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.
This week’s cavalcade of 700 MHz posts was an interesting opportunity to see and explore the interesting divisions on the issues among TLFers and with our friends in the commentsphere.
Because I have just finished a rejoinder in one, I noticed that a couple of these posts broke out into point-by-point discussions. The response I just wrote to TLF friend Doug Lay stretched to about two pages of text – and I never want to do that again!
Is there some practice we should all engage in to minimize excessively long point-by-point discussions? They are very time consuming, and they may not benefit visitors to the site very much – other than those of us point-by-pointing each other.
True, these are multi-faceted issues, but it might make sense for commenters and TLFers both to focus carefully on the precise thrust of each post, as best we can discern them. Alternatively, when a point-by-point breaks out, we could make the tangents into new posts and let the discussions of each blossom in its own little hothouse.
Ideas?
(A point-by-point response in the comments to all I’ve said here would not – well, yes it
would – be funny.)
Tomorrow, the FCC is scheduled to meet and adopt rules regarding the upcoming auction of spectrum usage rights in 700 MHz band for wireless services. A number of interests have been crowding around, trying to get the FCC to slant the auction rules in their favor.
I’ve written a Cato TechKnowledge on the topic: “How About an Open Auction?“
Last week, my side-project WashingtonWatch.com announced a content partnership with PR Newswire. Press release here.
PR Newswire has taken a sitewide sponsorship of WashingtonWatch.com, and it will now distribute federal legislative updates from WashingtonWatch.com, giving the site even greater visibility to media and online audiences worldwide.
It’s a terrific pairing: PR Newswire will have increased access to the policymakers and engaged citizens who visit WashingtonWatch.com, and WashingtonWatch.com will grow even more prominent as a clearinghouse of legislative information for the media.
The REAL ID Act is, of course, still the law of the land. But with 17 states objecting to, or refusing to carry out, this federal surveillance mandate, its prospects for implementation look bleak indeed. Now, for a second time, the U.S. Senate has declined to prop up the failing policy of herding law-abiding Americans into a national ID system.
Yesterday, the Senate considered an amendment that would have added $300 million to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008. The money would have gone to grants to states for REAL ID implementation. Though it’s a paltry amount compared to the huge cost of implementing, the idea was to lure state governments back into REAL ID using taxpayer dollars collected by the feds.
The Senate voted to table the amendment, effectively killing it. Senator Alexander (R-TN), who offered the amendment, has taken the approach that REAL ID should be funded or scrapped. If he’s a straight-shooter, he should now turn to the business of scrapping this wrongheaded law. REAL ID is dead, but it needs a stake in the heart to stop it from walking around searching for personal information to consume.
A few interesting tidbits can be found in the vote tally. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) voted against tabling the amendment, indicating once again that she supports REAL ID even though her state was the first in the nation to reject it, with both parties opposed to REAL ID.
REAL ID will continue to twitch, but we’re in the early part of the endgame for this national ID law.
On Wednesday this week (7/25; 11:00 a.m.), the Cato Institute will be having a policy forum on the dispute between the United States and the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda over U.S. restrictions on Internet gambling.
The U.S. has lost a series of World Trade Organization rulings on its Internet gambling laws, and its intransigence threatens the viability of the WTO. Will the U.S. burn down an institution of free trade to protect American grown-ups from their own entertainment choices?
Register, watch the live webcast, or watch the recorded webcast here.
So went the headline on Drudge. The article itself says:
Officials initially expressed concern after discovering that Besai’s house is located along a flight path for Newark Liberty International Airport. They later learned that used, inoperable AT-4 tubes are sold to the public through military surplus Web sites and other outlets.
It might as well have been used army boots – but the media had you thinking terrorism and downed planes, didn’t they! Gotcha!
Reporting like this is part of the reason why mass surveillance and national ID cards have currency in today’s political debate.
With the National Governors Association meeting in Traverse City, Michigan, this weekend, the Detroit Free Press has seen fit to lay out some sensible thinking on the REAL ID Act:
[The governors] ought to do themselves and their states a service by serving a definitive notice on Washington that the Real ID Act is not just unworkable but unacceptable and ought to be repealed before it takes effect next year. . . .
Several states already have flatly said no to implementing Real ID. The NGA should, too.
Good stuff. The FreeP gets it.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.