Had some work to do Friday night, so this this became Tech at Sunday Morning!
I still don’t see it passing the House after Mike Enzi’s winners and losers talk poisoned the well, but conservative governors want MFA passed for good reason. Ask Scott Walker.
Remember when the T-Mobile/MetroPCS deal flew through the Obama administration without a hitch? I think we now know why: it meant the end of the MetroPCS challenge to Net Neutrality. How convenient.
Stealth recording technology. What could go wrong? Of course, if you don’t like Google Glass, the real thing to do is to let property owners ban it on their own property. Problem solved.
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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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So the left is mad that the President’s new pick for Commerce isn’t totally in the pocket of the unions, and they’re mad the new pick for FCC, Tom Wheeler, isn’t a radical socialist like Bernie Sanders. I’m not all that optimistic about either pick though. The President is choosing bundlers for personal loyalty, which means radicalism on his terms, but still radicalism.
This is amazing though, and this is something the radicals will never tell you: more Americans lack access to public water than to broadband Internet. Twice as many, in fact. Government is a failure, compared with private competition.
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Some legislative action still ongoing: the Senate looking to fix the ECPA, an email search law that was written to the technology of the time, and now defies the expectations of its framers.
I was told Amazon and eBay would like the sales tax compact, but eBay is coming out against it, spamming its users. But the Senate continues to support it.
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So yes, CISPA passed the House. Unsurprisingly, Anonymous isn’t happy, what when as things stand Lulzsec already is getting hammered. Greater information sharing is a threat to online anarchists, as well as foreign private and state actors.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where Jay Rockefeller may stall on an ego-driven separate bill. I think the bill’s a good idea. It’s not perfect, but not all of the criticisms floating around are correct. In particular, SOPA is a red herring, and totally unrelated. CISPA is about information sharing, not regulation.
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CISPA is still the top issue right now. The new version is getting broad support in industry, it appears. Again: the attacks America faces against our government and industry would be acts of war if done on the high seas, but are continuing consequence-free just because they’re online. Francis Cianfrocca points out what is needed: a framework for sharing information about threats. Not massive regulations, which won’t help. Not blaming the victim, which will make the bad guys laugh.
In Internet Sales Tax Compact news, Mike Enzi is feeling the heat to defend his bill to his constituents, and is making reasonable arguments for it. “If we don’t collect that revenue, they’ll have to find a new source.” Ding. “This is a states’ rights bill and it would require the states to act before anything could happen.” Ding. But we shall see if it can pass the House. I do wonder if the terrible “fairness” rhetoric from the big box retailers has poisoned the well.
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CISPA continues to remain the big story right now. It’s moving on, though some are concerned that it was effectively renegotiated in back room meetings. It needs scrutiny before passage, I’m thinking. It’s probably a decent but watered-down bill at this point, but let’s look before supporting at this point. We need a good cybersecurity bill, not just any old thing.
Which is exactly what Jay Rockefeller is up to: flailing about, expanding government willy-nilly, in the name of cybersecurity. The SEC? Doing Cybersecurity? Insane.
I like the idea of the Internet Freedom bill, though. The global trend is away from freedom online, and it’s up to us to try to do something about it. The idea that the bill would hurt Net Neutrality is just a bonus.
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While it’s true that cybersecurity can be cover for bad proposals, it is true that foreign organized criminal and state-backed attacks are hitting American government and business interests online every day. They’re even stealing large sums of money on a regular basis. This is why we need to address the issue in a serious way. If these attacks were going on at sea, it would be an act of war. Because it’s online, nothing happens? Come on.
Amending CISPA in order to try to get it to pass might be a good idea. If anarchists and other left-libs don’t like it, then it may yet be a good bill after the changes.
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I have a charity event I’m participating in tomorrow (I’m the one doing The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II), and I’d like to have slept for it, so this may be briefer than usual.
Looks like a push for real patent reform is brewing. After the lawyer- but not innovation-friendly America Invents Act was signed by Barack Obama, we’ve been left with a need to fix the actual problems with the US patent system. the i2Coalition and Google are backing anti-Patent Trolling ideas. There’s got to be a way to continue to reward small-time inventors without allowing the fakes to abuse the system.
Do Americans have a duty to diminish the security of their communications to ease government spying? Some seem to think so, as we’re reminded of in the flap over Apple’s iMessage being more secure in its encryption than government would like. Let me remind you though that any back door that government can exploit, China and Anonymous can, too.
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Here we go again. The Weekend-at-Bernies-ificatoin of Aaron Swartz continues. He made an example of himself to become an anti-copyright martyr, and now we’re supposed to degrade property rights online to give him his way anyway. Pass.
Computer Fraud and Abuse is a problem, but foreign threats are an issue, too. That’s why we also need to pass CISPA which started off as the low-regulatory, small-government alternative to the Democrat power grab, if you recall. Funny how the so-called libertarians only rally agains the GOP proposal, and stayed silent against Lieberman-Collins last time.
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