On his blog, Jeff has posted some further thinking about 9/11 and searching for terrorists. He attacks a widespread presumption about that task forthrightly:
The whole point of my 9/11 analysis was that the government did not need mounds of data, did not need new technology, and in fact did not need any new laws to unravel this event!
Jeff feels strongly that Monday morning quarterbacking is unfair, and I agree with him. Nobody in our national security infrastructure knew the full scope of what would happen on 9/11, and so they aren’t blameworthy. Yet we should not shrink from the point that diligent seeking after the 9/11 terrorists, using traditional methods and the legal authorities existing at the time, would have found them.
Fine-tuning patent law (as I have argued here and here) is a task the Supreme Court is best suited to handle, and the Leahy-Hatch / Berman-Smith Patent Reform Act of 2007, introduced yesterday in the Senate and House, thankfully is silent on some of the more contentious patent reform issues. According to Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA),
There are a number of issues which we have chosen not to include in the bill primarily because we hope they will be addressed without the need for legislation. For instance the Supreme Court recently resolved questions regarding injunctive relief. In that category we include amendments to Section 271(f) and the obviousness standard as both issues are currently before the Supreme Court. If either of those issues are not resolved, Congress may need to re-evaluate whether to include them in a patent bill.
Click here for Rep. Berman’s web page containing the text of the proposal and a section-by-section analysis. A very quick initial read indicates that a number of the ideas in the Congressional proposal sound okay in theory but could in practice lead to more uncertainty and new forms of abuse.
My co-blogger Brian Moore notes another of these ridiculous “wi-fi theft” cases, this one in the UK. Brian’s take is spot-on:
I can’t think of a better example of a victim-less crimes. The “victims” were so unconcerned about people accessing their network that they didn’t bother to give it even the minimal security that most wireless access points will automatically prompt you to install. Secondly, absolutely nothing the “perpetrators” did harmed the “victim.” This is a positive externality — this is like me listening to good music coming out of your house. We both benefit from your purchase. It’s better than bad, it’s good!
The only exception would be if the connection burglars were doing something that negatively impacted the owners of the network — such as downloading massive files that slowed their connection. But nothing in the article implies this — they merely saw him sitting in a car across the street with a laptop. If someone cracks your encryption and steals your credit card numbers, then yes, this is a crime. But that’s not what’s happening.
Here’s the crime they were charged with: “dishonestly obtaining electronic communications services with intent to avoid payment.” Imagine a similar crime — I purchase a newspaper and throw it out into the street after I’m done with it. Someone walks by and picks it up, and starts reading it. Then the police arrest him for “dishonestly obtaining paper communications services with intent to avoid payment.” What’s worse, in this example, the original owner of the newspaper has actually lost the ability to use it because there’s only one copy, even if it’s obvious he doesn’t care about it. “Stealing” wireless access doesn’t (normally) impact the owner’s ability to use it.
If you look back at all the writing we have done here on Net Neutrality (NN), it seems to me that the common theme of our collective opposition to regulation is that we just don’t know what we’re getting ourselves into. No doubt, we’re skeptics about most regulatory proposals, but with good reason. Our government does not have a very good track record when it comes to regulating communications or high-technology markets for the purposes of improving consumer welfare. In fact, just the opposite is usually the result. Consumers typically are on the losing end of grandiose regulatory schemes that are suppose to serve “the public interest.” As a century’s worth of communications industry regulation proved, regulation typically results in stagnant markets, lack-luster innovation and limited consumer choice.
That’s why yesterday’s new Notice of Inquiry about Net neutrality from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has me so worried. It tees up all the questions that we’ve been asking here for the past few years. The difference is, of course, that now the whole world is going to flood the agency with answers and many of them will entail regulatory action.
Just the way the FCC frames some of the questions in this Notice concerns me, especially in terms of the breadth of what the agency is investigating. Consider how the discussion kicks off:
I don’t know all of these companies, so I made some educated guesses about the links (and I may have gotten the wrong division of Motorola), but it appears that fully 11 of the 15 participants are in the biometrics industry.
If you think for a minute that this is about the boundary line dividing the United States from its neighbors, I have a bridge to sell you. No wait – I have a “biometric solution” to sell you. Mobilisa, for example, is being used to run background checks on the citizens of Clermont County, Ohio.
Participants in the Homeland Security Committee’s lunch briefing are all in the biometrics industry. One of them, James Ziglar, wrote an op-ed in favor of a national ID in Monday’s New York Times. He claims it’s not a national ID, but then, he’s got a biometric solution to sell you.
Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle today announced a citywide wireless service coverage initiative to ensure all major cellular phone companies are able to provide full coverage through Anaheim’s 50 square miles. This is in contrast to other cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia that prefer to stifle competoition by only granting city-wide access to a small number of providers like Earthlink or Google.
“It’s only fitting that the United States’ largest municipal Wi-Fi city would have complete and total coverage for all wireless devices, including cellular telephones,” said Mayor Pringle. “For 150 years in Anaheim, we have championed creativity, innovation and imagination – the same ideals that technology companies embody.”
Good for them. It’s time for leaders in other cities to do the same.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.