Some fascinating Bitcoin developments: As I predicted, Mt. Gox just got trouble with its US dollar processor, Dwolla. Meanwhile it comes out that a cabal of developers has de facto control over the Bitcoin network and is devaluing very small wallets. The net effect of this is to reduce the money supply, deflating Bitcoin to benefit those with large holdings.
So even as Bitcoin is revealed to have its own central bankers, the new Megaupload is getting censored per New Zealand law, as Kim Dotcom weighs (heavily) in against Obama to attempt to distract from this censorship.
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Crime Watch: Lulzsec bigshot gets taken down in Australia, and an Anonymous gang member is on trial for multiple rape at an Occupy event. Bad week for anarchists. Heh.
Democrats tuning their rhetoric for the moment: IMMEDIATE ACTION needed on Do Not Track, even as it’s taken YEARS to do anything on outdated ECPA email rules which now may include a warning requirement, and it wasn’t even Jay Rockefeller who got off his tail to get that done.
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While it’s true that cybersecurity can be cover for bad proposals, it is true that foreign organized criminal and state-backed attacks are hitting American government and business interests online every day. They’re even stealing large sums of money on a regular basis. This is why we need to address the issue in a serious way. If these attacks were going on at sea, it would be an act of war. Because it’s online, nothing happens? Come on.
Amending CISPA in order to try to get it to pass might be a good idea. If anarchists and other left-libs don’t like it, then it may yet be a good bill after the changes.
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Leave it to the Obama administration to botch everything. Trying to shortchange rural TV stations will only discourage them from participating in incentive auctions, therefore harming universal access and competition in the rural broadband market.
More wireless means more competition, folks. Allowing TV stations to reap the full rewards of selling off their spectrum is win-win.
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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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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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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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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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So, the President and other Democrats seem to think more government is the answer to our cybersecurity problems. the Chinese are attacking us, and will continue to do so going forward. Hard to see how more regulation on our wend will help that. Fighting back might make more sense, so long as we don’t make the Internet unusable in the process.
Of course, some threats are domestic. Gangs like Anonymous need to be found and jailed. Again, regulation isn’t the answer there. Police work is. Especially since this Anontard attack was on… the Federal Reserve. Oops.
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Hey Mark Cuban: We both know that when Obama signed the American Invents Act, crushing small businesses was a feature, since it meant a) more work for lawyers who backed the bill and b) easier competition for the big businesses who backed the bill.
I see the vultures using Aaron Swartz’s dead body for political purposes are now going full Weekend at Bernie’s on this. It’s amazing.
And yet nobody reconciles the Democrat outrage at this, with Democrat plans to ignore the Constitution and use Executive Orders on cybersecurity. If we allow stuff like what Swartz did, we’re letting cybersecurity threats go unpunished, sorry.
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