Tech at Night: Kim Dotcom in trouble? Let’s bar anarchists from the country. Net Neutrality vs the Bill of Rights.

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

Apparently Kim Dotcom is already tired of living as a fugitive in New Zealand. Tired of laying about, risking capsizing an island, he’s quitting the new Mega to focus on his defense.

Meanwhile, it’s unfortunate that this anarchist was allowed in the country. Let’s just bar him from the United States, please?

The latest problem with Net Neutrality? It tramples over the Bill of Rights. Opposing the FCC’s power grab is the position in favor of civil liberties.

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Tech at Night: Private Manning loses Wikipedia, Anonymity aids a murderer?

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  September 3rd at 02:00 AM  | 

I enjoy that in America, we refuse to give official sanction of the radical appropriation of May Day, and instead have a Labor Day on a completely different day, separating ourselves from anti-liberty radicals.

You can tell the anti-NSA people are really scraping the bottom of the barrel now in their attempts to attack the agency. It’s kind of ridiculous. Even if we take traitor Edward Snowden at his word, despite how he could easily have modified or even fabricated parts of or entire documents to push an agenda, it’s actually the NSA’s job to spy on foreign agents like the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera.

Of course, this is really interesting timing for DEA to be seeking massive amounts of call metadata. That’s not going to go over well with the libertarians. Then again, I don’t know if it’ll sway anyone who didn’t already favor free dope and sodomy. Sorry, but it’s true. You can talk a lot of people into part-way legalizations of cannabis, but it takes a hardcore radical to go all the way and legalize opiates and cocaine.

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Tech at Night: NSA roundup. Germany shoots the messenger.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 31st at 04:00 AM  | 

Never waste a good crisis. Some Eurocrats are looking to use the NSA fearmongering as an excuse to lock down the Internet, and the Obama administration is fighting back because closing off that form of free trade in ideas would hurt everyone, not just themselves. Of course it’s still suspect to believe just anything Edward Snowden has alleged, given reports that he’s a liar.

So even as Microsoft and Google reasonably sue to be able to release non-specific, aggregated data on secret court requests for data, NSA may release its own stats on its programs. This should not be seen as good enough, since FISA covers more than just the NSA.

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Tech at Night: FCC’s Net Neutrality order is illegal. Wikileaks funding Snowden.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 29th at 12:00 AM  | 

Are the Europeans looking to censor the Internet with the NSA as pretext? Cameron Kerry seems to think so. I don’t know how serious or likely any proposals were, but it bears looking at if you’re a European.

Meanwhile here in the US, the Internet control pretext is Net Neutrality, which ought to be struck down. The Communications Act never gave them that power, and the Telecommunications Act was pretty clear on an open Internet. The FCC has acted illegally.

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Tech at Night: CBS mad the law isn’t TOTALLY stacked in their favor. Net Neutrality remains a scam.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 27th at 12:30 AM  | 

Keep in mind that in the Time Warner/CBS dispute, CBS has a built-in negotiation advantage due to federal laws. So I don’t buy it when CBS claims that Time Warner is the unreasonable side. CBS’s complaints about what other cable companies do reminds me of the cartel-like “negotiations” done by UAW.

I do appreciate the cleverness of giving out free antennas though. If only Aereo were huge right now. That’d be great for Time Warner to work with.

Psst: Net Neutrality was always a power grab, and not a fact- and law-based endeavor. I love though how the left-leaning Daily Dot is outraged that Net Neutrality isn’t being used to push for more free stuff.

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Tech at Night: Suuuure Snowden wasn’t the source. FBI rolling up an Anonymous cell.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 23rd at 11:30 PM  | 

Enough about Manning for right now. Back to Snowden. Edward Snowden and the Glenns Greenwald say Snowden wasn’t their source. Of course they’re saying that. Why wouldn’t they say it, whether it’s true or not? If Snowden was the source Greenwald and the Guardian gain nothing by admitting it. He especially has nothing to gain when his boy toy is getting stopped at airports.

And let’s be clear about the ongoing Time Warner/CBS dispute: the problem was created by government, specifically antiquated regulations designed to hinder cable television and aid the lucky network affiliates. That is, regulation hinders innovation and picks winners and losers.

Deregulate, or at the very least loosen the regulations as Steve Scalise and Jim DeMint tried a while back.

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Tech at Night: Bradley Manning only gets 35 years

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 21st at 11:30 PM  | 

So, the top story is of course that anti-American anarchist hero Bradley Manning got 35 years. The bad news is with parole he could apparently be out in 10.

The hacker of “Palestine” who broke into Facebook is now getting money raised for him. One wonders if any laws are being broken sending money to someone like that, in a place like that.

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Tech at Night: TOR hacked. Bradley Manning could get 90 years. Christopher Poole profiting from sick behavior.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 7th at 07:00 PM  | 

For months I’ve been dreaming of the day that NSA could crack TOR. Well, it turns out, they did it. That child pornographer in Ireland I mentioned previously? It sounds like that’s how they got him.

TOR, aka The Onion Router, is a distributed network designed to let people do things online without their actions being traceable back to their locations. It failed.

