And we truly are back. Friday night was a night off thanks to some maintenance at RedState. It was nice because I could rest on a Friday night… but it’s not so nice now when I have a whopping 20 Firefox windows to sort through tonight. So here we go.
With so many big stories going on, it’s hard to pick which one to start with. So I’ll start with the one that may be under the radar more than the others. The FCC refused to declare the wireless market competitive in its annual report required by the [Correction: OMNIBUS BUDGET RECONCILIATION ACT OF 1993]. This is a ridiculous position to take. Despite obvious, quantifiable proof that prices are lower, service is better, and choices abound, the FCC has refused to admit the market is competitive for ideological reasons. After all, if the FCC finds the market competitive, it can’t give itself permission to regulate further. Just more proof we need FCC reform, joining the long list of existing reasons.
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Can we just start shooting the hackers? It seems like it’s war on the Internet these days, and the more there is for me to cover, the more work it is churning out Tech at Night!
Lulzsec denies the allies are in Baghdad the leader is arrested despite an earlier claim on Twitter that it was true.
Anyway, Shame on the Daily Mail for trying to turn a Lulzsec hacker into a sob story. He’s a criminal gangster who couldn’t hold a real job. Let him rot.
How bad is Lulzsec? Even other hacker gangs hate them. I assume it’s because others realize that Lulzsec’s insane overreach is going to bring the hammer of justice down on the entire field. Especially when they’re targeting security experts, besides. It’s true, too: The FBI is on the march here, on the heels of arrests already made in Spain, Turkey, and the UK.
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Even as Mary Bono Mack and Republicans fiddle with the pointless SAFE Data act that won’t actually do anything to prevent or even to deter online crime, the Internet burns with a string of further attacks. The Senate was hit twice, and the CIA was hit as well.
I thought we were the party that likes to solve crime by putting the criminals in jail? Why don’t we drop this reporting theater and get back to catching criminals blackmailing the US government and private enterprise?
Seriously? We want to jail kids who upload music to YouTube, and create a Communist China-style Internet censorship blacklist, but we’re blaming the victims of online attacks?
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Don’t our elected officials have access to Ballotpedia? If the California Democrats did, they’d know that the Amazon Tax being taken up this afternoon in the legislature is unconstitutional under the state Constitution. And it’s not some old, obscure provision that’s violated either. It’s the brand-new Proposition 26, a constitutional amendment passed in November, that the tax violates.
Put simply, Proposition 26 doesn’t let the state raise new revenue without a 2/3 requirement, so the Amazon tax cannot be passed with a simple majority. And no, Proposition 25, another constitutional amendment also passed in November, doesn’t change that fact.
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The cyberterrorist groups Anonymous and its apparent splinter group Lulzsec are getting bold. The latter gang of criminals is attempting to blackmail the United States Government after attacking government networks, which is just insane and I hope will lead to mass arrests. While the former is attacking the Spanish government after arrests made there, and suffering further damage from mass arrests in Turkey.
I hope when the Lulzsec gang gets rolled up, just like Anonymous is getting slammed, that some of them resist. OK, that was a mean thing to say, but it’s how I feel.
Anonymous hub 4chan still refuses to take basic steps to mitigate the groups’ ability to propagandize and recruit, such as requiring account registration or closing down unmoderated sections of the site.
Oh yes, and despite all the above attacks plus one on the IMF, Mary Bono Mack’s answer is to blame the victims instead of rounding up and sending to Gitmo or Alcatraz the perpetrators.
In further news, lots going on at RedState today. Erick Erickson and Dana Rohrabacher are fighting the good fight on the America Invents Act, the Patrick Leahy giveaway that punishes inventors and favors lawyers and patent mills, in an attempt to make us more like Old Europe. I’ve been warning about this bill for a while, so I’m sure glad to see opposition growing.
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State governments are timid beasts. So often the country will refuse to move in a new policy direction unless one state jumps out ahead and acts first. In the past, California was often the dynamic frontrunner. Now, Texas is increasingly the example that other states ought to follow.
When it comes to the Amazon Tax, or the plan to change the tax laws in Texas to punish Amazon for out-competing its competitors, it looked like Texas was ready to lead in the the right direction. Governor Rick Perry vetoed HB 2403, the initial attempt at passing a special Amazon Tax in the state.
But the forces of tax-and-spend politics haven’t given up yet. Even as Texas celebrates its first all-funds spending reduction in decades, it seems like some people haven’t given up on raising taxes. So, the Amazon tax was re-inserted into SB 1 in the special session.
No matter what bill it’s in, a special Internet Sales Tax is a bad idea, and takes Texas in the wrong direction.
Conservative think tanks and activist groups are aligning against the proposal. However the sneaky bit about this second attempt at the new tax is that Governor Perry does not have a line item veto. So it’s time to put pressure on the legislature to fix SB 1 for smaller, Constitutional government.
Free Press is getting the heat. It’s been exposed through FOIA that the far left front group was secretly coordinating media strategy with people at the FCC, including Commissioner Michael Copps. So when Copps makes a statement about media regulation, Free Press’s pet issue, I have to assume they wrote it for him. Media Reform is their code for nationalization of the press, after all.
So now that they’re getting exposed, it’s almost not surprising that Free Press and their allies at the FCC are getting violent against conservatives and others exposing the truth about them.
Let me interrupt the Free Press update with some great news, though: Spain has made some arrests in connection with the Playstation Network attack I would love for every one of these antisocial online goons to get real jailtime.
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With fourteen articles to run through tonight, a near record, I don’t have time to waste.
We’ll start with Joshua Trevino bringing us Bill Peacock on the Texas Amazon Tax. Texas SB 1 contains the tax Governor Perry already vetoed this session, and it needs defeated again. Says Peacock: “Gov. Perry was right to veto the Amazon tax bill, and he’d be right if he did it again. Staying focused on downsizing Texas government is the only way to keep Texas as the top job producing state in the nation.”
In national bills that need stopped, patent reform still looms over our heads. This bill,t he America Invents Act, removes patent protection from the person who first invents a thing. Instead, patent protection goes to the person who first files papers with the government for the invention. Is it any wonder that patent mills like IBM, and lawyers groups like the ABA have fallen in love with it?
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I really can’t wait until the Lulzsec crew learns about the joys of frogmarching. These arrogant punks need to have some sense smacked into them, and felony charges would be a great way to do that.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you improve domestic cybersecurity: find the people breaking into servers and take away their liberties under existing US law.
More in security news: Darrell Issa is tracking a Gmail-related attack that hit government officials. But, instead of going after the perpetrators, he too is interrogating the victim. This is unfortunate. We need to round up these criminals and lock them up.
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I am so sick of California. While it’s good that the “privacy” bill didn’t make it out of the Senate, it’s not so good that the Amazon tax is going on to the Senate. Texas: Don’t be like us. Defeat your Amazon tax in SB 1.
And the hacks go on: Anonymous attacks.. Iran?, its apparent offshoot lulzsec attacked PBS and Sony, but leaves itself open to law enforcement action? And yet, somehow, our elected officials think the victims are the people to be grilling. I can’t think of a metaphor that doesn’t overstate the situation some, so I’ll be direct: finding fault with the victims is what we need to do only after we’ve exhausted our options related to frogmarching the attackers.
One question though: Why isn’t the House talking to RSA, after the breakin it suffered not too long ago? Is SecurID broken wider open than the Congress wants known publicly?
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