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.

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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.

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Tech at Night: Catching up after Easter with Aereo, Google, and Obama

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 2nd at 02:00 AM  | 

I meant to post over the weekend, but with RedState so active for Easter, I decided just to cancel the Friday Tech.

Hey folks, here’s more evidence: Population density matters for Internet speeds. Wealth also matters. Those who don’t adjust for these factors, and tell you US Internet speeds are slow or bad, are selling something. Usually government.

And yes, it’s still a problem that the Obama administration isn’t doing enough to oppose global Internet regulation through the ITU. Some say the administration was duped, but I think they just don’t oppose global regulation and governance. Obama wants to bow to foreign countries by letting global tyrants hijack the Internet from the free peoples of the world.

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Tech at Night: Julius Genachowski out at FCC. Senate passes Sales Tax amendment. Ron Johnson on Cybersecurity.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 23rd at 04:40 AM  | 

It’s not just Robert McDowell that’s moving on from FCC. Julius Genachowski is, too, and while Genachowski hasn’t been very good at all, we could have done worse. Just look at NLRB. Let’s hope we don’t do worse after all with his successor.

Another big story is the Senate’s passage of the budget amendment incorporating the interstate sales tax compact. Some are bothered by this, but I still say it’s the right thing to do unless you’re going to rewrite the sales tax laws in every state. And that isn’t happening because the prisoner’s dilemma is keeping any one state from going from a buyer-owes to a seller-owes sales tax model.

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Tech at Night: Can we kill the Obamaphone? Beware comprehensive copyright reform.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 19th at 01:00 AM  | 

Some nights I have a couple dozen points to hit. Some nights I have three. This is one of the latter.

The radicals are worried about the Obamaphone program, also known as the Lifeline program. They tried saying it expanded under Bush, but we still want to kill it anyway. So they’re nervous we might kill it.

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Tech at Night: Google Reader popularity again proves nobody cares about privacy. Catch my latest on Aaron Swartz.

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

More proof people don’t care about privacy: Google announces a service is ending, and the competitor I use to prepare Tech at Night becomes flooded to the point of unusability Wednesday night. People just don’t care what Google is doing.

The Street View WiSpy scandal didn’t scare people off, even as Texas hits Google for those offenses. Glass excites them. The shift toward human biases doesn’t raise questions. People love Google’s services, and privacy doesn’t enter into the equation. So keep regulation out.

Make sure you catch my recent RedState post on Aaron Swartz, and how the blame casting against his prosecutor is not only unfair, it’s wrong.

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Tech at Night: Barack Obama ORDERS China to stop attacking us, and his FCC fudges spectrum figures.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 11th at 11:00 PM  | 

It’s too bad. We’ve had all the hype, all the build up, and all the promise shown in the FCC’s incentive auction program, allowing underperforming legacy spectrum to be transferred to where it can be of most use. And yet, FCC might still mess up the program.

Of course, it’s unfortunately true that Obama’s FCC has done a poor job all around on spectrum, to the point that it’s changing numbers around to cover up the facts. Caught red-handed?

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Tech at Night: As usual, Republicans are right and Democrats have an alternate agenda in the Senate

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 9th at 02:30 AM  | 

A lot of conservatives seem to be getting behind a Hatch-Rubio bill to increase immigration for skilled individuals. No wonder Harry Reid wants to block it for partisan reasons. Have to put politics over anything else. Can’t let Republicans do a good thing.

Though I think the Senate priorities are pretty messed up. Jay Rockefeller is talking about workforce standards in the context of cybersecurity legislation. Talk about using any excuse to grow government. At least guys like John Thune recognize the need for the government and private business to work together against foreign Internet threats.

I mean, we can’t rely solely on NSA doing its best to do the right thing on its own.

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Tech at Night: Sacco, Vanzetti, and Aaron Swartz were all guilty. It’s time to break up the Bitcoin ring.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 6th at 11:30 PM  | 

So even as Eric Holder is pushing back against the Weekend at Bernies-ification of Aaron Swartz, the man who committed premeditated crimes (as the puppet on the strings of the callous Larry Lessig, perhaps?), was caught, and was getting prosecuted for his high-profile sabotage of one of America’s leading academic institutions. It’s rare that you’ll see writers at RedState agree with that guy, but Moe is pushing back against the excesses of the Swartz defenders as well, and I pretty much agree with Moe.

Guys, if you want to push an anarchic anti-copyright agenda, do so on its own merits, as Joe Karaganis does. Don’t use the corpse of a suicide to do so.

There is room for IP reform in America, with excesses like the Sonny Bono act in the picture, and odd situations where Frito Lay can use patent and trade dress, two distinct concepts, to attack the same competitor. But the Swartz fan club is as auto-discrediting as the Sacco and Vanzetti crowd ended up being.

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Tech at Night: Cybersecurity Executive Order needs buy in?

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 5th at 12:30 AM  | 

An interesting development in the President’s Cybersecurity order: his people are going hat in hand looking for industry buy-in. Perhaps they fear actual legislation?

Of course, when it comes to industry and the administration, their relationships can’t always be as cozy as Google’s with the President’s men, including the FTC Chairman. Google really is the caricature of Halliburton that existed in the minds of the radicals.

Microsoft is beginning to realize their ad campaign is failing because nobody cares about privacy, it appears.

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Tech at Night: Bradley Manning confesses. Kim Dotcom whines like a stuck pig. Don’t let Pandora be a regulatory Solyndra.

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

Is it still a likely coincidence when all these stories at once come out pushing this topic of spending money to give schoolkids access to the dangerous, adult Internet? Or is somebody funding this drive?

Manning confessies to being a spy and a traitor. I wish we could just force choke him.

Bad news: New Zealand is arming manatees. Seriously though, if Kim Dotcom wants to fight his prosecution, he should turn himself in, instead of continuing his crimes in New Zealand.

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Tech at Night: How to fight Chinese Cybersecurity threats? Democrats promoting the Regulatory-Industrial Complex

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 26th at 12:00 AM  | 

The evidence mounts that we need to respond to Chinese attacks on American industry. But what do we do about it when we have few tools short of military attack? Hit them back in kind, I would think.

Of course, Seton Motley says Barack Obama is attacking our Internet access with his illegal, overreaching regulations. Remember: the courts have already pointed out his NLRB efforts have been flat out illegal, and the FCC’s Net Neutrality efforts have also been overturned once before.

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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?

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Tech at Night: The President’s order is published. Wifi Spectrum coming.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 21st at 03:30 AM  | 

I took President’s day off. I know, terrible, right? Well let’s try to catch up.

So the President’s Cybersecurity order has been published. EO 13636. Part of it relates to information sharing. Interesting that even as he does that, he opposes actual regulation to share information. CISPA would be an actual law though, but the President cares not for the Constitution.

Oh, but he’s also going to use diplomacy as cybersecurity. Yeah, that’ll work.

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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.

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