Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
POLITICO reports that a bill aimed at combating so-called “rogue websites” will soon be introduced in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Patrick Leahy. The legislation, entitled the PROTECT IP Act, will substantially resemble COICA (PDF), a bill that was reported unanimously out of the Senate Judiciary Committee late last year but did not reach a [...]
This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law had a hearing entitled: “Protecting Mobile Privacy: Your Smartphones, Tablets, Cell Phones and Your Privacy.” It was a remarkably scattered affair, and I blogged three key—and very distinct—elements of it on the Cato@Liberty blog: The Department of Justice used this “mobile privacy” [...]
I’m reading David Brin’s 1998 classic The Transparent Society and I’d like to share a passage that I found especially interesting in light of the recent Do-Not-Track bill introduced by Sen. Rockefeller. On this blog, Adam Thierer has often written about the implicit quid pro quo between tracking and free online services. It seems to [...]
Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institue who focuses on issues related to technology, privacy, and civil liberties, discusses electronic communications. Sanchez talks about changes in surveillance of electronic communications since 9/11, highlighting the large number of cases in which the FBI has gathered phone, internet, and banking information without judicial oversight. He then discusses the legal framework around electronic communications, which he says was built for a very different set of assumptions than we have today. Sanchez also gives a few recommendations for how to disentangle the convoluted legal standards related to electronic communications.
A UK government report issued this week warns that climate change, in addition to threatening many different parts of everyday life, also threatens the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry. The report, available online, warns that regulatory measures have to be taken to lessen the threat of rising temperatures and stormy weather, which would have [...]
“There’s No Data Sheriff on the Wild Web,” is an article by Nick Bilton in the New York Times this weekend, pointing out that no federal law punishes the massive breaches of personal information like the recent Epsilon and Sony cases. “There needs to be new legislation and new laws need to be adopted” to [...]
Late last week, the Project on Government Oversight‘s Danielle Brian took a little umbrage at a Huffington Post piece by former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer Beth Noveck, who had been implementing the Obama Administration’s Open Government Initiative until she recently returned to New York Law School. Brian’s piece suggests a slight schism in the [...]
Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) have released a discussion draft of their forthcoming “Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011.” I’ve only had a chance to give it a quick read, but the bill, which is intended to help safeguard kids’ privacy online, has two major regulatory provisions of interest: (1) New [...]
For Forbes.com this morning, I take a close look at last month’s controversial FCC order requiring facilities-based wireless carriers to negotiate data roaming agreements with other carriers. There are business, technical, and legal reasons why the order stands on unsteady ground, which the article looks at in detail. The order, by encouraging artificial competition in [...]
I spaced out and completely forget to post a link here to my latest Forbes column which came out over the weekend. It’s a look at back at last week’s hullabaloo over “Apple, The iPhone, and a Locational Privacy Techno-Panic.” In it, I argue: Some of the concerns raised about the retention of locational data [...]
January 27, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