In more good news, convicted spy Bradley Manning is facing 90 years in prison for working with fugitive rapist Julian Assange and his Wikileaks gang.

This is so disgusting: Users of Christopher Poole’s site 4chan are willfully tormenting the family of a dead teenager. Poole, aka ‘moot’, needs to do something about the sick community on his site. I hold him responsible for his continued failure to act. His site is a hub for criminal and anti-social activity. He does nothing to stop it, instead choosing to profit from it.

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Tech at Night: A key government cybersecurity role. Chinese trojan horses. ECPA reform held.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 6th at 04:00 AM  | 

I’d have signed a letter against IRFA, the Pandora-backed regulatory bailout.

Government is trying to give advice on security online, including advice on how to deal with breakins. Information exchange is truly a proper cybersecurity role for government. Also important is prosecuting private offenders, and dealing with state offenders.

Though it gets tricky when state offenders include firms selling goods while pretending to be private firms, such as Chinese firms like Lenovo or Huawei.

ECPA reform is being held in the Senate. Leaky Leahy says it’s a Republican doing it. I wonder who? Lindsey Graham? John McCain? I’m not entirely convinced that the bill is necessary, but I don’t think it’s a particularly idea as long as we preserve something along the lines of FISA.

If you really want your email to be private, don’t have it all run through Google.

Turns out Snowden’s final decision to pledge allegiance to United Russia has encouraged a child pornographer in Ireland to follow suit.

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Tech at Night: Manning guilty. Snowden lying. Microsoft accuses itself of copyright infringement.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  August 1st at 03:30 AM  | 

This will be my last post before heading off to the gathering, enjoy!

Previously on RedState: Google as ISP lets us know they oppose Net Neutrality.

So Bradley Manning was convicted on nearly every charge. Let’s hope he gets a serious sentence to go with it.

More Wikileaks: The latest Edward Snowden/Glenn Greenwald report was misleading, so says the House.

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Tech at Night: Catching up with my trip, before my next trip to #RSG13

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

SGDQ raised over $230,000 as of this writing, with the main marathon about over and the bonus stream soon to begin. I got to be there for about a day and a half, which was great fun. I ever learned that hiking uphill a mile and a half from the Arapahoe light rail station to the Sheraton Denver Tech Center is a lot harder than it sounds, in that mile high air. I don’t know how the Nuggets ever lose a home game.

So, I’m back, but there’s still also going to be no Tech on Friday this week, because I’m going to be off again for the 2013 Redstate Gathering in New Orleans. So what we’re doing tonight is the same as we’ll likely be doing next Monday: a catch-up post. Enjoy.

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Tech at Night: Google accused of violating Net Neutrality. House chooses not to restrict NSA.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 25th at 02:30 AM  | 

This will bet he only edition of Tech at Night this week. I was out of it Monday night, and this weekend I’m traveling to Denver for SGDQ 2013. I will be there to give live on stream commentary for the Legend of Zelda and Zelda II runs, so watch and donate if you care to.

House Democrats, together with a few libertarians, tried to restrict the NSA, and failed. I’m fine with this.

In other news, Google is accused of Net Neutrality violations for trying to restrict servers on Google Fiber. Heh. If people can run servers on Google Fiber then they’re going to have problems quickly. So this is a very interesting case.

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Tech at Night: We need E-Rate reform, not a plain expansion. The FTC lets a spammer off easy.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 20th at 03:30 AM  | 

Here we go. The President, Jay Rockefeller, and the grabbing hands are on the move, using “Internet for the Children” as a pretext to expand spending. We need E-Rate reform along the lines of what Ajit Pai is talking about, not anything that’s just a plain old expansion.

The FTC went easy on this spammer. Texts can cost people 5-10 cents each. They do me. So if this spammer sent 20 million spam texts, he could have costs his victims 1-2 million dollars. And he only got find 60 thousand. Weak.

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Tech at Night: How not to NSA-proof your email. ECPA reform doesn’t hinder FISA. Ajit Pai on E-Rate Reform.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 17th at 10:30 PM  | 

Update on ECPA reform: Last time I commented that it was problematic to give such strong protections to terrorist emails on American corporate-run servers. Well, it turns out ECPA reform backers are listening, and have pointed out to me that FISA will work just fine in those cases. Fair point. I still don’t think the law makes sense, but at least it’s not too terribly harmful.

This tutorial to “NSA-proof your email” is all wrong. All wrong. You NSA-proof your email by using end-to-end encryption, not by using transport level encryption. Hosing your own email is a great idea, mind you (it makes the ECPA-related issues moot), but NSA can still spy on you all they want if you follow that webpage’s instructions.

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Tech at Night: The Snowden fallout continues. ECPA probably will pass, but makes no sense to me.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  July 16th at 03:30 AM  | 

Russia is reacting to Snowden’s leaks. One wonders what he’s telling them.

Here we go again. Having failed to pass the preferred bill of Joe Lieberman’s and Jay Rockefeller’s last time, Senate leaders are trying again on a cybersecurity bill. Any bill Senate Democrat leaders support is suspect, given their history of the Internet Kill Switch.

There’s room for legislation, but by default I oppose their plans to expand the scope of government online.

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