Tech at Night

More proof people don’t care about privacy: Google announces a service is ending, and the competitor I use to prepare Tech at Night becomes flooded to the point of unusability Wednesday night. People just don’t care what Google is doing.

The Street View WiSpy scandal didn’t scare people off, even as Texas hits Google for those offenses. Glass excites them. The shift toward human biases doesn’t raise questions. People love Google’s services, and privacy doesn’t enter into the equation. So keep regulation out.

Make sure you catch my recent RedState post on Aaron Swartz, and how the blame casting against his prosecutor is not only unfair, it’s wrong.

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Tech at Night

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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Tech at Night

A lot of conservatives seem to be getting behind a Hatch-Rubio bill to increase immigration for skilled individuals. No wonder Harry Reid wants to block it for partisan reasons. Have to put politics over anything else. Can’t let Republicans do a good thing.

Though I think the Senate priorities are pretty messed up. Jay Rockefeller is talking about workforce standards in the context of cybersecurity legislation. Talk about using any excuse to grow government. At least guys like John Thune recognize the need for the government and private business to work together against foreign Internet threats.

I mean, we can’t rely solely on NSA doing its best to do the right thing on its own.

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Tech at Night

So even as Eric Holder is pushing back against the Weekend at Bernies-ification of Aaron Swartz, the man who committed premeditated crimes (as the puppet on the strings of the callous Larry Lessig, perhaps?), was caught, and was getting prosecuted for his high-profile sabotage of one of America’s leading academic institutions. It’s rare that you’ll see writers at RedState agree with that guy, but Moe is pushing back against the excesses of the Swartz defenders as well, and I pretty much agree with Moe.

Guys, if you want to push an anarchic anti-copyright agenda, do so on its own merits, as Joe Karaganis does. Don’t use the corpse of a suicide to do so.

There is room for IP reform in America, with excesses like the Sonny Bono act in the picture, and odd situations where Frito Lay can use patent and trade dress, two distinct concepts, to attack the same competitor. But the Swartz fan club is as auto-discrediting as the Sacco and Vanzetti crowd ended up being.

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Tech at Night

An interesting development in the President’s Cybersecurity order: his people are going hat in hand looking for industry buy-in. Perhaps they fear actual legislation?

Of course, when it comes to industry and the administration, their relationships can’t always be as cozy as Google’s with the President’s men, including the FTC Chairman. Google really is the caricature of Halliburton that existed in the minds of the radicals.

Microsoft is beginning to realize their ad campaign is failing because nobody cares about privacy, it appears.

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Tech at Night

Is it still a likely coincidence when all these stories at once come out pushing this topic of spending money to give schoolkids access to the dangerous, adult Internet? Or is somebody funding this drive?

Manning confessies to being a spy and a traitor. I wish we could just force choke him.

Bad news: New Zealand is arming manatees. Seriously though, if Kim Dotcom wants to fight his prosecution, he should turn himself in, instead of continuing his crimes in New Zealand.

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Tech at Night

So Republicans checked up on the Broadband Stimulus, yet another pork barrel spending project by the President, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid: Surprise! It was a wasteful failure, like the rest of the jobless stimulus.

IP reform: I’m not optimistic of copyright reform soon, though it is a populist thing the TEA party could do against Hollywood and the joint efforts of big government and big business. But implementing loser pays against only patent trolls would be nice. But don’t forget that trademarks are completely out of hand, too.

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Tech at Night

The evidence mounts that we need to respond to Chinese attacks on American industry. But what do we do about it when we have few tools short of military attack? Hit them back in kind, I would think.

Of course, Seton Motley says Barack Obama is attacking our Internet access with his illegal, overreaching regulations. Remember: the courts have already pointed out his NLRB efforts have been flat out illegal, and the FCC’s Net Neutrality efforts have also been overturned once before.

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Tech at Night

I can’t agree with Jerry Brito on cybersecurity legisiation. That the President did the wrong thing, the wrong way, doesn’t mean we don’t need the right thing done the right way. It’s time we stopped playing blame the victim.

How about more Free Press? Mike Wendy thinks they need to man up, a fair point. Instead of trying to silence opponents, debate. Then Jonathan Lee makes another great point: Free Press trying to silent AT&T isn’t exactly advocacy for a free press, is it?

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Tech at Night

I took President’s day off. I know, terrible, right? Well let’s try to catch up.

So the President’s Cybersecurity order has been published. EO 13636. Part of it relates to information sharing. Interesting that even as he does that, he opposes actual regulation to share information. CISPA would be an actual law though, but the President cares not for the Constitution.

Oh, but he’s also going to use diplomacy as cybersecurity. Yeah, that’ll work.

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Nima Jooyandeh facts.