Unnecessary legislation watch: House Democrats (and a Republican) want to meddle in the matter of employer access to Facebook. Sure, a lot of people aren’t smart about Facebook, but that’s no good reason to expand government here. Let’s not micromanage. We just went over this with ECPA.
How can we trust new government regulations of Cybersecurity, Obama-style, when heavily regulated utilities are doing so poorly? That’s why we need a light touch, low on regulation, CISPA-style.
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You know what happens when you use other people’s email services, such as Yahoo or Google? You become especially vulnerable to attacks on your privacy, including the ability of the government to search your email provider’s computers. The ECPA is a red herring, really. Sure, we an tweak it, but when you use somebody else’s computer, I’m not sure you should have much of an expectation of privacy.
Hey, look: While Pandora spends money lobbying to try to change the law to rig the system, Apple is negotiating to get what it wants for Internet radio like a free market participant should.
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Had some work to do Friday night, so this this became Tech at Sunday Morning!
I still don’t see it passing the House after Mike Enzi’s winners and losers talk poisoned the well, but conservative governors want MFA passed for good reason. Ask Scott Walker.
Remember when the T-Mobile/MetroPCS deal flew through the Obama administration without a hitch? I think we now know why: it meant the end of the MetroPCS challenge to Net Neutrality. How convenient.
Stealth recording technology. What could go wrong? Of course, if you don’t like Google Glass, the real thing to do is to let property owners ban it on their own property. Problem solved.
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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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Sorry for missing Tech at Night on Friday. After that near-miss with a cold, I decided to start the weekend a little early that night. But we’re back. So with five days of news to catch up on, let’s see what we have here.
Here’s a reminder of why Net Neutrality was a terrible idea. Making people pay for what they use creates opportunities for innovation. If ESPN wants to negotiate bulk rates for wireless data, let them!
And yet that John McCain would add more regulations. We need less micromanagement of cable, not more.
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Even as I’ve said the bill is a good idea, Senate conservatives overwhelmingly voted against the Internet Sales Tax. The whole Tea Party era gang is there in the NAY column. It’s easy to see why too: guys like Mike Enzi are coming out and saying their purpose for the bill is to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. I can’t see this passing the House with the cloud of toxic rhetoric around it.
As Team Obama wavers between a bureaucrat and an actual expert for its DHS Cybersecurity head, insecure accounts are getting hammered by foreign attackers. Use good passwords. Never give the actual answers to ‘security questions.’ Keep software updated. And don’t approve random “Who unfollowed me/How much time am I wasting/Which President am I” Twitter apps!
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So the left is mad that the President’s new pick for Commerce isn’t totally in the pocket of the unions, and they’re mad the new pick for FCC, Tom Wheeler, isn’t a radical socialist like Bernie Sanders. I’m not all that optimistic about either pick though. The President is choosing bundlers for personal loyalty, which means radicalism on his terms, but still radicalism.
This is amazing though, and this is something the radicals will never tell you: more Americans lack access to public water than to broadband Internet. Twice as many, in fact. Government is a failure, compared with private competition.
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We’re still at war online, guys. The Chinese are scouting us and even criminal enterprise is under constant attack. And make no mistake DDoS attacks affect not just the target, but the networks surrounding the target, too, so even a criminal racket like Silk Road should have attacks on it stopped, for the health of American networks. And again, the anarchists SWATted a member of Congress, Mike Rogers, to fight for weaker security online.
Yet, The President and Democrats continue to obstruct CISPA, instead of getting the job done. This guy made illegal executive orders on the topic, but as soon as we take good, light-regulatory legislative action, he suddenly wants to slam on the brakes. Shameful.
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So back on Saturday it came out that CISPA supporters were being threatened, and now today it comes out that Mike Rogers was “SWATted”. That is, the Anonymous-tied anarchists tried to kill him by lying to the police about him.
I said recently that the radicals opposed CISPA, and were lying about it by saying it was the new SOPA, because they didn’t want American networks to be more secure. Sounds like these criminal, radical gangs really do feel threatened. This is why we must pass a similar bill, and the Senate does the nation a disservice by not doing so.
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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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