We missed Tech on Monday because of Memorial Day, but I was sick anyway so it wasn’t happening. Still getting over my cold though, so this tech is about 2 hours late.
Here’s your periodic reminder that kids and teenagers shouldn’t be online unsupervised. Adult sexual predators are actively hunting them to take advantage of them.
Keeping data Internet-accessible is inherently dangerous to your privacy. Internet security is spotty but still users don’t actually quit services that gather their data, as their outrage is always short lived. People want convenience and innovation so I reject calls for bigger government to try to use FTC to enforce a privacy few actually want.
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We’re at war online. Iran, North Korea, and Russia are the sources of sustained attacks on our government and our economy. They steal from us, they disrupt our operations, and they’re no better than the pirates of old. On the sea, such attacks would eventually mean war, but on the Internet they get a pass.
Individuals do tend to get nabbed after the fact, as they build massive botnets for credit card fraud and Bitcoin mining, but it’s not enough to sit back passively and wait to get attacked before doing anything.
We need to be proactive, and that means putting together all the information we can about attacks past, present, and future. We need to be able to deal with attacks before the spin up fully. We need to pass along warnings before it’s too late. And that means we need legislation to prevent trial lawyers from making a mess of all of this. So that’s why it’s time to pass CISPA.
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It’s too bad. We’ve had all the hype, all the build up, and all the promise shown in the FCC’s incentive auction program, allowing underperforming legacy spectrum to be transferred to where it can be of most use. And yet, FCC might still mess up the program.
Of course, it’s unfortunately true that Obama’s FCC has done a poor job all around on spectrum, to the point that it’s changing numbers around to cover up the facts. Caught red-handed?
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Justice is impeding the Sprint/Softbank merger. Gee, whoever could have predicted that if Sprint funded the left-wing effort to embolden Obama administration action, then Sprint itself could suffer bad consequences? I wonder. It wasn’t me, was it? I didn’t point out that Sprint Nextel itself had a history of mergers, such as the Sprint-Nextel merger, did I? Hmm.
Hey Chuck Grassley: The first amendment is not a suggestion any more than the second amendment is. There is no Video Game exception that I saw. You’d have to be as special as the Vice President to think think citing the words of a crazed murderer as an authority helps you make a point, anyway.
Besides, it is not your job to dictate ‘artistic value’ to others, nor does your own job have ‘artistic value.’ So if you would silence others who do not have ‘artistic value,’ then that do we conclude about your right to speech? Everybody knows you never go full Biden, Senator.
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Hello again. Having been traveling from Wednesday to Friday for my employer, I did my best to get this out Friday night, but I crashed about a third of the way into my backlog of links. Then over the weekend my email server died. So, we catch up with Tech at Night on Monday!
We’ll start with the International Telecommunications Union. Reports came out that ITU anti-liberty proposals were backing off, but the effort is going in the wrong direction. A big chunk of the Anglosphere is against it, including the Obama administration.
The President is getting credit for this position from industry and House Republicans, but consider this: if the ITU’s secretary general didn’t see the Obama opposition coming then just how muted were Obama’s efforts to fix the treaty to begin with? This is a failure of the President to lead internationally.
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We’re still in wait and see mode on what the Obama administration will try with respect to cybersecurity, but of course they’ll use every news event as justification. Here’s the problem though: Attacks like the Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia prove that businesses must use best practices, but government regulation will only hinder industry from keeping up with the latest. Regulation is too slow. Government is too restrictive, and not accountable enough.
Of course the President himself continues to try to make the pitch, but in the end I agree with Eric Cantor. The administration wants unchecked power, and Cybersecurity is the next buzzword after Net Neutrality that is being used as an excuse. Cantor calls it the ‘imperial presidency.’
So, more cybersecurity. The government is starting to recognize state actors online, which makes sense given that enemies like Iran aren’t shy about it. That’s good. Recognizing fact is a prerequisite to making good policy.
But I think trying to dictate to private business is the wrong idea. Huawei and ZTE may be organs of the People’s Liberation Army, which would make it a good reason never to have government buy from Huawei, and possibly even to restrict government contractors from using Huawei hardware when fulfilling government contracts. But anything beyond that just grows government in ways that possibly harm us.
If Huawei is breaking the law then we need to put people in jail. If we can show that the Chinese government is attacking us, we need to address the problem at the source, rather than cut a couple vines of kudzu. Expanding government against a couple of businesses is not necessary when we have laws already on the books, and not sufficient when the problem is a state actor.
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Why the Marketplace Fairness Act is looking inevitable: We’re up to about a third of all GOP governors backing it, and there’s a reasonable probability of a former GOP governor becoming President with an all Republican Congress.
Broadening the tax base without actually raising taxes. It’s the Holy Grail for a conservative governor. I expect it’ll get done in 2013.
Riddle me this: If the US government perpetrated Stuxnet and its successor, why do the attacks justify US government action domestically?
If we don’t fix the spectrum crunch, we won’t like the consequences. And that’s why we need government out of the way of the secondary spectrum market, starting with Verizon/Comcast.
Guess what: Internet bill of rights only if it’s like the original and is only a list of restrictions on the Congress.
So much going on suddenly this week. Barack Obama and Eric Holder’s DoJ has decided to come after AT&T for its plans to merge with T-Mobile, possibly doing the bidding of donors while hindering jobs growth in America as well as nationwide 4G wireless Internet competition. Sprint’s not doing much to keep Verizon in check; we need AT&T to have the spectrum needed to do that.
So Holder wants to drive Gibson manufacturing out of the US, and to keep T-Mobile in German hands, and prevent AT&T from bringing jobs back to America. Do I have that right? It’s no wonder people rate the Internet and Telephone industries much higher than they rate the government.
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