The Heritage Foundation is one of the most important components of the conservative movement. They’re a true Think Tank, bringing together many smart people to speak intelligently on many issues. And I agree with Jim DeMint’s predecessor at Heritage, Ed Fuelner, when he says Net Neutrality “needs to be eradicated, not embraced.
Net Neutrality, that is, Barack Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet through a process known as “Title II Reclassification” which arbitrarily declared the Internet to be under the FCC’s 1930s-era phone regulations, is one of those rare things that gets everything wrong. Everything.
Obama got it wrong on policy, as Fuelner pointed out. Obama got it wrong on process, and he got it wrong on transparency. There’s nothing correct or legitimate about the whole thing. Every Republican running for President must clearly state he will take every action to reverse this.
Once we let government in, the market distortions only expand. Ajit Pai (rightly) scolds DirecTV for cheating spectrum auctions, but I reply that FCC shouldn’t be trying to pick winners and losers to begin with, rigging auctions to subsidize some firms over others.
I remain skeptical of the idea that we need to regulate privacy with respect to ‘cloud’ servers, as is now being pushed in California. Lock your doors. Encrypt your data. Protect yourself, don’t expect nanny state to protect you. Government’s freaking out about Android and iOS encryption plans, and for good reason: Math will protect your privacy better than laws can, always.
So in my mind, the Coolidge principle applies to ECPA reform. Let’s not rush to legislate a momentary thing.
Edward Snowden failed in his main objective, which was to effect change in America. People’s behavior isn’t different, they aren’t using encryption more, and through their actions in the marketplace we can demonstrate they aren’t worried about NSA in fact. Snowden sold out to Russia and got nothing. Heh.
Speaking of Net Neutrality, Twitter came out all for it. Yet we hear of Twitter restricting access to its APIs. Weird that they’re doing the things they claim are bad for ISPs to do. Regulation for thee, but not for me.