Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
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.
I missed a good opinion piece on REAL ID in the L.A. Times last week. The subhead of “The False Promise of REAL ID” gets its assessment of the recently issued regulations about right: “Homeland Security’s compromises make an ineffective law somewhat less damaging.”
Previewing his Monday State of the Union address, President Bush’s radio address today highlights the economic stimulus package and the push to give telecom companies immunity in the FISA bill.
The other urgent issue before Congress is a matter of national security. Congress needs to provide our intelligence professionals with the tools and flexibility they need to protect America from attack. In August, Congress passed a bill that strengthened our ability to monitor terrorist communications. The problem is that Congress set this law to expire on February 1st. That is next Friday. If this law expires, it will become harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to infiltrate our country, harder for us to uncover terrorist plots, and harder to prevent attacks on the American people.
Congress is now considering a bipartisan bill that will allow our professionals to maintain the vital flow of intelligence on terrorist threats. It would protect the freedoms of Americans, while making sure we do not extend those same protections to terrorists overseas. It would provide liability protection to companies now facing billion-dollar lawsuits because they are believed to have assisted in efforts to defend our Nation following the 9/11 attacks. I call on Congress to pass this legislation quickly. We need to know who our enemies are and what they are plotting. And we cannot afford to wait until after an attack to put the pieces together.
We may learn a lot about American public opinion on terrorism in the next few weeks.
If the Democratic Congress holds the line on immunity in the FISA bill and weathers the partisan attacks that follow, we’ll know that the administration’s terror-pandering has finally worn thin.
If Congress capitulates, we’ll re-learn the basic tenets of Public Choice theory holding that politicians are risk-averse and much more interested in reelection than principled policymaking.
The scene is Central Europe. It’s 1990-something. After a bicycle tour of the Czech Republic’s Bohemian countryside, Jim Harper and his girlfriend have traveled into Hungary and a town called Eger, two hours by train northeast of the capitol.
In a small valley not far out of town, there are dozens of underground wine cellars where vintners store and sell the local wine, Egri Bikaver, also known as “Bull’s Blood.” As the evening winds on and the cellars close, visitors concentrate themselves more and more tightly into the remaining open cellars. The wine and proximity make for good conversation and new friendships.
Late on, this particular evening, as our table edged toward overstaying, one of our group stood up and sang his country’s national anthem. He was Estonian.
It was a very long song. I’d like to say otherwise, but his singing wasn’t all that good. And he was quite overly serious about it. With the song going on so long, and the wine having its full effects, the scene edged toward the comical.
Since that evening, the Bull’s Blood wine and our Estonian friend have provided the touches of mirth and memory that interesting travel will. The Estonian singer has been the subject of some affectionate joking, I’ll admit.
That’s a little bit regrettable, because I now know that there’s more to the story. Watch the trailer here.
The Department of Homeland Security often invokes the 9/11 Commission when it discusses REAL ID. A recent DHS press release called REAL ID a “core 9/11 Commission finding.”
In fact, the 9/11 Commission dedicated about three-quarters of a page to identification security – out of 400+ pages of substance. See for yourself. Page 390.
I originally started studying and writing about privacy policy because I thought the advocates in Washington, and Congress itself, didn’t have a full grasp of the issues. They were treating privacy as a political football, and grinding their political, ideological, and self-interest axes on “the privacy issue.”
Illustrating how that problem may persist, Declan McCullagh has a strong rip on the Electronic Privacy Information Center on his Iconoclast blog. It seems that EPIC and some of its allies recently filed a strongly worded complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about problems with AskEraser that no longer exist.
The AskEraser cookie originally had a time-stamp that could act like a unique identifier, so Ask.com changed it. Nonetheless, in went EPIC’s “Complaint and Request for Injunction, Request for Investigation and for Other Relief.”
The government’s undirected, surveillance-heavy overreaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought me together with lots of folks with whom I disagree on lesser issues like private-sector regulation and privacy practices. I often joke that people will know their privacy is pretty well protected when I’m back to fighting with EPIC and the ACLU. Well, I don’t intend to pick a fight now, because there’s still too much to be done, but a privacy advocacy group shouldn’t just be an FTC-complaint mill.
Declan speculates that EPIC files with the FTC rather than suing (there are some arguable causes of action) because courts would sanction them for frivolous filings. Prospectively calling EPIC’s future bluffs, he says: “The next time you see them complaining to the FTC about some alleged wrongdoing, remember these attorneys’ odd reluctance to litigate.”
Jon Stokes at Ars Technica analyzes the REAL ID Act from in terms of Americans’ data security and personal security. He finds REAL ID wanting.
(Shades of Harper’s Law.)
Today the Cato Daily Digest is pointing people to an essay by David Boaz titled “Parasite Economy Latches onto New Host.” Thus we celebrate the opening of Google’s new policy office here in Washington, D.C.
I celebrated the traditional way also, by attending last night’s party. It was typically Googley, with good food, drinks in glowing glasses with curly straws, etc.
Happily, late in the evening, I got a chance to talk to a Googler very high in the food chain, and delivered (eloquently, I’m sure) the same message I delivered at Wednesday’s AFF forum: If Google wants not to be evil, it should openly and strongly oppose the government’s claimed authority to issue “National Security Letters.”
NSLs are alien to our constitution, of course, but Google has a business interest in ending them as well. Its office strategy is not viable while the government can credibly claim a right to unilaterally access data.
Its interesting, the faraway look people get in their eyes when you tell them what they should do, they know you’re right, and they’re not going to do it.
AP reports that Time Warner Cable will soon begin to experiment with metered pricing, an idea Adam has touted here several times.
Update: Obviously, I’m asleep at the switch. Adam posted about this already. Mike Masnick has his thinking up at Techdirt. I’m going back to bed now.
Valley rumormonger Valleywag mongs the rumor that PayPal founder and VC/hedge fund manager Peter Thiel is moving to New York to be closer to his current beau. Now read carefully:
An acquaintance of Thiel scoffs at the idea that Thiel would do anything for romantic reasons. Thiel, he says, is an utterly rational thinker. But the heart is capable of its own rationalizations. The mere possibilty that Thiel might maximize happiness, rather than profit, is a comforting thought.
You see thinking of this type again and again in our culture and society – doing things for love is irrational; self-interest is greed – as if there is some wall separating the things we do for ourselves and the things we do for others.
A rational thinker has to fool himself into doing something for love. You really have to be altruistic – irrationally disinterested in yourself – to be a good person. Au contraire. Doing things for love is part of the rational pursuit of self-interest, and it’s good.
Go ahead, Adam. Say something homophobic. Or lovophobic.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
