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.
L-1 Identity Solutions is acquiring the ID Systems business of REAL ID supporter Digimarc.
Presumably, this will get Digimarc out of the national ID business – and the national ID advocacy business. We’ll see what L-1 does.
It is possible to make money with biometrics outside of a national ID infrastructure, of course. Indeed, it’s penny-wise and pound-foolish for folks in this industry to pursue the small, government-centered market REAL ID would create when there could be a big, diverse identity and credentialing marketplace.
One-time TLF blogger Brooke Oberwetter (no really, she posted here one time) fretted to me recently that there was no commentary here on the outcome of the recent 700 mhz spectrum auction. Here goes, Brooke:
The way I see it, the result shows that Google has arrived as a Washington player and rent-seeker. It masterfully used the regulatory process to bend the rules in its favor. Rather than buying the spectrum, it managed to convince the FCC to require any buyer to make use of the spectrum in a way that benefits Google.
The $billions in benefits Google’s owners may reap come at the cost of the relatively tiny sum it spent on PR and lobbying. It didn’t have to plunk down any of its big money on spectrum itself. Richard Whitt’s recent post phrased the outcome in terms of benefit to consumers, of course, but its as much self-congratulations for the rewards that will come to Google from his work.
Make no mistake, I believe that an open network will be a better network with more innovation and more interesting uses, but we could have had that same open network if Google had paid full price for the spectrum in an open auction. Instead, Google will reap excess returns from the encumbrance it got placed on the spectrum.
<mild derision>Well played, Google. Welcome to Washington.</mild derision>
So reports the Missoulian on the Department of Homeland Security’s capitulation in the face of Governor Schweitzer’s resolute rejection of REAL ID.
On Friday, Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath notified the Department of Homeland Security that the state will not comply with REAL ID but will pursue the identity security policies it deems appropriate. McGrath urged DHS not to penalize the state for rejecting REAL ID.
DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker chose to interpret McGrath’s letter as a request for an extension of the REAL ID compliance deadline and granted it.
In other words, DHS has abandoned any pretense that it can tell states what to do. A showdown with recalcitrant states around the May 11 compliance deadline would require the Transportation Security Administration to disrupt the passenger air travel system, something DHS evidently recognizes to be a losing proposition.
Over at the Cato@Liberty blog, I’ve got a longish post responding to a Center for Strategic and International Studies paper defending data mining for terrorists.
I’m interested in changing the way things work – witness WashingtonWatch.com – and I have no doubt about the earnest good intentions of Professor Lessig. But there are plenty of reasons why the project might not succeed, and indeed might be harmful to discourse in our democracy. They’re articulated well in the comments to Weigel’s post.
One would be right to worry about DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker. He’s as smart and cagey as they come, but for all his years at the Department of Homeland Security his security thinking seems not yet to have matured. At the same time, his recollection of the REAL ID Act is showing signs of somewhat advanced age. Let’s walk through some things with our friend, Stewart.
Writing on the DHS blog in support of our national ID law, the REAL ID Act, he intones about the importance of driver’s licenses to national security. “Unfortunately,” he says, “we learned this the hard way. Twice.”:
First, in 1995, when Timothy McVeigh was able to create a fake South Dakota license with ease; all it took was a manual typewriter and a kitchen iron. He used the license to rent a Ryder truck in Oklahoma and destroy the Murrah Federal Building. Then, on September 11, 2001, eighteen of the nineteen hijackers carried government-issued IDs – mostly state driver’s licenses, many obtained fraudulently.
Back in December, I wrote about a good article in Democracy by Beth Simone Noveck, director of the Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School. Her article highlighted the Peer-to-Patent experiment being conducted with the Patent and Trademark Office.
A response has now been published by Andrew Keen, a critic of all things 2.0 heretofore unknown to me – and for good reason. Keen’s response is drivel.
Here is the third and (blessedly) final installment of Dan Mitchell’s Laffer Curve videos. (Here’s the first and here’s the second.)
This one is really exciting – hey, it’s all relative – because he takes the Joint Committee on Taxation to task about how they score changes in tax rates.
Don’t take your eye off the ball, people. The FTC’s assessment of $2.9 million against ValueClick does not mean that CAN-SPAM is working. The Inbox at Privacilla.org has about 25,000 spam messages in it – because Rackspace’s hosted email product has such ineffectual anti-spam technology. Oh, and because CAN-SPAM, which was supposed to “can” spam – meaning “end it” – didn’t.
The actual case says (at page 12): “There was no error in excluding the classified information.” Valleywag’s version: “The appeals court agreed that classified documents related to those negotiations were improperly excluded.” (For you non-lawyers, that is the opposite.)
But the circuit court’s analysis is awfully interesting, and I think it’s wrong. I’ll copy the whole thing because it’s so brief and then run it past some analysis of insider trading law:
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.