Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I just finished Ken Auletta’s latest book, Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, and I highly recommend it. Auletta is an amazingly gifted journalist and knows how put together a hell of good story. It helps in this case that he was granted unprecedented access to the Google team and their [...]
A number of conservative blogs have picked up on reports that the Obama administration is looking to data mine users on social networking sites. Reports CNS News: Anyone who posts comments on the White House’s Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter pages will have their statements captured and permanently archived by the federal government, according to [...]
I was very pleased to read in Federal Computer Week this morning that the Office of Management and Budget will begin tracking earmark requests next year for the fiscal 2011 budget cycle. OMB makes available some years’ approved earmarks, but not the earmark requests put forward by members of Congress. Tracking and publishing requests will [...]
More restraint is in order when it comes to the Obama administrations intent to escalate “antitrust” enforcement against business and enterprise in America. A skeptical interpretation of antitrust’s realities—up to and including recent campaigns targeting Intel, Google, XM-Sirius; and earlier campaigns against Microsoft and the AOL Time Warner merger, as well as rejected mergers like [...]
According to the Threat Level blog, the Obama Administration has declared the text of a proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement a national security secret. Thing is . . . it can’t be. And that would also be contrary to Obama administration policy.
. . . or does he? Friday afternoon, the White House blog announced that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was posted online for public comment. This is good evidence that the President intends to honor his campaign promise to post legislation online and take public comment for five days before signing it. [...]
I’ve been following President Obama’s early moves on government transparency here on Tech Liberation and on the Cato@Liberty blog. Last week, Obama’s first broken campaign promise was the pledge to post legislation online for five days before signing it. Well, the White House is working to address that, but it appears to be doing so [...]
The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is delaying the Bush Administration plan to require federal contractors to use the E-Verify worker background check system. Criticizing the move, Lamar Smith (R-TX), ranking minority member on the House Judiciary Committee says, “It is ironic that at the same time President Obama was pushing for passage [...]
In at least two recent stories, the mainstream press are highlighting Obama administration slow-walking on transparency. Bloomberg recently filed suit against the Fed under the Freedom of Information Act to force disclosure of securities the central bank is taking as collateral for $1.5 trillion of loans to banks. “The American taxpayer is entitled to know [...]
My post yesterday wondering aloud whether the Obama administration was walking away from its transparency commitments was slightly premature. Memoranda were being issued/reported on as I wrote, and this morning’s Washington Post describes some of the technical glitches that befuddled White House staff on day one. The texts of the executive orders President Obama signed [...]
February 14, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
