Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The DC Chapter of Internet Society is being reborn, and holding its first event on Monday, September 14 on “Internet 2020″ at the Capitol Visitors Center, 6:30-8pm. The discussion will be moderated by Mike Nelson, the self-described cyber-libertarian who runs Georgetown University and include: Leslie Daigle, Chief Internet Technology Officer, Internet Society Eric Burger, Chief Technology [...]
I really appreciate the venture capitalists (VCs) in Silicon Valley subsidizing my soapbox at Twitter. Seriously, it is an absolutely awesome platform for getting a message out to the masses. But at some point I worry that the gravy train will come to an end and that users will have to start picking up part [...]
Michael Anderson from Niemanlab.org reports: In the two months since Ann Arbor became the nation’s newest no-newspaper town, there’s been lots of talk about its status as ground zero for the new ecosystem of Web-native niche outlets. But I wanted to know: In a business that’s always been oiled by routine — midnight press runs, [...]
ArsTechnica has a great write-up of WashingtonWatch.com’s earmarks project and a top earmark hunter, Andi Osiek. Back from vacation and digging out, I will be furiously working over the weekend to check the data we collected, flag earmarks that made it into bills, and award the prizes to the top earmark hunters in the contest.
You can avoid the early termination fee on your wireless phone contract by transferring the contract to someone else. So why did lawmakers lean on the wireless companies to prorate early termination fees?
There is no better security for data than not collecting it in the first place. And when data is no longer needed, the best security for it is to destroy it. That’s why I was surprised to see a request from the chairman and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee asking the Transportation [...]
Read Part II here In February, Congress passed the Obama Administration’s “(Five Year) National Broadband Plan,” part of the so-called “Stimulus.” (As economist Russ Roberts put it, government “stimulus” is “like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end.”) The Plan transfers $7.2 billion [...]
It’s bad enough that America educates the world’s best and brightest, only to send them home for lack of visas. But to drive away immigrants who come to the U.S. and start businesses is just unconscionable. I hope Paul Graham’s idea for a “Founder Visa” takes off: 10,000 / year for founders of companies that [...]
[This is part of an ongoing series about "Problems in Public Utility Paradise."] According to this recent article by Donald Meyers of the Salt Lake City Tribune, five candidates for mayor of Provo, Utah are falling all over themselves to declare their support for continuing the public utility fiasco that is iProvo, the city’s fiber-to-the-home [...]
January 29, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
More on the FCC’s e-Government Transparency Efforts: ECFS, RSS, Social Media & Setting Priorities
by Berin Szoka on September 11, 2009 · 9 comments
I vented my frustration earlier today with the FCC’s failure to make comments it receives easily accessible to the public—which means, more than anything, making them full-text searchable. This may seem like Inside Baseball to many, but it’s not. It’s a failure of the democratic process, a waste of taxpayer dollars, and a testimony to [...]