Ah, the FCC. If The FCC wanted to do incentive auctions to free up spectrum for wireless Internet, they could just do it. They wouldn’t need to set up a task force to talk about the National Broad band Plan to consider it, while instead getting involved in unrelated things like making its own security rules. We need FCC reform. Just say yes to Coase.
Remember when they said that an AT&T/T-Mobile merger would cost us jobs, as only after the merger would there be layoffs? Oops, the FCC and Holder DOJ cost us jobs, instead.
Of course, we also need Senate reform, better known as electing Republicans.
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Previously on Tech at Night I linked to a story that suggested there was a split between Darrell Issa and Chuck Grassley on FCC transparency. It turns out the story I relied on, had it wrong. Oversight wasn’t grading transparency itself; the committee was grading the management of FOIA requests, and FCC did relatively well by having established processes for dealing with FOIA. and tracking the requests in a systematic way.
The Oversight committee was not saying that the FCC is open. Because, in fact as pointed out by Mario Diaz-Balart, FCC rejects more FOIA requests than CIA, amazingly enough. That’s a serious transparency problem.
Speaking of transparency, Eric Cantor is soliciting citizen co-sponsorship of the DATA Act which would try to get more data about government out into the open, where the public can apply oversight.
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The House is doing anything but shirking its responsibility to apply oversight to the Obama administration. The FCC in particular is getting the attention it needs. “Regulatory hubris” in picking winners and losers is part of the problem, says Commissioner Robert McDowell. He should know, as he’s on the inside.
Darrell Issa and Chuck Grassley disagree on the FCC’s transparency though. Issa gives them a good grade, oddly enough, even as they continue to stonewall Grassley.
And so it’s good that Jo Ann Emerson questions the FCC’s hypocritical and questionable demand for senseless record keeping in others.
Though it’d be nice if somebody asked “Senator” Wendy’s questions about Free Press, in relation to the FCC.
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The FCC may yet get what’s coming to it. It’s been going out of its way to get headlines as it tries to pick winners and losers in industry, but now the attention is coming from the House as the Appropriations Committee will discuss the FCC’s budget. Prepare for hysterical shouting on the order of the SimCity 2000 Transportation advisor if the Republicans threaten to cut funding.
Also, we’re back to discussing the Marketplace Fairness Act. As we’ve discussed before, this is a bill that would give Congressional approval to an interstate compact between the states to collect sales tax across state lines, requires member states to harmonize their tax rules to fit in with the interstate system. The bill is gaining Congressional support this time around. In theory I’m fine with this. It’s Constitutional and it’s reasonable. I disagree with Overstock.com’s complaints of complexity, because the compact imposes restrictions on the way the states can tax items, and also creates mechanisms to ease collection of the taxes.
All I would ask is that we get some safeguards in that make it impossible to include any sort of national sales tax in the system. We don’t want Canada-style taxation through the back door.
Also, Tech at Night is sending a raspberry to Rick Santorum for his Internet censorship plans. Are there legitimate social reasons to restrict pornography? Yes, just like there are legitimate social reasons to restrict alcohol. But regulating vice is not a Constitutional role of the national government. Keep it local, I say. If we can have dry counties then we can have clean counties. But the last thing we want is to empower the next Eric Holder to regulate Internet content, thank you very much.
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Remember the SECURE IT bill, backed in the House by Marsha Blackburn and Mary Bono Mack, and in the Senate by John McCain and the gang? One of the key reasons I like the idea is that it enhances our options for prosecuting online crime. And contrary to ACLU hysteria, it’s not the Republican bill that is a threat to our liberties. Sharing reasonable, relevant information is not a problem. Guess what: information is the life blood of Internet defense. The Lieberman-Collins threat of an effective government take over of the Internet: that’s the problem.
Also a problem though are the attackers themselves: whether far away or based in an allied nation, information sharing is vital to defense. And when they’re domestic, criminal prosecution hurts them.
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I know, I know. The way that broadcasts travel across state lines, it’s important that some sort of national control step in, because the states can’t do it. But the way the Obama FCC operates, sometimes I wonder if it’s worth all the trouble.
Instead of working to ensure we have the spectrum we need allocated to the purposes we want, The Obama FCC constantly works as a roadblock, earlier against AT&T, and now against Verizon.
