My legislative tracking project/site has welcomed 1,000,000 visitors so far this year, a nice threshold to cross.
Oh, and the Senate economic stimulus bill amounts to about $750 per U.S. family in spending.
Articles by Jim Harper 
Jim is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. Prior to becoming a policy analyst, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the House and Senate.
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The idea of an Obama Administration CTO has captured the hearts of many. I am generally skeptical of the idea, which is likely to be more symbolism than substance. But I’m really skeptical of the priorities being suggested for a government CTO on ObamaCTO.org.
Top of the list? “Ensure the Internet is Widely Accessible & Network Neutral.”
The Internet is one of the most valuable technical resources in America. In order to continue the amazing growth and utility of the Internet, the CTO’s policies should:
Improve accessibility in remote and depressed areas.
Maintain a carrier and content neutral network.
Foster a competitive and entrepreneurial business environment.
I’ve got some news or you: These are policy proposals that would be beyond the purview of any CTO. Policy proposals go through Congress and the President, advised by his policy staff. They do not go through a CTO.
If the Baltimore Ravens asked the team physician to kick field goals, the results would be about what you’d get from asking a federal CTO to carry out these policies.
Radley Balko has nominated me to head the Transportation Security Agency. It’s a kind compliment. His column this week has some good ideas in it, too.
Fellow nominee Bruce Schneier doesn’t want the job. Of Bruce’s refusal, Radley says:
[I]t sorta’ reminds me of what a retired police chief once told me about how he staffed his SWAT team. He said he’d ask for volunteers, then disqualify every officer who raised his hand. He added, “The guys who want the job are the last ones who should have it.”
That leaves John Mueller, whose excellent 2004 Regulation magazine article “A False Sense of Insecurity?” has stood the test of time. His insight into the strategic logic of terrorism will eventually turn around our country’s maladjusted approach to securing against terrorism.
Tomorrow evening, I’ll be participating in an IQ2US debate arguing against the proposition that “Google violates its ‘don’t be evil’ motto.” The venue is Caspary Auditorium at The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue at 66th Street, in New York City.
Jeff Jarvis, Esther Dyson and I will be debating Harry Lewis of Harvard, Randall Picker of the University of Chicago Law School, and Siva Vaidhyanathan from the University of Virginia. Jarvis’ blog post on the subject has gotten some interesting discussion.
As with any company, one can complain about the details of how Google does business. I think I call it like I see it with respect to Google, having derided their gaming of the regulatory system in the 700 MHz auction and lauding their generally good corporate citizenship on privacy.
You have to drain the word “evil” of meaning to apply it to Google. But even in the casual, slightly anti-corporate sense that the founders probably meant it, Google isn’t evil.
Though publishers and holders of copyrights protest (often from ignorance of the modern media landscape), Google makes their material more available, more useful, and more profitable.
Owners of trademarks may object, but Google AdWords brings new products and better prices to consumers.
Surely Google should avoid censorship on behalf of the Chinese government, but exiting China would abandon the Chinese people to government-approved information sources only.
Google Earth, Maps, Street View, and basic search challenge privacy, but Google has made itself a model corporate citizen by working to educate users, by making its products transparent, and by openly resisting government subpoenas.
Some say Google’s search monopoly makes it the most powerful company on earth, but it’s always one misstep (and one click) away from handing its customer base to a challenger.
Disruptive technologies and businesses always make life uncomfortable for the old guard. These complainers should be ignored. Google earns a rightful profit as it makes people around the world more aware, educated, and informed. Evil? Hardly.
Discuss.
Tim Lee’s long anticipated Cato Institute Policy Analysis has been released today.
The Durable Internet: Preserving Network Neutrality without Regulation is a must-read for people on both sides of the debate over network neutrality regulation.
What I like best about this paper is how Tim avoids joining one “team” or another. He evenly gives each side its due – each side is right about some things, after all – and calls out the specific instances where he thinks each is wrong.
