By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  May 16th at 02:30 AM  | 

Some fascinating Bitcoin developments: As I predicted, Mt. Gox just got trouble with its US dollar processor, Dwolla. Meanwhile it comes out that a cabal of developers has de facto control over the Bitcoin network and is devaluing very small wallets. The net effect of this is to reduce the money supply, deflating Bitcoin to benefit those with large holdings.

So even as Bitcoin is revealed to have its own central bankers, the new Megaupload is getting censored per New Zealand law, as Kim Dotcom weighs (heavily) in against Obama to attempt to distract from this censorship.

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their rhetoric for the moment: IMMEDIATE ACTION needed on Do Not Track, even as it’s taken YEARS to do anything on outdated ECPA email rules which now may include a warning requirement, and it wasn’t even Jay Rockefeller who got off his tail to get that done.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  April 9th at 02:00 AM  | 

While it’s true that cybersecurity can be cover for bad proposals, it is true that foreign organized criminal and state-backed attacks are hitting American government and business interests online every day. They’re even stealing large sums of money on a regular basis. This is why we need to address the issue in a serious way. If these attacks were going on at sea, it would be an act of war. Because it’s online, nothing happens? Come on.

Amending CISPA in order to try to get it to pass might be a good idea. If anarchists and other left-libs don’t like it, then it may yet be a good bill after the changes.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 28th at 04:00 AM  | 

Leave it to the Obama administration to botch everything. Trying to shortchange rural TV stations will only discourage them from participating in incentive auctions, therefore harming universal access and competition in the rural broadband market.

More wireless means more competition, folks. Allowing TV stations to reap the full rewards of selling off their spectrum is win-win.

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 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?

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.

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.

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

A few years ago, Google was deeply in bed with the left wing activists like Moveon.org and Free Press pushing for Internet regulation. When Obama was elected, Google got even more deeply embedded with both the left and the government. At this point, Republicans began paying more attention to Google and Google realized it had a political problem.

So, after years of lining up with the left to demand more government regulation of the internet, Google changed course. (“Google cozies up to the GOP”) Google promoted their Republican lobbyists, hired Republican consultants, sucked up to conservative organizations and even hired a squishy Republican, Susan Molinari (R-MSNBC) to run their DC office.

But if they were playing footsie with Republicans, Google was still sleeping with the Democrats.

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.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  February 2nd at 05:00 AM  | 

Hey Mark Cuban: We both know that when Obama signed the American Invents Act, crushing small businesses was a feature, since it meant a) more work for lawyers who backed the bill and b) easier competition for the big businesses who backed the bill.

I see the vultures using Aaron Swartz’s dead body for political purposes are now going full Weekend at Bernie’s on this. It’s amazing.

And yet nobody reconciles the Democrat outrage at this, with Democrat plans to ignore the Constitution and use Executive Orders on cybersecurity. If we allow stuff like what Swartz did, we’re letting cybersecurity threats go unpunished, sorry.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 22nd at 01:00 AM  | 

New Zealand continues to let fugitive Kim Dotcom waddle free as his successor to Megaupload has launched. The US shut down his previous service, hosting files for law breakers, and now New Zealand is letting him start over with a new service. I look forward to people using it to infringe on New Zealand copyrights, and to distribute tools for stealing from New Zealanders.

It’s amazing how detached from reality left-wing tech policy gets. Connectivity is better and faster than ever thanks to the 4G wireless revolution, as Media Freedom points out. I guess that’s why when firms like Comcast try to expand access even further, they have to try to talk it down.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 12th at 02:00 AM  | 

For once I have some good news from FCC. The FCC is going to find some more spectrum to allocate for WiFi as unlicensed use. The idea is that everyone knows large events tend to have serious WiFi problems and this could help fix that.

Meanwhile, the tech lobbying arms race continues to grow. Facebook his growing its policy arm and Pandora is going to go all-out for the IRFA pro-Pandora regulation bill.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  January 5th at 05:00 AM  | 

Message to The New Republic: The left-right antiSOPA coalition isn’t getting back together because the right half still opposes Internet regulation, while y’all keep pushing stuff like privacy regulation and Net Neutrality.

Also, in case you missed it, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai returned to RedState, this time to talk about government’s oversized spectrum holdings.

Here’s a brief conversation with Marsha Blackburn about tech policy.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  December 18th at 01:30 AM  | 

Hello again. Having been traveling from Wednesday to Friday for my employer, I did my best to get this out Friday night, but I crashed about a third of the way into my backlog of links. Then over the weekend my email server died. So, we catch up with Tech at Night on Monday!

We’ll start with the International Telecommunications Union. Reports came out that ITU anti-liberty proposals were backing off, but the effort is going in the wrong direction. A big chunk of the Anglosphere is against it, including the Obama administration.

The President is getting credit for this position from industry and House Republicans, but consider this: if the ITU’s secretary general didn’t see the Obama opposition coming then just how muted were Obama’s efforts to fix the treaty to begin with? This is a failure of the President to lead internationally.