Tech at Night

Tone deaf, or simply apathetic? Even as Americans are unhappy about government data collection, Obama wants to do more big data work on private citizens. Mike Crapo is looking in the other direction, though, and wants to investigate the data gathering the government is already doing.

China didn’t want Edward Snowden. Russia didn’t want Snowden. Ecuador apparently didn’t want him, either. Not even Cuba wanted him, so he was left trying for fascist Venezuela, and unsurprisingly they dislike America so they like Snowden. Again and again, Snowden allies with America’s opponents against America.

Continue reading »

Tagged with:
 
Tech at Night

Regular readers know I’ve been hard on Google for wrongdoings, and think Google got off way too easy for the Safari spy hack, and for the WiSpy situation, but some of these attacks right now are silly. Youtube is a user-generated content service. As such, Google doesn’t produce what’s on there, and can only take things down if they’re breaking the law to be posted. The fact that some grandstanding Attorneys General are trying to bully Google into censoring the service, is the real troubling issue here.

This is completely different from the Adsense situation, where it was shown that people at Google were seeing sites for illegal drugs and approving them for ad revenue It’s not even comparable, and people are hoping you don’t realize that. Stop making me defend Google here!

Further, if it’s “coercive” for Google to put conditions on the inclusion of Youtube on a television, including a) correctly implementing Internet standards and b) giving it prominent placement, then trademark rights themselves are coercive, people. Again, quit making me defend these guys. Get better complaints.

Like advertising services. People are acting outraged that AT&T is going to sell aggregated, anonymized data, but this is the sort of thing Google has been doing for years, and look at all the people still using Gmail.

Continue reading »

Tagged with:
 
Tech at Night

Missed Tech on Monday due to a very uncomfortable and annoying, but not particularly threatening health issue. So let’s catch up.

Spying and cybersecurity. Edward Snowden intended to defect all along. And he’s probably now in Russia after serving up anti-American propaganda bait in commmunist China.

Meanwhile, one Lulzsec anarchist is under tough parole terms, we find Bitcoin is increasingly tied to crime, and Wikileaks isn’t going to get off easy backing Assange, Snowden, and Manning. For good reason.

Continue reading »

Tagged with:
 
Tech at Night

So Edward Snowden is getting charged with spying. Note that this development in itself is not an affirmation of any particular element of what he ‘leaked.’ Parts may be true, parts many not be. For all we know, he’s a spy for things he didn’t leak but instead took with him to the People’s Republic of China to take refuge in that communist country which attacks American interests daily.

Speaking of attacking American interests, it looks like the privacy religion is heating up in Europe, as a coordinated assault on Google is happening in the European Union. Italy, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, and the UK have openly coordinated attacks on the company and are hitting the American firm with 6 hits, combined with possible action from the European Union itself.

I find this action interesting. It’s clear to me that if tomorrow, Google began blockading all European users from its services, it is the European people, not Google, who would suffer more. Google would lose profits, but the European would lose services they depend upon. Google, from Eric Schmidt on down, has a flagrant disregard for the privacy of its customers or anyone else, but people use Google’s stuff anyway, in mass quantities. This is yet another case of government trying to shut down what the people wish to allow, combined of course with a healthy does of anti-American bigotry.

Continue reading »

Tech at Night

China is ‘demanding’ information about what the NSA is up to, wink wink. Because they’re totally, 100%, absolutely not in cahoots with Snowden or anything, of course not.

I hope these SWATters are found and get prison time.

Continue reading »

Nima Jooyandeh facts.