Tech at Night: Keep government from micromanaging, to prevent the next ECPA mess.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 23rd at 03:30 AM  | 

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.

Read More »

Tech at Sunday Morning: We now know why the MetroPCS / T-Mobile deal went through. What to do about Google Glass.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 19th at 05:30 AM  | 

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.

Read More »

Tech at Night: Getting proven right on CISPA, again, as Obama proves to be anti-privacy.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 9th at 12:30 AM  | 

I’m on antihistamines and hoping I’m not getting too sick, so this is going to be less… focused than it usually will be. Hang on.

Let’s recap the CISPA situation. Anonymous is proving why we need it (though BGR is delusional for thinking Anonymous was “attacking North Korea” when it hacked Twitter accounts, though BGR does sometimes go gaga for radical propaganda). China is, too. But the administration is opposing CISPA on “privacy” grounds. Hold that thought.

The Obama administration is not opposing and may back government mandates for “wiretapping” Internet communications – that is, government-mandated backdoors into encrypted communications. What was that about privacy, again?

At least Republicans are still serious on the matter, looking at the large scale of thefts and spying going on. Make no mistake: this is aimed at China. In theory it would affect Iran, but we already embargo them, so this affects China.

Read More »

Tech at Night: Stand up to the gangs and pass CISPA. Obama nominates a new FCC chairman.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 2nd at 02:30 AM  | 

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.

Read More »

Tech at Night: The terrorists strike back against CISPA. Privacy silliness?

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 29th at 08:30 PM  | 

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.

Read More »

Tech at Night: A bad week for anarchists. Democrats selectively urgent about privacy.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 27th at 04:00 AM  | 

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.

Read More »

This is why we need to pass CISPA

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 24th at 09:30 AM  | 

We’re at war online. Iran, North Korea, and Russia are the sources of sustained attacks on our government and our economy. They steal from us, they disrupt our operations, and they’re no better than the pirates of old. On the sea, such attacks would eventually mean war, but on the Internet they get a pass.

Individuals do tend to get nabbed after the fact, as they build massive botnets for credit card fraud and Bitcoin mining, but it’s not enough to sit back passively and wait to get attacked before doing anything.

We need to be proactive, and that means putting together all the information we can about attacks past, present, and future. We need to be able to deal with attacks before the spin up fully. We need to pass along warnings before it’s too late. And that means we need legislation to prevent trial lawyers from making a mess of all of this. So that’s why it’s time to pass CISPA.

Read More »

Tech at Night: ECPA email bill and MFA sales tax bill appear to have Senate support.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 22nd at 11:30 PM  | 

Some legislative action still ongoing: the Senate looking to fix the ECPA, an email search law that was written to the technology of the time, and now defies the expectations of its framers.

I was told Amazon and eBay would like the sales tax compact, but eBay is coming out against it, spamming its users. But the Senate continues to support it.

Read More »

Tech at Night: CISPA moves on. Ayotte takes on the Sales Tax. Google defeats Viacom.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 20th at 04:30 AM  | 

So yes, CISPA passed the House. Unsurprisingly, Anonymous isn’t happy, what when as things stand Lulzsec already is getting hammered. Greater information sharing is a threat to online anarchists, as well as foreign private and state actors.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where Jay Rockefeller may stall on an ego-driven separate bill. I think the bill’s a good idea. It’s not perfect, but not all of the criticisms floating around are correct. In particular, SOPA is a red herring, and totally unrelated. CISPA is about information sharing, not regulation.

Read More »

Tech at Night: Cybersecurity matters thanks to China, even if the Anonymous gang is a bunch of idiots.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 5th at 10:15 PM  | 

I have a charity event I’m participating in tomorrow (I’m the one doing The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II), and I’d like to have slept for it, so this may be briefer than usual.

Looks like a push for real patent reform is brewing. After the lawyer- but not innovation-friendly America Invents Act was signed by Barack Obama, we’ve been left with a need to fix the actual problems with the US patent system. the i2Coalition and Google are backing anti-Patent Trolling ideas. There’s got to be a way to continue to reward small-time inventors without allowing the fakes to abuse the system.

Do Americans have a duty to diminish the security of their communications to ease government spying? Some seem to think so, as we’re reminded of in the flap over Apple’s iMessage being more secure in its encryption than government would like. Let me remind you though that any back door that government can exploit, China and Anonymous can, too.

Read More »

Tech at Night: Odds and ends on security and regulation

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 3rd at 11:15 PM  | 

Here we go again. The Weekend-at-Bernies-ificatoin of Aaron Swartz continues. He made an example of himself to become an anti-copyright martyr, and now we’re supposed to degrade property rights online to give him his way anyway. Pass.

Computer Fraud and Abuse is a problem, but foreign threats are an issue, too. That’s why we also need to pass CISPA which started off as the low-regulatory, small-government alternative to the Democrat power grab, if you recall. Funny how the so-called libertarians only rally agains the GOP proposal, and stayed silent against Lieberman-Collins last time.

Read More »

Tech at Night, er, Sunday Morning: Stop blaming the victim and pass sensible cybersecurity legislation. Free Press not for a free press.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 24th at 12:00 PM  | 

I can’t agree with Jerry Brito on cybersecurity legisiation. That the President did the wrong thing, the wrong way, doesn’t mean we don’t need the right thing done the right way. It’s time we stopped playing blame the victim.

How about more Free Press? Mike Wendy thinks they need to man up, a fair point. Instead of trying to silence opponents, debate. Then Jonathan Lee makes another great point: Free Press trying to silent AT&T isn’t exactly advocacy for a free press, is it?

Read More »

Tech at Night: Thailand succeeding, Anonymous failing, Ben Howe asking a fair question about Google

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 14th at 03:30 AM  | 

I’m constantly pointing out how New Zealand is making it itself into a bit of an anti-American legal haven, but they’re not the only ones who have a history of that. Thailand has had issues, so many that the government had to declare a Year of IP Protection, with renewed enforcement to go with it. And as it turns out, they have a long way to go, but even US industry groups recognize the progress. That’s good to see.

I imagine they don’t harbor fugitives like Kim Dotcom, either. Who may or may not drink 10 liters of Coke every day, then blame the eeevil Americans for the consequences.

Read More »

Tech at Night: The DMCA balance is delicate. Deflating the Fed attack hype. No, Google’s ad service isn’t racist.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 7th at 03:00 AM  | 

The anti-copyright crusaders are going to try to use this latest DMCA horror story as a reason to eliminate DMCA. I disagree. Of all the DMCA uses that go on in this country, most of them fly under the radar. How many are correct? Probably most. Will mistakes happen? Yup. Are copyright holders overzealous? Yup. Is this reason not to strengthen the system? Yup. But it’s not reason to repeal it. It’s a tradeoff and a compromise.

Of course, the real motive of DMCA critics is to open the Internet to mass copyright infringement on free services like Wordpress.com, Youtube, and others. These are the same people who think abusers should be able to to onto MIT’s network and abuse MIT’s JSTOR access to commit mass, premeditated copyright infringement, and then blame MIT, JSTOR, and the government for the crime.

Read More »

Tech at Night: Right and Wrong answers on Cybersecurity

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 5th at 02:00 AM  | 

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.

Read More »