By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 15th at 03:30 AM  | 

Good news, everyone! Kay Bailey Hutchison and Senate Republicans were able to help defeat the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act once again.

Bad news, everyone! We lost the Presidential election, so President Obama is almost sure to try to defy the Congress, which won’t even pass the idea through one house, let alone both to make it a law. He’s going to try to implement this through executive order!

Meanwhile it falls to the Congress to investigate actual foreign threats in the digital theater.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 16th at 12:30 AM  | 

Two points on cybersecurity tonight. The first is that Harry Reid and Barack Obama aren’t on the same page. The latter is still working toward a (probably illegal) executive order, while the former is talking about trying again to pass the rejected Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act. Meanwhile we backers of the Marlin Stutzman campaign have been vindicated, as Dan Coats is siding with Harry Reid on this, the Internet Kill Switch bill, with the IKS removed but everything else left intact.

With Republicans like that, who needs Democrats?

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 13th at 03:30 AM  | 

It is done! Privacy is saved in America? The huge looming threat of Myspace has been defeated by FTC! Don’t you feel so much safer now that the dynamic, active regulators of the Obama administration have clamped down on a competitor of Facebook?

Shame on me. Remember when I went with the claim that Anonymous took down GoDaddy? Well, It may have been an opportunistic claim.

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

Why Mitt Romney must win the election: Dianne Feinstein is urging Barack Obama to defy the Congress, which refused to pass the Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act, and rule by decree on the matter.

And I know it’s a lot of inside baseball, some of the details of which I’m not entirely up on, but the FCC has been making hay before the election, and it’s not even pretending to make sense. Much as I’ve previously noted the left-wing advocacy groups do, the FCC uses whatever argument it must for the immediate issue at hand. Consistency across issues is not required.

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 7th at 03:30 AM  | 

We had no Tech at Night on Friday becuase I was at the Gathering in Jacksonville. Hope those who went enjoyed it, and that those who weren’t able to attend can make it next year! So, Harry Reid offered to let Republicans fix Lieberman-Collins. Republicans took him up on that, and he was unhappy. So he tried to ram it through after all. Republicans objected, | 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 31st at 02:30 AM  | 

Having decided to give amending Lieberman-Collins Cybersecurity Act a go, Republicans now engage in that amendment process. Though, is it unfair of me to point out that it would be against Symantec’s best interests for American Internet security to improve? Why not to trust Senate Democrats on cybersecurity, in a nutshell: We’re criminalizing victimhood with this new Patrick Leahy proposal. Insane.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 28th at 12:30 AM  | 

Senate Republicans have decided to take Harry Reid at his word that Republicans will have the opportunity to amend the Lieberman-Collins cybersecurity bill. So, many Republicans voted for advancing the bill, which passed 84-11. And oh boy it needs amending. Who are you going to believe? For it is Barack Obama. Against have been Kay Bailey Hutchison, John McCain, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Heritage, and | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 26th at 02:15 AM  | 

Right now the top issues are both getting lots of attention in the Senate. One is the cybersecurity bill. It’s been difficult for me to find out much about what’s going on with it, and it turns out there’s a reason. Sources familiar with the situation indicate to me that Harry Reid has been negotiating with Republicans in bad faith. Even Republicans who love 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 23rd at 03:57 AM  | 

Texas takes on Google as the state comes after the corporation on antitrust grounds. I’m not sure this is a good idea, any more than it was a good idea for the Clinton administration to go after Microsoft, but it’s probably even dumber for Google to obstruct the investigation.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  June 28th at 02:00 PM  | 

So, the Cybersecurity bill is back, fully formed as the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PCNAA). When I first highlighted the bill in August of 2009, I summarized it like so: S. 773, a bill by West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Democrat, would create new “emergency” powers for the President, a ‘cybersecurity’ Enabling Act of sorts, that would give the President the authority | Read More »