This is one of those nights. I did some work looking into just how foolish the idea of state-run Internet is, and now I’m out of time to do this, sorry to say. Quick links time!
The Senate is taking up STELA. Let’s hope the Democrats now don’t inject something into this virtually must-pass legislation, after House Republicans were kind enough to hold back.
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I know, it’s two weeks in a row the Friday tech got pushed the the weekend. Sorry.
The war on Tor crime continues as the Silk Road arrests go on and on and on. Next up, find the killers for hire?
Oh look, Edward Snowden and the Glenns Greenwald are in cahoots again. Even as the new push is on to claim he gave no data to the Chinese and Russians. I guess he needs that cover to try to get asylum?
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How desperate do you have to be? The radicals at Public Knowledge are trying to take credit for Republican initiatives. To claim a lefty was the ‘thought leader’ behind phone unlocking is ridiculous. That was Derek Khanna. Even Washington Post says so.
AT&T is wishing for a modern FCC so that they can innovate with the IP revolution. Instead FCC is threatening the economy by stalling, and for the basest of reasons: to try a power grab.
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Good news! California Democrats think you can erase stuff from the global Internet just because you really really want to. This is magical thinking in law form. Telling kids they should run amok online because they can just erase it later, is insane. The Internet is dangerous and not for kids.
Again, the core problem with patent troll litigation isn’t with the court system, it’s with too many patents being issued. So the patent-holding tech industry may have a conflict in what it recommends to fix this. But seriously, the only reason patent trolling works is that so many bad patents get issued to begin with.
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I enjoy that in America, we refuse to give official sanction of the radical appropriation of May Day, and instead have a Labor Day on a completely different day, separating ourselves from anti-liberty radicals.
You can tell the anti-NSA people are really scraping the bottom of the barrel now in their attempts to attack the agency. It’s kind of ridiculous. Even if we take traitor Edward Snowden at his word, despite how he could easily have modified or even fabricated parts of or entire documents to push an agenda, it’s actually the NSA’s job to spy on foreign agents like the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera.
Of course, this is really interesting timing for DEA to be seeking massive amounts of call metadata. That’s not going to go over well with the libertarians. Then again, I don’t know if it’ll sway anyone who didn’t already favor free dope and sodomy. Sorry, but it’s true. You can talk a lot of people into part-way legalizations of cannabis, but it takes a hardcore radical to go all the way and legalize opiates and cocaine.
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Net Neutrality (which Mike Wendy calls a “Private Property Slap-Down”) may not be any longer the top issue on the Obama administration’s side of things, but questions still remain. And the funny thing: all the Net Neutrality advocates in the world working in the White House were no big deal. But all of a sudden it’s a concern that a former AT&T President going to the White House is a problem.
But yes, the FCC wants to change the subject. Now suddenly the press is to open up more bandwidth for wireless Internet access. Funny, I was assured during the Net Neut debate that wireless access didn’t effectively exist. Now the FCC wants to expand it. More spectrum isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but we do have to watch how it is acquired.
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Some people stay up late on December 31. I don’t intend to, Friday and New Year’s Eve or not. Boring, yes, I know. But until I switch to decaf coffee my sleeping habits are going to be a wreck, so I’ll just have to ride it out. And that means I want to get going right away with tonight’s stories.
Republicans are getting very loud on regulatory issues, both with the FCC and with the EPA. Fred Upton is ginning up support in Michigan for his planned House efforts to challenge EPA regulatory power grabs with respect to Carbon Dioxide, efforts that will surely influence the FCC and Net Neutrality. In addition, on Sunday morning at 9am Eastern he’s scheduled to speak with Chris Wallace on Fox, with repeats on Fox News Channel at 2 and 6pm Eastern. I am so glad he’s going out there and preparing to lead on regulatory issues.
Kay Bailey Hutchison has also called the FCC “wrong” on Net Neutrality, and is hoping to be able to get some sort of action through a Democrat controlled Senate. It won’t be easy, as she points out, but it could happen if we can swing enough Democrats to see the truth about the FCC power grab.
She also doesn’t rule out defunding the FCC’s Net Neutrality plans, a way of stopping the regulations that the President cannot veto.
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