What’s better than anarchists getting arrested for spreading terrorists slogans, including threats? Anarchists getting arrested and caned for the same.
Speaking of people who need arrested, even as Kim Dotcom continues his war on copyright, he’s also going to get into politics in New Zealand. I think we can guess the sole platform element of his party: DO NOT EXTRADITE KIM DOTCOM TO AMERICA.
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While I don’t share the zeal some have for ECPA reform, to change the requirements to search emails on third party servers, I think the whole project is at worst harmless so long as FISA is preserved.
As much as a broad free trade area would be great, I begin to wonder whether the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been hijacked by special interests, and so must fail. I mean, this “threat to Internet freedom” stuff is likely overblown, but the treaty is likely being used to try to ram stuff through that could never pass as ordinary legislation.
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How busy and important is FCC? They have time to worry about fluorescent lights in every small business in America, it seems.
More proof kids don’t belong on the Internet: the anarchoterrorists of Anonymous are now recruiting 12 year old elementary school students to commit crimes for them. Please take note, everyone. The Internet is a dangerous place that is not safe for kids.
That said, beware ideas for government-directed national cybersecurity plans or regulations, such as those proposed often by Democrats. They can’t even secure the Obamacare website, let alone tell you how to secure yours. Share information only. Pass CISPA, not new mandates.
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You know what happens when you use other people’s email services, such as Yahoo or Google? You become especially vulnerable to attacks on your privacy, including the ability of the government to search your email provider’s computers. The ECPA is a red herring, really. Sure, we an tweak it, but when you use somebody else’s computer, I’m not sure you should have much of an expectation of privacy.
Hey, look: While Pandora spends money lobbying to try to change the law to rig the system, Apple is negotiating to get what it wants for Internet radio like a free market participant should.
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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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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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We’re still at war online, guys. The Chinese are scouting us and even criminal enterprise is under constant attack. And make no mistake DDoS attacks affect not just the target, but the networks surrounding the target, too, so even a criminal racket like Silk Road should have attacks on it stopped, for the health of American networks. And again, the anarchists SWATted a member of Congress, Mike Rogers, to fight for weaker security online.
Yet, The President and Democrats continue to obstruct CISPA, instead of getting the job done. This guy made illegal executive orders on the topic, but as soon as we take good, light-regulatory legislative action, he suddenly wants to slam on the brakes. Shameful.
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So back on Saturday it came out that CISPA supporters were being threatened, and now today it comes out that Mike Rogers was “SWATted”. That is, the Anonymous-tied anarchists tried to kill him by lying to the police about him.
I said recently that the radicals opposed CISPA, and were lying about it by saying it was the new SOPA, because they didn’t want American networks to be more secure. Sounds like these criminal, radical gangs really do feel threatened. This is why we must pass a similar bill, and the Senate does the nation a disservice by not doing so.
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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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Monday night, as promised, we still have some catch up work to do. So let’s start with those Amazon Taxes, those Internet sales taxes of dubious Constitutionality. Colorado’s got tossed in federal court and Illinois’s didn’t raise any money. Obeying the Constitution counts, folks. Pass a true interstate compact through the Congress first.
Also as promised, there’s the matter of the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act. This is the one where ACU has come out against Jim DeMint, and that caught my attention. I have to side with the bill DeMint is sponsoring. I think ACU simply misunderstood what’s at stake here and had good intentions, but the excessive complexity of the regulations defeated them here.
The bill does not let cable providers become free riders, retransmitting others’ streams for free. It just stops the law from trying to dictate the parameters of the negotiations on retransmissions. I see no harm in that, and potentially much good.
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