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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Woof. This week I had my worst cold in years, the worst I had since the first CPAC I attended. Boy was that a miserable trip home, let me tell you, sick as a dog, with insufficient Claritin Ds to get me through it. I was lucky the middle seat was empty for me on both flights I had to get home! At least this week I could stay home, and sleep.
I’ve got a ton to cover, and I’m not really at 100% yet, so apologies for making this a bit scattershot tonight. Especially since the victory in Texas distracted me from finishing this promptly! (Edit: It’s also help if I remembered to hit Publish…)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Seen on RedState this week: 10 questions for Obama’s nominee to chair FCC. It doesn’t sound like his answers are all great, which is in keeping with this adminstration’s inability to follow through with good spectrum policy.
In video games, this Microsoft announcement means both more and less than it’s made out to be. Yes, they are backing off on some of the mandatory online stuff, and removing whole features (like trading digital games) in order to respond to Sony. But they’re not promising no DRM, and in fact they just promised no selling of digital copies. However what they did do is 1-up Sony, who has left used game restrictions to publishers.
No, no, no, do not pass the Lofgren bill. Using or hijacking other people’s computing resources without permission to use them for your purposes, that should be a crime. If I accidentally leave my car unlocked, and you come swipe it, we don’t say “Oh well, you should have been more careful,” and let you off without penalty.
Aaron Swartz wanted to be the martyr. He made himself one. He only faced years in prison because he chose it. Instead of pleading guilty, he wanted a big, showy trial. Changing the law because of that person is just ridiculous and anti-property rights.
IRFA is a bill seemingly written by Pandora to stick it to copyright holders and pad their bottom line.
Other Internet radio firms are doing fine. Spotify’s growing. Apple is reportedly in negotiations with copyright holders to create their own service. Pandora is probably feeling the competitive pinch since Spotify came over from Europe, and instead of competing and innovating, wants the government to pull a Net Neutrality and shift some rents their way.
Why do we want to impose price controls? Look, if you came to me and said here’s a bill to deregulate the whole thing, I’d be all for that. But IRFA doesn’t deregulate. It tightens regulations. It picks winners and losers.
This is the same old stuff we’ve been seeing from Washington since January 20, 2009. Washington has been tilting the playing field for all those hipster-filled online firms that love Obama, and worked to re-elect Obama, and now they’re trying to wrap a free market flag around it and get us to sign on.
Didn’t we settle the price controls debate decades ago? Reject IRFA, Republicans. Thanks.
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Some fascinating Bitcoin developments: As I predicted, Mt. Gox just got trouble with its US dollar processor, Dwolla. Meanwhile it comes out that a cabal of developers has de facto control over the Bitcoin network and is devaluing very small wallets. The net effect of this is to reduce the money supply, deflating Bitcoin to benefit those with large holdings.
So even as Bitcoin is revealed to have its own central bankers, the new Megaupload is getting censored per New Zealand law, as Kim Dotcom weighs (heavily) in against Obama to attempt to distract from this censorship.
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Sorry for missing Tech at Night on Friday. After that near-miss with a cold, I decided to start the weekend a little early that night. But we’re back. So with five days of news to catch up on, let’s see what we have here.
Here’s a reminder of why Net Neutrality was a terrible idea. Making people pay for what they use creates opportunities for innovation. If ESPN wants to negotiate bulk rates for wireless data, let them!
And yet that John McCain would add more regulations. We need less micromanagement of cable, not more.
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I’m on antihistamines and hoping I’m not getting too sick, so this is going to be less… focused than it usually will be. Hang on.
Let’s recap the CISPA situation. Anonymous is proving why we need it (though BGR is delusional for thinking Anonymous was “attacking North Korea” when it hacked Twitter accounts, though BGR does sometimes go gaga for radical propaganda). China is, too. But the administration is opposing CISPA on “privacy” grounds. Hold that thought.
The Obama administration is not opposing and may back government mandates for “wiretapping” Internet communications – that is, government-mandated backdoors into encrypted communications. What was that about privacy, again?
At least Republicans are still serious on the matter, looking at the large scale of thefts and spying going on. Make no mistake: this is aimed at China. In theory it would affect Iran, but we already embargo them, so this affects China.
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