Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Breaking news: The Supreme Court as just ruled in the important First Amendment case of Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations and held in the government’s favor by a 5-4 vote. Decision is here. My background info about the case is here and will publish some essays throughout the day as I digest the [...]
I’ve been quite depressed to witness Bruce Schneier’s ongoing conversion from opponent of government intervention in the high-tech economy (at least on encryption) to vociferous proponent (at least in terms of privacy regulation). Anyway, his latest cheerleading piece for government privacy regulation in The Wall Street Journal includes lots of fear-mongering about private website data [...]
Last week I attended the National Conference of State Legislators spring meeting here in Washington, DC. One of the panels was called “Social Networking 101”, and it was an interesting inside discussion centered on how legislatures and legislators are using Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking tools. Presenters were Sharon Crouch Steidel (Dir of [...]
If you’re from New Jersey and you like to drink wine — or just feel strongly that government shouldn’t be protecting alcohol distributors at the expense of competition and consumers — go to the UncorkNJ website and send a letter to your local representative in the General Assembly. New Jerseyans are barred from buying wine [...]
Vivek Kundra spoke to a 150+ crowd at a Northern Virginia Technology Counsel event on Saturday morning in Tysons Corner. He has his speech crafted pretty well at this point, but did have interesting responses to one question on open standards from someone who said he was affiliated with the W3C, and another question about [...]
New Jerseyans may get a chance to vote their Fourth Amendment preferences in the upcoming gubernatorial elections. Among the candidates is Chris Christie, who as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey authorized the tracking of suspects’ cell phones without getting a warrant.
I’ve been helping to organize this year’s CFP, which is consistently one of the most interesting and forward-looking privacy conferences. Here’s the program as it now stands. Register now as an early-bird – prices rise May 1.
Here’s a terrific piece by Harry McCracken over at Technologizer asking “Whatever Happened to the Top 15 Web Properties of April, 1999?” McCracken goes through the hottest web properties of April 1999 and asks, “How many of 1999’s Web giants remain gigantic today — assuming they still exist at all?” Instead of reproducing his entire [...]
The supposed top finding of a new report commissioned by the British telecom regulator Ofcom is that we won’t need any QoS (quality of service) or traffic management to accommodate next generation video services, which are driving Internet traffic at consistently high annual growth rates of between 50% and 60%. TelecomTV One headlined, “Much ado [...]
My friend Anne Collier of Net Family News, one of America’s great sages on child safety issues, has produced a terrific list of reasons “Why Technopanics are Bad.” Technopanics and moral panics are topics I’ve spent quite a bit of time commenting on here. (See 1, 2, 3, 4.) Anne is a rare voice of [...]
May 21, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
