There are two possibilities when it comes to the latest Edward Snowden announcement. Option one is he’s lying, and simply spreading propaganda against America to appease his Russian paymasters.
Option two is he’s telling the truth, and specifically attempting to undermine American operations against a brutal Communist regime that has been attacking America for years, including a massive $100 bill counterfeiting operation (remember when we finally changed the $100 to those stupid colored versions we have these days? North Korea is why).
Either way Snowden is a spy for the enemies of liberty, and a traitor to us all.
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So it’s really all about Net Neutrality right now. In case you missed it, I gave a summary of the events earlier this week. I can add to that this further update: all information I have with respect to the bill says it’s a good one.
I said before this isn’t about winning. This is about not losing. But the Thune/Upton bill is probably going to be much better than that.
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So I happened to get sick twice in two weekends, though the second cold was well worth it as I picked it up giving Zelda 2 commentary to help in the raising of $1.5MM for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.
But regardless I have some Tech at Night catchup to do. The biggest stories are related to Internet policy and Net Neutrality as they usually are. I will cover those later Thursday.
So tonight we’re going to catch up on other stories of interest over the last few days.
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People don’t really believe how much damage a determined state-backed attacker can do to us online. And yes, the attack on Sony Pictures was an attack on us. North Korea’s attack on that studio, and let’s be clear, it was North Korea, not a domestic malcontent, was their way of cheaply doing millions of dollars of damage to our economy.
It used to take bombs to do that. Not anymore. That’s why we need NSA.
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Well here it comes. After pro-liberty, anti-Net Neutrality forces won the comment period, forcing the Obama Democrats to ‘find new comments’, The FCC will vote on the next round of Net Neutrality next month. There are two ways this could go. Chairman Tom Wheeler could try for a repeat of the rules that were thrown out in court the last two times, with a possible tweak to get by the courts.
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People keep trying to diminish the possibility that North Korea was behind the attack on Sony, which I don’t get. An online attack is not like a nuclear weapon, needing a massive capital investment and scarce domain expertise. Computer experts are much easier to develop, and the investment to make such attacks is well within the budget of even a backward country like North Korea.
So some other group may be claiming responsibility, but that’s not necessarily the ned of the story. If private groups can commoditize online attacks, then North Korea can make them.
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They keep telling me American Internet access is terrible, but the appropriately-named US Internet is announcing the world’s fastest home Internet access: 10 Gigabit fiber. Not coincidentally, US Internet is in competition with Verizon’s 0.5 Gigabit fiber in the same area.
In other news, DSL is improving, pushing 45+ Megabit connections to millions of Americans. Note that officially, the FCC and others have declared DSL not to be ‘broadband Internet’, and exclude it when claiming Americans don’t have choices.
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So Barack Obama denies it’s an act of war for a foreign country, North Korea, to attack American Internet resources, those of Sony Pictures. It is war though, as surely as an embargo is an act of war, though it is war by a new means.
I hope South Korea is taking it seriously, because it looks like somebody is. NSA? Sounds like them, shutting it down to neutralize a threat.
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It’s not often a Tech at Night issue gets wide play on the Internet, but this one has. North Korean attackers broke into Sony systems in the US (Sony being a Japanese firm but Sony Pictures Studios being a major US-based movie studio, at the old Paramount lot) in order to intimidate them into pulling a movie, The Interview.
Some are trying to dismiss this as an actual foreign threat, but there’s no reason not to think they could do it, and this is every reason why we need a strong NSA.
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Barack Obama’s FBI director, James Comey, was previously featured in this space for his declaration that he’s troubled, that Americans would be able to take proactive measures to encrypt their own data, in ways the FBI couldn’t read at will.
He tried to intimidate and bully Apple and Google into avoiding adding effective cryptography to iOS and Android. This is important because it’s only effective cryptography that would allow private citizens and corporations to protect themselves from spying by foreign governments and government-backed hackers.
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