By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 16th at 12:00 AM  | 

I guess legislatively it’ll be slow going the rest of this year, thanks to the elections. So Tech at Night just may be shorter for a while to come. That’s good for my sleep schedule, I believe. Though the aftermath continues of Harry Reid’s failure to ram through the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act, as John McCain, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and other Republicans criticized Harry Reid for | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 9th at 01:30 AM  | 

With the Cybersecurity Act on hold for now, it seems like a slow news week, so a quick one tonight. We’re in a spectrum crunch, and as long as the Obama administration is restricting spectrum allocation, including the critical secondary spectrum market that firms like Verizon and AT&T are trying to operate in, it’s not going to get better. The Obama FCC claims to get | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 2nd at 12:00 AM  | 

Lieberman-Collins is in trouble! There is apparently some misinformation going around. I’ve seen people claiming that gun control is in the bill, when it’s just an amendment possibly to be added, along with an anti-Obamacare amendment going around. Further, The Hill posted and pulled a story saying Harry Reid postponed the Cybersecurity Act. But it looks like I was right to respect Republican attempts to | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 17th at 01:30 AM  | 

Please read: A personal appeal to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. You mad, bro? With that business out of the way, back to Tech at Night. I for one am glad that Jon Kyl and Sheldon Whitehouse are having trouble coming up with a compromise. The Lieberman-Collins bill favored by Harry Reid and Barack Obama is terrible and just an awful, huge power grab. We’re better | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  June 26th at 01:30 AM  | 

Hey, digital libertarians? Hope you’re ready to move on from Barack Obama, His administration thinks the First Amendment is an obstacle to greater government on the Internet, and not something that must be respected or protected by the courts when it gets in the way. This of course turns the First Amendment on its head. I guess in the Democrat parallel world Tim Wu and | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  June 14th at 01:30 AM  | 

When Jim DeMint and Steve Scalise first started talking about reforming the regulated relationship between broadcasters and cable companies, oh the fits that were thrown. Even a certain conservative group jumped out in front complaining. But look: these regulations are worth big bucks to the side they favor, and the negotiation deadlocks they produce don’t help the public, they only force everyone to deal with | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  June 5th at 01:00 AM  | 

Privacy? You want privacy in the digital age? Start by repealing campaign finance laws before you wag your socialist finger at the private sector. Al Qaeda also denied 9/11 involvement at first, but we knew the truth. Also, how can Anonymous deny involvement in an attack when they claim to be unorganized? It’s these slipups that let us know the truth about them: they’re an | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 22nd at 02:00 AM  | 

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 | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 3rd at 01:30 AM  | 

CISPA’s proponents bent over backward to respond to reasonable complaints, but the extremists are still complaining. Anonymous and Mozilla (much of which is foreign, no?) are whining, but nobody ever points to any specific, offending verbiage of the bill. Am I the only one who reads tech bills before complaining about them? Even Democrats are having to start acknowledging Republican expertise in tech leadership, though. | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 21st at 12:30 AM  | 

CISPA is still a harmless bill devoid of new mandates of power grabs, but I’m actually short of new things to say about it this week. Lieberman-Collins is the real threat. Watch the other hand. Let’s start with some spectrum instead. Verizon is under fire for trying to buy spectrum from Comcast and other cable companies, even as it tries to sell other spectrum. Note | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 12th at 01:00 AM  | 

I’m seeing some real panicked shouting online about CISPA, a new bill that some are calling “the new SOPA.” It’s absurd. The bill may not be perfect. It could have flaws. But the argument being hammered against CISPA again and again is that it may be used against copyright infringers who abuse networks. So? The only reason to oppose that is if you wish to | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 10th at 12:30 AM  | 

Monday night, as promised, we still have some catch up work to do. So let’s start with those Amazon Taxes, those Internet sales taxes of dubious Constitutionality. Colorado’s got tossed in federal court and Illinois’s didn’t raise any money. Obeying the Constitution counts, folks. Pass a true interstate compact through the Congress first. Also as promised, there’s the matter of the Next Generation Television Marketplace | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 7th at 02:30 AM  | 

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 | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 8th at 01:30 AM  | 

ACTA. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is Darrell Issa’s next project, as he’s not happy about the treaty. So, he’s put the treaty online for all to see. I still don’t know of any specific reason to oppose the treaty. My understanding is that it basically brings the west in on the DMCA. There may be details I’ve missed though. The best argument against the treaty | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 2nd at 03:00 AM  | 

Harry Reid may be on a mad dash to bring the radical Liebmerman/Collins/Rockefeller cybersecurity bill, but a broad spectrum of Republicans continue to fight. Democrats may have toned down its Internet Kill Switch provisions, but still is a massive power grab online, and the new SECURE IT act is a much better idea. What I absolutely love about SECURE it is that it hits all | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 28th at 03:00 AM  | 

So, Google is integrating its websites more. As a result, some privacy settings will apply network-wide, and one site will be able to use data from another site. People are flipping out, naturally. People have been giving Google this data for ages. People have known that Google was watching them, and yet they chose to keep using Google and in fact use one account for | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 21st at 02:30 AM  | 

It was a long fight. I can’t tell you how many times I kept saying that SOPA and PROTECT IP were in trouble. But they’re getting shelved now. Sure, there’s whining about it. And the President still is too cowardly to lead. Now it’s time to move on to the next step, though, and find a sensible way to attack the foreign infringers, who essentially | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 5th at 01:00 AM  | 

I’m back. I ended up taking an extended Christmas break because well, I liked having a break, plus there wasn’t a whole lot going on anyway. But, back to work! Lamar Smith and Chris Dodd still want to censor the Internet, by pushing the SOPA bill that we need to defeat. Why is it bad? Victims get no due process, ISPs have the burden of | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  December 17th at 02:30 AM  | 

Wednesday night I put off all Tech at Night topics except for SOPA because the critical mark up votes in Committee were coming up. We weren’t supposed to be able to stop SOPA, but we could at least raise awareness, put up a fight, and prepare for the floor votes. And sure enough, the vote to keep the Internet censorship provisions went in favor of | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 29th at 12:30 AM  | 

What do AT&T, LightSquared, and the late Super Committee have in common? Spectrum. AT&T is the big story right now, too. They know the fix is in, with Sprint, Eric Holder, and FCC all ganging up on them as a team effort. The Obama administration is all but running guns to Sprint in this effort. So, the firm is trying to slip the noose by | Read More »