Oh man, I could not stop laughing at this old “Kids Guide to the Internet” video from the 90s. My thanks to my former colleague Amy Smorodin for tweeting it out today. I just had to post it here so that everyone could enjoy.

(Note: You can turn this video into a great drinking game. Just make everyone in the room raise their glass each time the lines “Does your computer have a modem?” and “Not all that cybernet stuff, OK?” are uttered.) And yes, as the opening line of the video notes, “the first thing you need to know about the Internet is that it is amazing.”

In a recent essay here “On the Line between Technology Ethics vs. Technology Policy,” I made the argument that “We cannot possibly plan for all the ‘bad butterfly-effects’ that might occur, and attempts to do so will result in significant sacrifices in terms of social and economic liberty.” It was a response to a problem I see at work in many tech policy debates today: With increasing regularity, scholars, activists, and policymakers are conjuring up a seemingly endless parade of horribles that will befall humanity unless “steps are taken” to preemptive head-off all the hypothetical harms they can imagine. (This week’s latest examples involve the two hottest technopanic topics du jour: the Internet of Things and commercial delivery drones. Fear and loathing, and plenty of “threat inflation,” are on vivid display.)

I’ve written about this phenomenon at even greater length in my recent law review article, “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle,” as well as in two lengthy blog posts asking the questions, “Who Really Believes in ‘Permissionless Innovation’?” and “What Does It Mean to ‘Have a Conversation’ about a New Technology?” The key point I try to get across in those essays is that letting such “precautionary principle” thinking guide policy poses a serious threat to technological progress, economic entrepreneurialism, social adaptation, and long-run prosperity. If public policy is guided at every turn by the precautionary mindset then innovation becomes impossible because of fear of the unknown; hypothetical worst-case scenarios trump all other considerations. Social learning and economic opportunities become far less likely under such a regime. In practical terms, it means fewer services, lower quality goods, higher prices, diminished economic growth, and a decline in the overall standard of living.

Indeed, if we live in constant fear of the future and become paralyzed by every boogeyman scenario that our creative little heads can conjure up, then we’re bound to end up looking as silly as this classic 2005 parody from The Onion, “Everything That Can Go Wrong Listed.” It joked that “A worldwide consortium of scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers is nearing the completion of the ambitious, decade-long project of cataloging everything that can go wrong.” The goal of the project was to create a “catalog of every possible unfortunate scenario” such that, “every hazardous possibility will be known to man.” Here was the hilarious fake snippet of the imaginary page 55,623 of the project:

I loved the story’s concluding quote from obviously fake Popular Science writer Brian Dyce, who said:

“Within a decade, laypeople might be able to log onto the Internet or go to their public library and consult volumes listing the myriad things that could go wrong,” Dyce said. “It could prove a very valuable research tool or preventative stopgap. For example, if you’re shopping for a car, you can prepare yourself by boning up on the 98,627 bad things that could happen during the purchasing process. This project could have deep repercussions on the way people make decisions, and also the amount of time they spend locked in their bedrooms.”

So, in the spirit of keeping people locked in their bedrooms, cowering in fear of hypothetical horribles, I have started a list of things we must all live in fear of and plan for! (I actually pulled most of these from articles and essays in my Evernote files that I tagged with the words “fear,” “panic.” and “dread.” I have collected more things than I can count.)  Anyway, please feel free to add your own suggestions down below in the comments.