This same FCC is also, with apparently no objection from the President, actively and openly stonewalling Chuck Grassley and the Senate in attempts at applying reasonable oversight to the committee.
The FCC has too many secrets and tries to make too many decisions over the private sector. We have to fix this.
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ACTA. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is Darrell Issa’s next project, as he’s not happy about the treaty. So, he’s put the treaty online for all to see.
I still don’t know of any specific reason to oppose the treaty. My understanding is that it basically brings the west in on the DMCA. There may be details I’ve missed though. The best argument against the treaty is a process argument: it’s a bad precedent to pass a treaty kept from the public the way ACTA has been.
In much more amusing news, Anonymous and affiliated online terror cells continue to get rolled up, in some cases with the help of members and leaders already caught.
They’re not anonymous. They have names. They’re not legion. They are limited in number. They’re not an unstoppable idea. They’re specific people who can be jailed. And we’re doing it.
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Great news! Tech at Night’s favorite Representative Marsha Blackburn, along with TaN’s own home representative Mary Bono Mack are bringing a version of Secure IT to the House. The bill has been introduced in the Senate as an alternative to the power grab known as Lieberman-Collins. The great thing about the bill? It toughens criminal penalties for online lawbreaking even as it makes it easier for the private sector to share information about attacks.
The bad guys share information, and they think they won’t go to jail. If we let the good guys share information without getting sued for it, and if we throw the bad guys in jail, we win. And you can tell that the bad guys really hate it when we send them to jail; just witness how Anonymous has been hitting law enforcement more and more in the last year or so, most recently targeting Interpol’s website, and previously publishing names and addresses of police officers in the US. These online terrorists don’t like that they can be held accountable for their actions. It’s their weakness, the fact that they are named individuals who are finite in numbers, and we need to exploit it.
I know we had to push hard against some good members of Congress in order to send a message on SOPA, but it had to be done. The RIAA is not giving up on SOPA, so it was important that we let good members of Congress know what the problem was. And we did, so now it’s time to move on to passing good bills like SECURE IT.
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Harry Reid may be on a mad dash to bring the radical Liebmerman/Collins/Rockefeller cybersecurity bill, but a broad spectrum of Republicans continue to fight. Democrats may have toned down its Internet Kill Switch provisions, but still is a massive power grab online, and the new SECURE IT act is a much better idea.
What I absolutely love about SECURE it is that it hits all the key points: It strengthens criminal penalties for breaking into servers. It strengthens criminal penalties for breaking into servers (Yes, I said that twice on purpose because it’s that important). It creates private sector information sharing incentives without regulating the private sector at large. It turns inward and gets government to audit its own practices.
These are all the right ideas and none of the wrong ideas. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is speaking only the common-sense truth when he says “This bill recognizes that industry is at the center of any solution. It’s a sensible step forward that allows industry to invest in innovation and job creation rather than compliance. Imposing a costly and bureaucratic regulatory regime is the wrong approach to national security. New regulations will slow down innovation and investment while companies wait years for the government to introduce outdated standards. The regulatory process simply cannot keep up with the rapid pace of technology.”
It tells you just how basic and correct this bill is when it has co-sponsorship from such a broad spectrum of the caucus: Ron Johnson as mentioned, John McCain, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Chuck Grassley, Saxby Chambliss, Lisa Murkowski, Dan Coats, and Richard Burr.
Support Ron Johnson and the team. We want this bill passed. The common-sense alternative to the power grab cybersecurity bill.
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Special Tuesday edition! Having been very busy hitting a launch window for a client, I had to skip Friday and Monday. So to make up for it, this week I start on Tuesday.
Riddle me this: FCC refuses to be transparent about its dealings with LightSquared (who by the way just changed CEOs, as the firm continues to flail desperately in response to the FCC’s LTE refusal), but FCC wants broadcasters to put files online. I’m with Richard Burr: Let’s look closer at that plan before we let FCC go ahead with it.
And speaking of the un-transparent FCC, Democrats are trying to talk down Chuck Grassley over his insistence on transparency, but have no fear: the House is now on the case.
The insistence by both the FCC and by LightSquared that no information be turned over to Chuck Grassley is itself suspicious. More investigation is essential.
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