Tech at Night

So, Cybersecurity. I’ve spent so much time talking about why the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity bill in the Senate is terrible, and anti-PROTECT IP champion Ron Wyden has taken up the opposition as well, but there is need for some enhanced ability of government to coordinate against and to attack Internet security threats.

Here’s a Reddit post that should scare people about the kinds of ongoing criminal enterprises that are out there, online, worldwide. Here’s the kind of research that demonstrates the need of the good guys to be open and to collaborate. Think about what happens when (not if) the technology that goes into these cash cow botnets (some run by Anonymous) instead goes into spying (some done by Wikileaks) and into terrorism (some done by Anonymous).

Cybersecurity is, on some level, easy to understand as an issue. We know there are people online who break into computers. Retransmission Consent is a tricker issue, as it’s regulatory inside baseball between local broadcasters and local cable providers. Two heavily regulated industries battle it out over a fine point of policy. It’s hard for a conservative to grapple with it, sometimes.

But I’m going to disagree with with this post by Gordon Smith and call television broadcasters the new manufacturers of buggy whips. Right now they’re still important for some people, to be sure, in the same way that some people will use a land line phone instead of wireless Internet to stay connected.

But younger people are moving away from it. “Broadcast-only” is a misleading term. I’m in that category, but not because I watch broadcast television. I watch pay TV. It’s just called Hulu, not cable.

Further, I doubt that broadcasters really are the best source of information anymore most of the time. People are using the Internet more and more without having a cord in the home to bring it in. iPhones, Android phones, and yes even Windows phones, are collectively taking over the phone market. In so doing they also take over the information market at home.

This is why it’s wrong to maintain the current retransmission consent rules, and why it’s wrong to try to block spectrum incentive auctions to encourage the shifting of spectrum from broadcasters to wireless Internet providers. Even if we thought it was legitimate for government to try to prop up broadcasters instead of opening the market, it’s pointless to have government stand athwart what the people actually want to spend their money on, yelling stop. We’ll just get run over, and hinder innovation in the progress.

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Loretta Sanchez doubles down on racism

On September 21, 2010, in General, by Neil Stevens
Mexican Flag Protest

It’s clear that these lefty writers are no friends of law, order, and American values, given their clear amusement at the widely known fact that Loretta Sanchez stole her first election against Bob Dornan. The spirit of their use of “Trannies” as a way to mock Van Tran‘s supporters should be noticed, as well. Ah, the tolerant left. They respect the LGBT community alright, but only when that community coughs up cash and votes.

But anyway, even OC Weekly had to point out the incredibly racist remark she made on Univision, where she thought she would be away from the prying eyes of the general electorate, and spoke for la raza alone about how “the Vietnamese” were trying to take the seat from “our community.”

Don’t like those ideas in the House? Give to Van Tran so we can beat Loretta Sanchez and secure justice in California’s 47th district.

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