• Without beefed-up cybersecurity regulations, we’ll face an “electronic Pearl Harbor.”
• Without pervasive NSA & law enforcement snooping, we face “the next 9/11.”
• An unfiltered Internet experience will lead the next generation to become nymphomaniacs and sex-starved freaks.
• Social networking sites are a “predators’ playground” where sex perverts prey on children.
• Twitter and texting will lead to the end of reading and/or long-form writing.
• Personalized digital services will lead to an online echo-chamber (“filter bubbles”) and potentially even the death of deliberative democracy.
• Robots are going to take all our jobs and then turn us into their slaves.
• 3D printing will destroy manufacturing jobs and innovation.
• Strong crypto will just let the bad guys hide their secrets and nefarious plots from us.
• Bitcoin will just lead to every teenager buying illegal drugs online.
• Hackers will hijack my car’s electronic systems and force it to drive off a bridge with me inside.
• Hackers are just going to remotely hack all those new medical devices I might use and give me a heart attack or aneurism.
• Hackers are just going to remotely hack my home and all its “smart devices” and then shut down all my stuff or spy on me.
• Geolocation technology is only going to empower perverts and stalkers to harass women.
• Targeted online ads just brainwash us into buying things we don’t need and will lead to massive discrimination.
• Big Data and the “quantified self” movement are just going to lead to massive social and economic discrimination.
• Violent video games are teaching our kids to be killers and will lead to a massive spike in murders and violent crime.
• Facebook is a “monopoly” and “public utility” from which there is no escape if you want to have an online existence.
• Google Glass will mean everybody will just take pictures of me naked in the gym locker room.
• Wearable technology will lead to a massive peer-to-peer Panopticon.
• Commercial drones are going to fall from the sky and kill us (if they don’t zap us with lasers or death rays first).

Hey, it could all happen, right?!  Therefore, as The Onion proposed, we must “catalog every possible unfortunate scenario” such that “every hazardous possibility will be known to man” and then plan, plan, PLAN, P-L-A-N accordingly!

Alternatively, we could realize that, again and again, humans have shown the remarkable ability to gradually adapt to new technologies and assimilate them into their lives through trial-and-error experimentation, the evolution of norms, and the development of coping mechanisms. It’s called resiliency. It happens. We live, we learn, we move on.

Is geek culture sexist? Joseph Reagle, Assistant Professor of Communications Studies at Northeastern University and author of a new paper entitled, “Free as in Sexist? Free culture and the gender gap,” returns to Surprisingly Free to address geek feminism and the technology gender gap.

According to Reagle, only 1% of the free software community and 9% of Wikipedia editors are female, which he sees as emblematic of structural problems in the geek community. While he does not believe that being a geek or a nerd is in any way synonymous with being a sexist, he concludes that three things that he otherwise loves—geekiness, openness, and the rhetoric and ideology of freedom–are part of the problem inasmuch as they allow informal cliques to arise, dominate the discussion, and squeeze out minority views. Reagle also comments on a unintentional androcentricity he has observed even amongst free software community heroes, highlighting the ways in which this behavior can be alienating to women and prevents geek culture from growing beyond its traditional base.

Reagle prescribes a 3-step solution to sexism in geek culture: talking about gender; challenging and expanding what it means to be a geek; and not allowing the rhetoric of freedom to be used as an excuse for bad behavior.

Reagle further supports efforts to form female-only subcultures within the geek community, which opponents argue goes against the free software value of openness. Instead of the balkanization of their movement that opponents fear, these closed-group discussions actually strengthen geek culture at large, according to Reagle.

Download

Related Links

• “Free as in Sexist? Free culture and the gender gap”, Reagle
• Geek Feminism, blog
• Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog, blog
• Geek Feminism Wiki, Wikia

[NOTE: The following is a template for how to script congressional testimony when invited to speak about online safety issues.]

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you inviting me here today to testify about the most important issue to me and everyone in this room: Our children.

There is nothing I care more about than the future of our children. Like Whitney Houston, “I believe the children are our future.”

Mr. Chairman, I remember with fondness the day my little Johnny and Jannie came into this world. They were my little miracles. Gifts from God, I say. At the moment of birth, my wife… oh, well, I could tell you all about it someday but suffice it to say it was a beautiful scene, with the exception of all the amniotic fluid and blood everywhere. I wept for days.

Today my kids are (mention ages of each) and they are the cutest little angels on God’s green Earth. (NOTE: At this point it would be useful for you to hold up a picture of your kids, preferably with them cuddling with cute stuffed animals, a kitten, or petting a pony as in the example below. Alternatively, use a picture taken at a major attraction located in the Chairman’s congressional district.)

So, let me be clear: I love my children. And I will do anything to keep them safe. I hope you will, too.

That’s why I am here today to testify in favor of H.R. 1776, “The Keep our Innocent Darlings Safe Act.” The “KIDS SAFE” bill is essential if we love our children and care about their future. It would take sensible steps to shield them from the many evils of the world around us, especially the dangerous villains who haunt the Internets.

