turns out, they did it. That child pornographer in Ireland I mentioned previously? It sounds like that’s how they got him.
TOR, aka The Onion Router, is a distributed network designed to let people do things online without their actions being traceable back to their locations. It failed.
In more good news, convicted spy Bradley Manning is facing 90 years in prison for working with fugitive rapist Julian Assange and his Wikileaks gang.
This is so disgusting: Users of Christopher Poole’s site 4chan are willfully tormenting the family of a dead teenager. Poole, aka ‘moot’, needs to do something about the sick community on his site. I hold him responsible for his continued failure to act. His site is a hub for criminal and anti-social activity. He does nothing to stop it, instead choosing to profit from it.
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I’d have signed a letter against IRFA, the Pandora-backed regulatory bailout.
Government is trying to give advice on security online, including advice on how to deal with breakins. Information exchange is truly a proper cybersecurity role for government. Also important is prosecuting private offenders, and dealing with state offenders.
Though it gets tricky when state offenders include firms selling goods while pretending to be private firms, such as Chinese firms like Lenovo or Huawei.
ECPA reform is being held in the Senate. Leaky Leahy says it’s a Republican doing it. I wonder who? Lindsey Graham? John McCain? I’m not entirely convinced that the bill is necessary, but I don’t think it’s a particularly idea as long as we preserve something along the lines of FISA.
If you really want your email to be private, don’t have it all run through Google.
Turns out Snowden’s final decision to pledge allegiance to United Russia has encouraged a child pornographer in Ireland to follow suit.
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This will be my last post before heading off to the gathering, enjoy!
Previously on RedState: Google as ISP lets us know they oppose Net Neutrality.
So Bradley Manning was convicted on nearly every charge. Let’s hope he gets a serious sentence to go with it.
More Wikileaks: The latest Edward Snowden/Glenn Greenwald report was misleading, so says the House.
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SGDQ raised over $230,000 as of this writing, with the main marathon about over and the bonus stream soon to begin. I got to be there for about a day and a half, which was great fun. I ever learned that hiking uphill a mile and a half from the Arapahoe light rail station to the Sheraton Denver Tech Center is a lot harder than it sounds, in that mile high air. I don’t know how the Nuggets ever lose a home game.
So, I’m back, but there’s still also going to be no Tech on Friday this week, because I’m going to be off again for the 2013 Redstate Gathering in New Orleans. So what we’re doing tonight is the same as we’ll likely be doing next Monday: a catch-up post. Enjoy.
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This will bet he only edition of Tech at Night this week. I was out of it Monday night, and this weekend I’m traveling to Denver for SGDQ 2013. I will be there to give live on stream commentary for the Legend of Zelda and Zelda II runs, so watch and donate if you care to.
House Democrats, together with a few libertarians, tried to restrict the NSA, and failed. I’m fine with this.
In other news, Google is accused of Net Neutrality violations for trying to restrict servers on Google Fiber. Heh. If people can run servers on Google Fiber then they’re going to have problems quickly. So this is a very interesting case.
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Here we go. The President, Jay Rockefeller, and the grabbing hands are on the move, using “Internet for the Children” as a pretext to expand spending. We need E-Rate reform along the lines of what Ajit Pai is talking about, not anything that’s just a plain old expansion.
The FTC went easy on this spammer. Texts can cost people 5-10 cents each. They do me. So if this spammer sent 20 million spam texts, he could have costs his victims 1-2 million dollars. And he only got find 60 thousand. Weak.
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Update on ECPA reform: Last time I commented that it was problematic to give such strong protections to terrorist emails on American corporate-run servers. Well, it turns out ECPA reform backers are listening, and have pointed out to me that FISA will work just fine in those cases. Fair point. I still don’t think the law makes sense, but at least it’s not too terribly harmful.
This tutorial to “NSA-proof your email” is all wrong. All wrong. You NSA-proof your email by using end-to-end encryption, not by using transport level encryption. Hosing your own email is a great idea, mind you (it makes the ECPA-related issues moot), but NSA can still spy on you all they want if you follow that webpage’s instructions.
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Russia is reacting to Snowden’s leaks. One wonders what he’s telling them.
Here we go again. Having failed to pass the preferred bill of Joe Lieberman’s and Jay Rockefeller’s last time, Senate leaders are trying again on a cybersecurity bill. Any bill Senate Democrat leaders support is suspect, given their history of the Internet Kill Switch.
There’s room for legislation, but by default I oppose their plans to expand the scope of government online.
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