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Tech at Night: Live from Virginia: Human Trafficking, Cybersecurity

Tech at Night

I’m back, having gotten myself and my worldly possessions from southern California to northern Virginia. I also have a backlog of items that I’m never going to cover completely tonight, so some issues are going to wait until Monday. So please, check back Monday. There are things I’d love to cover tonight, but I simply lack the time.

Let’s start with Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) joining up to press Google to do something about the advertising of human trafficking services. Some people are going to have a knee-jerk reaction to this, call it a for-the-children threat to censor. But it’s not. The “child pornography” card gets pulled for all sorts of power grabs, but this isn’t about pictures on the Internet, either of real or made-up people. This is about the actual kidnapping and enslaving of people, including children. That is legitimate cause for action.

And note that Blackburn is would be perfectly happy for Google to do something about it, setting an industry standard, and end the need for government action of any kind. That’s commendable. Because you know what? Industry can act to emulate legislation and do so more effectively than government ever will.

So, how about some cybersecurity?

If we’re going to pass a bill at all, and we probably should given the rise of criminal and anarchist attacks trying to take down all world governments, we need to pass the SECURE IT bills introduced by McCain and co. in the Senate, and by Blackburn and co. in the House. Heightened criminal penalties, lowered barriers to defensive information sharing, and no government power grab. What’s not to like?

Information, not regulation, is the most powerful too in the box for fighting online attacks. Honest people need to be informed of possible attacks by domestic businesses or by foreign entities. SECURE IT tries to help information sharing. That’s what we need.

What we don’t need is to bring DHS in to regulate private industry, which is what Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins want. John McCain, not the staunchest advocate of free markets after his recent Augusta National comments, even sees the glaring problems here when he’s saying “A super-regulator like DHS would impact free-market forces.”

Note an interesting problem here: industries we’re most worried about are already regulated. Utilities, banks, doctors, airports, and others already have government breathing down their necks. If we bring DHS into it, we’re multiplying obligations and creating redundancy. That’s harmful, not helpful. Security requires clarity of design and of purpose. Mistakes come with complexity, and successful attacks are born in mistakes.

Democrat Chris Dodd may want to revive PROTECT IP in the Senate, but as long as the House leadership won’t budge on SOPA, its House counterpart, that’s not happening.

It may be time to Play the Sad Trombone for LightSquared. Losing Sprint had to hurt. A lot.

Tune in Monday for Internet Sales Tax failures, ACU vs Jim DeMint(!), and more that I didn’t cover tonight because I had to go to the grocery store, as I had no food in my new home and wanted to go pick some up before 2am.

COMMENTS

  • noodle

    If you can choose when to drive its not too bad, the weather is pretty temperate (until we get 2-3 feet of snow all at once). Also, school can be cancelled for rain and 1/4″ of sleet or ice can bring unbelievable gridlock. I think of the traffic here as supersaturated and the least disturbance can crystallize traffic in the entire region.

  • Scope

    for the Senate seat that Tim Kaine sat on a billion dollars in transportation funds when he was governor. He was more interested in pushing for Obama’s type dream of high speed rail than fixing the massive traffic problems on the roads, especially up in your neck of the woods.

    Down here in the liberalville Charlottesville, they also sat on billions of federal funds for more than 20 years to build an alternate route around the always traffic congested route 29 that runs right through the major shopping area in the city. The time limit to make that happen passed and I believe they had to repay the money to the feds. Guess who has been a very vocal opponent of the by-pass? John Grisham, yes that John Grisham. He lives just south of Charlottesville.

  • noodle

    I rarely spend more than an hour or two in C-ville, the traffic has been awful for years, but VA still has some awful pretty countryside. I’m still unhappy with the VA repubs about the primaries, but I cannot understand why anyone would vote Kaine. IMO he insulted the citizens of Virginia by taking the head of DNC job while simultaneously serving as Gov. Coincidentally, I wrote a long letter to the Dem Sen (the one that’s going to retire) about a week before he announced he wasn’t running for re-election. I explained to him v politely the problems w govt overspending, Obamacare, etc.. and how he was actually supposed to be representing VA, not just the Dems..

  • Scope

    Every Vet in VA was required to report the name and address of every pet owner that brought their pet to the vet for any reason. The Department of Pet Police was required to send the names of every reported pet owner to the counties where they resided. The counties were then required to notify every pet owner whose name they were given to come in and purchase a “license” for their pet, or face a monetary penalty. My husband seems to think it was a fine of $50-$100 bucks for non-compliance. I believe it was pushed as a program to have every pet vaccinated for rabies (I totally agree with that responsibility for pet owners), but it more so wound up being a pet license revenue issue than a rabies issue. As with all mandates, many pets were not vaccinated, or many pets were not properly taken care of because of the privacy issue. That argument was forefront with the impending law, oh well, they are just expendable animals. At that time, Lt Gov Bolling was seated, and Bob McDonnell was the state Atty Gen. Don’t know if they fought the legislation or not. I’ll have to look into that.

  • Scope

    which so very unfortunately was just renewed with the votes of at least 4 Republican VA Senators.

  • snowshooze

    Big brother cracking down for dollars.
    What are they gonna say if the pet was just visiting?
    Did you hear about the Stingray system?
    Cell towers all over the country… drive by, and you are not only tracked, but further, they can rip your phone for all it’s contents.
    Phone list, activity…the works.

  • noodle

    I never heard of this, but had something like that happen to me in another state when I took a dog in for an ear infection, the vet charged for a dog license since the animal lived in the same county as the clinic they were acting as enforcers. While vaccines can be good, I think they’re overused. There seems to still be a lot unknown about the immunology and side affects. I had one vets tell me the 1-yr and 3-yr rabies shot are the same and unclear why pets kept entirely indoors have to get a rabies shot. My horse became allergic to vaccines and was nearly killed by epinephrine used to treat the allergic reaction to the vaccine, turns out he was also allergic to epinephrine (rare), now he’s even allergic to anti-histamines. No more vaccines for him.

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