Tim makes the case for treating the “end-to-end principle” as an important part of the Internet’s fundamental design. Tim disagrees with the people who argue for a network with “smarter” innards and believes that neutrality advocates seek the best engineering for the network. But they are wrong to believe that the network is fragile or susceptible to control. The Internet’s end-to-end architecture is durable, despite examples where it is not an absolute.
Tim has history lessons for those who believe that regulatory control of network management will have salutary effects. Time and time again, regulatory agencies have fallen into service of the industries they regulate.
“In 1970,” Tim tells us, “a report released by a Ralph Nader group described the [Interstate Commerce Commission] as ‘primarily a forum at which transportation interests divide up the national transportation market.'” Such is the likely fate of the Internet were management of it given to regulators at the FCC and their lobbyist friends at Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and so on.
This paper has something for everyone, and will be a reference work as the network neutrality discussion continues. Highly recommended: The Durable Internet: Preserving Network Neutrality without Regulation.
ZDnet ran a story last week citing how security guru Bruce Schneier slams the US-VISIT program, which collects biometrics from people entering the country, saying that it has “zero benefit.”
I respect and like Bruce – he will be a participant in a major counterterrorism strategy conference we are having at the Cato Institute in January – but I have to voice my disagreement with him on this score. My belief is that border biometrics have an extremely small benefit – a benefit that rounds to zero, and one that is more than cancelled out by the costs. But not zero.
The Federal Trade Commission has announced that it will hold “a series of public hearings beginning on December 5, 2008, in Washington, D.C., to explore the evolving market for intellectual property (IP).”
It’s timely, then, that we will be having a forum Monday on a provocative book whose thesis is the title: Against Intellectual Monopoly. Co-author Michele Boldrin will present the book, and Rob Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation will critique it.
Highlighting one of the issues at Monday’s forum, the Arts+Labs blog points to Atkinson’s testimony about the value of American intellectual property on the export market. Over 50 percent of U.S. exports depend on some form of IP protection, according to Rob Atkinson.
It’ll be a good, interesting discussion. Register here now.
OK, in fairness, this image is of the statue outside the Federal Trade Commission, not the Justice Department. But it’s always perplexed me – the image of a man restraining/abusing a horse.
The name of the statue is “Man Controlling Trade.” Why doesn’t he get on and ride?
The same thing one must ask about the Justice Department’s successful campaign to thwart the Google-Yahoo! deal. As Cord has noted, allowing these two companies to enjoy the benefits they perceived from combining their resources would have made them both better off and acted as a spur to others, competition that would have produced new innovation for consumers to enjoy. But the dead hand of government power has won out.
The Justice Department’s two-step on the grave of the deal gets it precisely wrong both in terms of defining the relevant market and in terms of the effect on competition and innovation.
Julian Sanchez will be liveblogging the election returns tonight – poor soul – for a new infotainment outlet: Ars Technica’s Law & Disorder blog (or journal, if you prefer). The inaugural post lays out what it’s about.
He’s as smart and informed as they come, Julian is, so you’d be well-served to keep one eye on Law & Disorder.
The Cato Institute is holding a book forum Thursday on David Friedman’s book Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World.
David Friedman, author of such books as The Machinery of Freedom and Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, now looks at a variety of technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades, their implications, and how to deal with them. Topics range from encryption and surveillance through biotechnology and nanotechnology to life extension, mind drugs, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. One theme of the book is that the future is radically uncertain. Technological changes already begun could lead to more or less privacy than we have ever known, freedom or slavery, effective immortality or the elimination of our species, and radical changes in life, marriage, law, medicine, work, and play. “If it can be done, it will be done,” David Friedman has said. “So the interesting thing to me is not what should you stop but how do you adapt.” We do not know which future will arrive, but it is unlikely to be much like the past. It is worth starting to think about it now.
Friedman is a great thinker. It will be a stellar event. Register here now.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.