Let me tell you about those evils fiends.

Predators are everywhere, I tell you.  At any given second, their hands could reach right through the computer screen and abduct our kids. It could happen, I tell you.  But we mustn’t allow it if we love our children. That’s why we ask you to support “CyberCop,” or proposal to have trained law enforcement officers who visit everyone’s home once a year just to see how everyone is doing and to warn the kiddies about the dangers of the Net.

Then there’s all the smut and nasty talk online.  Who’s going to help me clean it up? If we love our children, we must. That’s why I hope you’ll support our new software tool, “CyberScrubber,” which will sanitize the Net and make it safe for our children.  We’d like to see all ISPs forced to install this software once you’ve mandated our solution as the law of the land. We can make them a very generous deal for bulk installments.

And let’s not forget about the vilest wretches of them all: Advertisers! These nefarious scum are trying to do the unthinkable: Convince our kids to buy their products. We all know what happens next. Little Johnny and Jannie will put a gun to Mom and Dad’s head and force them to drive right to the store to buy whatever it is their innocent little eyes have seen online. There’s no stopping them once the commercial devil has corrupted their souls, I tell you! Thus, we propose a ban on online ads and jail time for any online company who tries to produce free websites that are powered by commercial messages.

Sure, some will say all this is a matter of personal and parental responsibility, but… (NOTE: At this point it is important to deflect any thought in the minds of the Committee that parental responsibility has a role to play here. Find a crafty way of telling the Committee that, in essence, parents are naïve dopes who don’t really know how to raise their own children or what’s in their best interest. Sure this contradicts your overall message that everybody loves and cares about their own kids, but remember: YOU care about them even more!)

I propose we give parents a helping hand. They can’t do it alone. Uncle Sam needs to sitting right beside them for the ride.

That’s why I favor the proposal in the KIDS SAFE Act to create a new federal Office of Humanity, Child Love, & Adolescent Protection (OH-CLAP).

OH-CLAP should be generously funded and fully staffed with trained child development experts and others like me who profess a profound passion for loving children. By spending billions of taxpayer dollars and regulating all online speech and commerce, we can prove to the world how much more we Americans love our children.

I beg you to not listen to those nattering nabobs of negativism who raise pesky questions about technical implementation, constitutional limitations, or fiscal constraints. Clearly, these people just don’t love the children.

Intentions are all that matter here. Neither our Constitution nor technical feasibility should stand in the way of us doing all in our power to protect the fragile, impressionable minds of our children.

In closing, let me again reiterate — as I have the previous four dozen times you have invited me here to testify — the importance of fully funding groups like mine that truly care about the children. Thanks to the tireless work and dedication of Congressmen ____ and ___, my organization was able to secure another $90 million grant through an earmark in the latest Department of Defense authorization bill.

While we greatly appreciate this support, this is $10 million less than the $100 million we asked for as part of our “100 Million Ways to Love the Little Lads” crusade last year. Stated differently, children will feel $10 million dollars less loved this year because of this scandalous funding shortfall.

So, if this Congress really loves the children, we’d ask that you step up your support for us, and groups like ours—but mostly us—so that we can adequately protect our kids from various online evils. (NOTE: Consider mentioning predators again to close things out.)

For the sake of the children, the time to act is now!

Thank you, and God Bless the Children.

Attachment: Invitation to annual “Kids Love Fest” celebration where we will honor the latest “Loving Lawmaker of the Year” award winners.

by Berin Szoka & Geoffrey Manne

In advance of today’s Senate Judiciary hearing, “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?,” we’ve assembled a list of fallacies you’re likely to hear, either explicitly or implicitly:

