And yes, I found that because I was also contemplating the addition of some “useless ‘wood in pop culture’ section additions.”
July 2008
Over at the new WashingtonWatch.com blog, I’ve got a new post up called “Putting Politicians First?“.
Who is Randy Vanderhoof, you say?
More than a year ago, I posted here about a quote Randy Vanderhoof of the Smart Card Alliance had given to Federal Computer Week:
Privacy concerns are all perception and hype and no substance but carry considerable weight with state legislators because no one wants to be accused of being soft on privacy.
Though I’m not sure, I have a vague recollection that someone from his organization called me up or emailed and explained that he was misquoted. All a misunderstanding.
So I was interested in a Q&A Randy Vanderhoof had with David Pogue of the New York Times recently. Asked about the obstacles to adoption of smart cards in the U.S., he said:
It’s the business rules and legal barriers that are the biggest obstacles to overcome, and some cultural norms have to change as well, like the privacy advocates who don’t trust any technology that touches their identities (especially if the government is somehow in the middle).
There may be some privacy advocates that don’t trust any technology touching identity, but maybe it’s that all the technologies touching identity yet seen fail to meet the demands of the public for privacy and data security – especially if the government is in the middle.
I’m all for changing cultural norms. The dismissive culture at the Smart Card Alliance seems to be the right place to start.
Today we should remember not only Virginia planter and lyricist of American libertarianism Thomas Jefferson’s 1776 Declaration of Independence, but also Wyoming cattle-rancher and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow‘s 1996 Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. While everyone can find something to quibble with in it, especially given the changes of the last twelve years, Barlow’s Declaration remains the best creed of Internet Freedom yet written. Now more than ever, as Internet regulation gathers steam under the banner of preserving “Net Neutrality,” it is well worth re-reading as a stirring call against regulation:
In case you’ve been in a pre-holiday daze this week, the blogosphere has been atwitter (not to mention a-twittering) with the news that the Hon. Louis L. Stanton, the Federal district judge presiding over Viacom’s massive copyright infringement suit against YouTube has ordered Google, which owns YouTube, to turn over its viewership records (12 terabytes). Most notably, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington has called Judge Stanton a “moron” for failing to appreciate that “handing over user names and a list of videos they’ve watched to a highly litigious copyright holder is extremely likely to result in lawsuits against those users that have watched copyrighted content on YouTube.” Whatever one thinks of the Viacom v. YouTube/Google case, Arrington’s concern is misplaced (if not hysterical) and his logic betrays his ignorance of how litigation actually works. Continue reading →
Google has changed its homepage, providing a link to its privacy policy “Privacy Center” on the homepage. So ends one of the highest dramas to grip the privacy world in a generation. I’m being facetious.
On the Google Blog, Marissa Mayer explains how Google has long been careful not to crowd its homepage – and remains so: they took a word out before including “privacy” – ummm, actually “privacy”. Google had come under fire recently for not having a link to its privacy policy on the homepage, a triviality that I wrote about here and here.
Would that this were the end of Google’s privacy troubles though. It is still a fiendish violator of the law. The facetiousness continues.
The privacy legislation California passed in 2003 requires a thing that Google still contemptuously refuses. Google must “conspicuously post” its privacy policy on its Web site, yet it has decided that it will not, flouting the will of the people’s representatives.
Continue reading →
Via C@L, Glenn Greenwald has thoroughly fisked Senator Obama’s most recent statement on FISA and immunity for telecom providers.
It’s more and more clear that Obama has flip-flopped, reversed course, sold out, and whatever else you want to call it.
Obama himself set high expectations about standing for something, being different, and getting away from “politics as usual.” It didn’t take long for him to demonstrate that he is a typical, disappointing politician.
Does he have time to reverse course again, redeem himself, and build back support? Or has he already handed the election to McCain?
Happy Fourth of July everyone!
“What better way to celebrate the founding of our nation than . . . um, by . . . blogging?” So begins the introductory post of the new WashingtonWatch.com blog.
The blog will tie the bills in Congress to the day’s headlines, discuss the bills being debated on the House and Senate floor, and reveal some hidden stories. Readers of TLF will understand this line from the opening post all too well: “Oh, there’ll be jokes – and I’m telling you right now they’re not all going to be funny.”
On the more serious side, the first substantive post tells the the inspiring story found on WashingtonWatch.com of an Army NCO who has taken Iraqi interpreters into his home. They served the U.S. military in Iraq and received special visas to come to the United States. He has helped them make their way in the U.S., and awaits three more who are on waiting lists, simply because “it’s the right thing to do.”
Check out the WashingtonWatch.com blog. If you want to subscribe to the RSS feed straight away, it’s here.
This is the sixth and final installment in a series of essays about the legacy of the Supreme Court’s FCC v. Pacifica Foundation decision, which celebrates its 30th anniversary today. Part 1, presented a general overview of the issue. Part 2 sketched a short history of FCC indecency regulation. Part 3 discussed the misguided logic of the Court’s reasoning in Pacifica as it stood in 1978. Part 4 showed how that logic is even more misguided in light of modern developments. And part 5 was a recent joint editorial on the issue I co-authored with John Morris of Center for Democracy & Technology.
In this final installment, I thought I would just offer up a some further reading on the issue for those who might be interested in doing further research on the topic. Although it is certainly not an exhaustive list of all the relevant books and law review articles out there, below you find a bibliography of some of the very best material on the issue of the Pacifica case, the “pervasiveness doctrine,” and modern First Amendment jurisprudence. I’ve also embedded a Scribd version of a law review article I penned on these issues last year that ties together all my thinking on this front. It is called, “Why Regulate Broadcasting: Toward a Consistent First Amendment Standard for the Information Age.”
The most popular group on my.barackobama.com, the social networking service that lies at the heart of Barack Obama’s wildly successful online strategy, is now the one titled “Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right.” Created just over a week ago, it now has 16883 members, up from about 7000 members 48 hours ago. That compares to “Action Wire” with 13488 members and “Students for Barack Obama” with just 8704 members.
Social media are a two-edged sword. On the one hand, if harnessed effectively it can be a devastatingly effective way to mobilize large numbers of people toward a common goal. But the flip side is that the people have to want to be harnessed in the direction you want to go. If you start to betray the principles that attracted all those thousands of enthusiastic volunteers in the first place, they’re able to use the same potent organizational tools to express their dissatisfaction.
Democrats have been running left for the primaries and right for the general election for decades. (And Republicans, of course have done the reverse) Until recently, there simply wasn’t much party activists could do about it. The only organization with the scale and resources to mobilize a candidates supporters was the candidate’s campaign itself, and the campaign obviously isn’t a vehicle for criticizing the candidate. So once a candidate had the nomination in hand, he could safely ignore his “base” and focus on courting centrist voters.
Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.