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.

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.

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.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 29th at 03:30 AM  | 

Apologies. I’ve had some technical issues tonight, and after twice nearly losing my list of links to work through… I’ll do my best, but I’m not really feeling it at this point. So sorry if I’m subpar tonight.

Two Google wins going on. Larry Page talked with FTC on antitrust and now the left is shrieking that sanity may prevail on this. Google isn’t a search monopoly. Amazon, eBay, IMDB, sites like these ensure it. Even if Bing and Duck Duck Go are having trouble breaking through, domain-specific search matters, a lot, and Google has to compete with that, or die.

That said, it’s ridiculous that Google was allowed to hack people’s browsers, store information surreptitiously, and instruct the browsers to send that information to their servers at later times. This directly against the expressed wishes and policies of the users involved. All they have to do is pay Obama his 20 pieces of silver, and they even get to keep the data.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  November 3rd at 04:35 AM  | 

Surprise:Obama’s cybersecurity plans don’t actually fix anything, they just expand government. And yet the administration shamelessly attempts to use the crisis of storm Sandy to try to achieve this end.

At this point the administration’s cybersecurity efforts are as delusional and straw-grasping as its global warming efforts. Though what’s sad is that unlike global warming, there actually is a kernel of truth there that we as a nation could be acting on, but Obama is distracting us with his attempts to expand government.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 6th at 03:30 AM  | 

Even the Obama regulators occasionally do things right. It was right for FCC to let the regulation die that forced cable companies to license original content to competitors. Though as The Hill points out, it may have done so out of a fear that the courts would force the issue anyway, not out of any desire to deregulate. Naturally House and Senate Democrats can’t abide the least bit of deregulation.

But don’t worry, they’re still making mistakes, too. They can’t free up spectrum until 2015, moving at a snail’s pace in a fast moving industry. And FTC’s antitrust attacks on Google are ludicrous. The standard for antitrust is high: if I recall correctly you have to show market power, being wielded, in a way that harms customers. I’m not sure that, relative to Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon, that such points can be made at all.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 4th at 01:00 AM  | 

Everyone else is talking about the debate, but I’m going to touch on cybersecurity tonight. There was a great overview of what the issues and stakes really are on Monday’s Coffee and Markets. Francis Cianfrocca doesn’t post as much as he used to at RedState – he, not government, is building his business – but he sure knows what he’s talking about when it comes to government, military, and critical infrastructure cybersecurity. And he and I are in agreement that the Obama plan is wrong.

Kay Bailey Hutchison is also saying that a new Senate report on the topic also makes the case. “For months now I’ve been saying that it would be a mistake for the Administration to give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) control over our nation’s cybersecurity. This report affirms my position, and I urge the Administration to take the report into account and not issue an Executive Order that significantly expands DHS’s role in cybersecurity.”

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 29th at 01:30 AM  | 

Top story: the FCC is moving forward with spectrum auctions, providing incentives for television stations to auction off their spectrum for wireless Internet use. We could see the auctions completed by the end of 2014.

Everyone admits there’s a spectrum crunch, and on the right and left of the FCC they say it’s a difficult question of how to transfer spectrum to alleviate it. Greg Walden is right though that this is good “if implemented well.” Bruce Mehlman of iia calls it “a terrific start” and that’s also true.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  October 22nd at 04:00 AM  | 

It’s a lazy end of the week, it seems. Not much to cover, which is why I’m dipping down to chuckling at Sprint ending much-hyped unlimited data plans as its 3G network melts under the strain of iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. I’ll say this: it should be all the harder for Sprint to claim they’re in dire competitive trouble now. Especially as, again, T-Mobile | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 24th at 03:30 AM  | 

November 20. That’s the day the Obama administration has chosen to regulate the Internet after what even The Hill calls “a partisan vote” at the FCC to pass the Net Neutrality regulations. I’m hoping Verizon and/or MetroPCS will sue and win a stay before that date, though I don’t know how likely that is for a court to act that strongly. I’ve said much about | Read More »

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

Friday, Friday, Friday. Black Friday? Net Neutrality rules have become one step closer to official as the FCC finally delivered something to the OMB after months of stalling. Verizon, MetroPCS, Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli, and others ended up unable sue to throw out the illegal power grab until it’s published, so the longer the FCC waited, the longer everyone else had to wait to begin | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 26th at 03:00 AM  | 

This week I already called upon Rick Perry to veto the Texas Amazon Tax, and now I’m left to hope that California Democrats will be less stupid than Joe Straus. Sigh. Meanwhile the posturing around the AT&T/T-Mobile deal continues. We find from a press conference with COMPTEL CEO Jerry James that the Rural Cellular Alliance is joining with radical left, George Soros/OSI-funded group Public Knowledge | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 14th at 04:11 AM  | 

House pressure on the FCC continues, with Friday’s hearings on FCC process reform, including testimony from all four active FCC Commissioners (Republican Commissioner Meredith Baker has quit the FCC). I associate myself with the remarks of Seton Motley on the preferred outcome of FCC Process Reform: “FCC ‘Process Reform’ Should Be About Reducing FCC Power. Oh, and making them obey the law.” Meanwhile, as much | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 21st at 09:00 AM  | 

In the fast-paced, highly-competitive market of wireless phone and Internet access, this announcement stands out. The wireless carrier with the second-most subscribers, AT&T, is to acquire the number four carrier, T-Mobile USA. Some would say that this is a grave threat to competitiveness, risks reducing competition and increasing prices on everyone, and so should be stopped by the benevolent masters of the Obama administration. I | Read More »

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 27th at 03:30 AM  | 

Sorry but Monday night I plain forgot to post. So I just have twice as much stuff to discuss tonight is all. Arguably the big story right now is what to do with the D Block. The D block is one of five pieces of the old television spectrum that is now freed up for new uses since we’ve gotten television broadcasts moved into a | Read More »