1. Competitors, not Competition.  Antitrust protects consumer welfare: competition, not competitors.  Competitors complain because a practice hurts them, but antitrust asks only whether a practice actually hurts consumers. The two are rarely the same.
2. Big Is Bad. Being big (“success”) isn’t illegal.  Market share doesn’t necessarily create market power.  And even where market power does exist, antitrust punishes only its abuse.
3. Burden-Shifting. Google, like any defendant, is presumed innocent until proven guilty.  So Google’s critics bear the burden of proving both that Google has market power and that it has abused that power to the detriment of consumers.  Yet, ironically, it’s Google at the table defending itself rather than the antitrust agencies explaining their concerns.
4. Ignoring Error Costs. The faster technology moves, the greater the risk of a “false positive” and the more likely “false negatives” are to be mooted by disruptive innovation that unseats incumbents.  Thus, error costs counsel caution.
5. Waving the Magic Wand.  Google’s critics often blithely assume that Google is “smart enough to figure it out” when it comes to implementing, or coping with, a wide range of proposed remedies.  But antitrust remedies, like all regulation, must be grounded in technological reality, and we must be realistic about real-world trade-offs.

1. The Nirvana Fallacy. These two—ignoring error costs and ignoring the very real problems of fashioning effective remedies—create the Nirvana Fallacy: the belief that any problem must be fixed, without considering that the fix may be worse than the problem.  We learned this the hard way with the aborted, 13-year travesty of an antitrust case against IBM.
2. Overly-Narrow Market Definition. Shrinking the size of the market is the easiest way to exaggerate market power.  Google competes not just with Bing but with many other consumer research tools.  Some, like Yelp, share Google’s focus on keyword searches, but others, like Facebook, offer wholly new paradigms for finding information.  Consumers generally want information, not URLs, and keyword search is one of many tools available to find useful information.
3. Leveraging Dominance. This oft-repeated phrase comes from EU competition law, which lacks a rigorous focus on consumer welfare.  It’s frequently used to attack big companies for expanding into new markets—here, customer reviews, mobile handsets, operating systems, etc.  But there’s essentially no empirical evidence (pdf) that this has ever been bad for consumers—or that efforts to thwart it have been beneficial.
4. Downplaying Business Model Innovation. New technologies are great, but most innovation involves a process of discovering better ways to offer existing technologies.  Search results have evolved from a list of URLs (“ten blue links”) to a varied presentation of both information and links (from maps to reviews of local shops to flight information) not only because the technology evolved to enable it, but also because the business case was made to support it.
5. Stasis Mentality. Many assumed IBM and Microsoft would rule tech forever, or that a combined AOL and Time Warner would be unstoppable.  Google, for all its might, is already playing catch-up with Facebook.  Even seemingly simple products change rapidly, and competitors emerge from the most unexpected places.
6. Antitrust Isn’t Regulation. Like any form of government economic intervention, the limited knowledge of government regulators makes antitrust prone to “government failures,” which are often worse than the “market failures” they intend to correct.  (see the Nirvana Fallacy, above).  If antitrust is superior to other forms of regulation, it’s only because of the rigorous economic analysis of consumer welfare that has developed in recent decades to replace “Big is Bad” thinking.  Without that, antitrust can be much, much worse than regulation.  This thinking is especially common on the philosophical Right as a way to reconcile otherwise-healthy regulatory skepticism with antitrust activism.

(We just couldn’t resist throwing in a bonus fallacy to round out the list.  Call it a baker’s 10.)

We’ll try to tweet (hashtag #GAntitrust; follow us at @Tech_Freedom) anytime someone falls into one of these fallacies at the hearing.  You can get your own Google Antitrust Fallacy Bingo card here.  The first two to tweet with a picture of a completed card (quotes or times scrawled in the margin of each square would be nice!) win a copy of The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet, a unique and philosophically diverse collection of essays published earlier this year.

For Bingo purposes (to fill out the cards), also be on the look out for participants using these ill-defined or otherwise problematic (yet cavalierly tossed-around) terms:

1. “Search Neutrality”
2. “Scraping”
3. “Black Box”
4. “Search Fairness”
5. “Disclosure”
6. “Transparency”
7. “Conflicts of Interest”
8. “Level Playing Field”
9. “Corporate Responsibility”
10. “Deceptive Practice”
11. “Federal Search Commission”
12. “Privacy Violation”
13. “Market Power”

We do not recommend turning this into a drinking game.

Berin Szoka is Founder and President and Geoffrey Manne is Senior Adjunct Fellow at TechFreedom, a non-profit, non-partisan technology policy think tank launched in 2011.

The Supreme Court will be issuing its opinion in the case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association any day now (TLF’s previous coverage is here). The case was previously known as Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, but Mr. Schwarzenegger has been trying to stay out of court of late. I was just sent a draft of the statement that the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, which filed an amicus brief in the case, is planning to release if the decision goes its way. The Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund was founded by Phyllis Schlafly.

[Not really. This is a joke (but the quotes are true).]

[date] – The Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund (we just say “F’ed”) is happy to see that the U.S. Supreme Court has finally recognized that children are precious angels and need to be protected from reality. Its opinion in the Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association case, released today, holds that states are free to ignore the First Amendment when it comes to children. While F’d has long advocated fidelity to the text of the U.S. Constitution, it believes “traditional values” are more important than some document written 224 years ago. In response to the many calls that our position in support of California’s attempt to ban video games is hypocritical considering our mission is “to enable conservative and pro-family men and women to participate in the process of self-government and public policy making so that America will continue to be a land of individual liberty,” and we support “parents’ rights to guide the education of their own children … and to home-school without oppressive government regulations,” we say don’t listen to what we’ve said. “Be a ‘doer, not a hearer only.'” (You can’t argue with that–it’s from the bible.)

As we stated in our amicus brief filing, “violent video games are the equivalent of ‘fighting words’ for kids who play them.” To that end, and emboldened by today’s decision, we are calling on Congress to “stop the violence” by enacting Federal restrictions similar to the California statute just upheld by the Supreme Court. Federal legislation is needed because digital downloads already represent 29% of game sales. Virtual “app stores” offered by companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, and others allow children to access violent video games any time and from anywhere. Here are just a few examples of the sorts of games that are available on mobile phone app stores. They all “appeal[] to a deviant or morbid interest of minors” (to quote the language of the California law). Are your children playing these violent video games?

• Office Jerk – Now known by the slighly less-offensive name “OfficeJK”, the point of this game for the Android platform is to throw food, golf balls, a bug, a stapler, and even dynamite at a defenseless and nonviolent officemate.
• Dig Dug – Video games have been violent from the very beginning, with the first videogame “Space War.” Dig Dug, originally released in 1982 requires the player to kill “monsters” by either inflating them until they pop or dropping rocks on top of them (more on “crush videos” to come). Due to its age and the many emulators available for smartphones, this game is probably available for every platform including graphing calculators.
• Plants vs. Zombies – Another game available on a wide variety of platforms from PCs to game consoles to portable devices and phones, this game has been nominated for multiple Interactive Achievement Awards, the “Casual Game of the Year Award, and was one of the Best games of 2009 according to website Gamezebo. As you might surmise from the title, the game involves killing zombies. But you don’t just kill them by throwing fruits and vegetables at them (though that certainly does the trick on the early levels). Gameplay also involves explosions, rolling over zombies with giant walnuts, and literally mowing them down with lawn mowers. And the visuals are particularly disturbing, with limbs blown off and zombies literally turned to dust by explosions. It also makes fun of a special needs individual named “Crazy Dave.”
• Angry Birds – After the legality of “crush films” was barely upheld in 2008, it’s surprising this game even exists. The user scores point by flinging small birds into buildings and various other structures in an attempt to get the structures to collapse on top of pigs. To quote the California law, this is “especially heinous, cruel, or depraved in that it involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim[s].”

It’s worth pointing out that with the exception of Office Jerk, which is unrated, all of the above games have been rated “Everyone” by the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

Phyllis Schlafly is not available for comment because she gets more self-fulfillment from “the daily duties of a wife and mother in the home.”

Adam and I spent a lot of time on our joint amicus brief with EFF—which Larry has artfully summarized. But Jon Stewart has outdone us both with this witty satire on the case:

[Fellow members of the Society for the Prevention of Vice, I urge you to take immediate action to continue our crusade to clean up America’s media marketplace by ridding it of the scourge of media hyper-violence.  A clip has come to our attention that merits particular concern and I hope you will agree something must be done by our government before such filth gets widespread dissemination. So, please join me in signing this petition to the FCC to take action now—for the children—before such unspeakable acts of violence are mimicked by millions of youth across America.]

TO: Julius Genachowski, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission

FROM: Adam Thierer, President, Society for the Prevention of Vice (formerly known as the Society for Soft Pillow Fights)

RE:  Another example of unspeakable media violence that must be stopped

Dear Chairman Genachowski:

A video has come to our attention that displays, once again, the media industry’s utter disregard for human decency and the dignity of life, and we hope you will agree something must be done to stop its dissemination before it is too late.  In this video:

• A man’s nose is seemingly twisted off his face (as he screams in agony) and then his face is forced onto a grinding machine while sparks fly off his burning flesh (he again screams in agony);
• A shoe with an extended spike is inserted into a man’s head and then his eyeball and then his ear lobe (he screams in agony each time);
• The man who was impaled with said shoe spike then bites the offender’s foot (he, too, screams in agony);
• A blow-torch is used to light a man’s buttocks afire (he screams in agony);
• A man climbs a pole, plays with live electrical wires, is then is electrocuted after chewing on said wires, and then falls to the ground still shaking from the voltage running through his body (he screams in agony);
• A wrench is dropped on a man’s head (he screams in agony) and he then uses said wrench to hit another man over the head and violently twist his nose with it (he screams in agony); and
• Finally, the electrocuted man has a light bulb inserted into one ear and a screwdriver into the other (he screams in agony and then, bizarrely, he laughs to end the clip — as if he is mocking the depravity of what we have just witnessed!)

I have attached a clip of this unspeakably evil carnival of pain, but I warn you that it could forever darken your soul. Can you imagine, sir, if earlier generations of American youth had seen this? Could America have produced “The Greatest Generation” if the youth of the World War II era had grown up watching such filth?  We now know from several psychological studies that children will mimic whatever they see on the screen. If they see such depictions of violence in media, they will reenact it themselves in the real world. In other words, “monkey see-monkey do.”  Please, on behalf of all those signing this petition, and for the sake of our children, I beg you to help us put a stop to this moral outrage before our great civilization decays and withers away in a sea of media hyper-violence such as this: 

http://www.youtube.com/v/jocRd-aajW0?fs=1&hl=en_US

[I’m always amazed by the misuse of language in debates over media and communications policy. Some regulatory advocates, like Free Press and Public Knowledge, seem to contort the meaning of everyday words in such a grotesque way that they are barely recognizable.  Luckily, via Wikileaks, Mike Wendy and I stumbled upon a secret copy of the “Free Press-Public Knowledge Stylebook for Public Debate” and now have a better idea of what they mean when they utter these terms. We thought we’d share…]

_______________________

“ behemoth” – Use this word to refer to any corporation, regardless of actual size, and make them sound more nefarious than the much larger government that will regulate them.

“ Big Brother” – See “behemoth,” and be careful not to reference Orwell too much lest people actually read “1984” and discover that Big Brother was actually the government, not industry.

“ Censorship” – Refers to efforts by nefarious corporations to control our thoughts and actions since that’s obviously how they make most of their money. Some people say government might be the real threat to freedom of speech, but don’t you believe such silliness!

“ Competition” – A centrally-planned system used to prop up free-riders who usually don’t have facilities of their own. (See “Open access.”)  Of course, the best forms of competition arise from government ownership.

“ the Constitution” – An odd document in that, for some reason, it contains a litany of limitations on the power of government to regulate evil corporations that the people wanted to see crushed. (See “the People.”)  However, the addition of the First Amendment partially rectified that by giving us the foundation for industry regulation. (See “First Amendment.”)

“Corporation” – Detestable entities designed to usurp the fundamental freedoms of the people (See “the People.”)  Oftentimes used to quickly shorthand the concept of “evil” in press releases.

“Fifth Amendment” – A misguided amendment not as easily contorted to our ends at the First. (See “First Amendment.”)  Has something to do with property. (See “Property.”) To be ignored whenever possible. Do not mention in court.

“ First Amendment” – The First Amendment was part of a meddlesome text called “The Constitution,” which apparently limited the powers of government, or something like that.  (See “The Constitution.”)  Anyway, the First Amendment empowers the government to control companies so they can’t censor our every thought. (See “censorship.”)  Some claim the First Amendment should be used to limit government regulation of speech or expression, but it’s unclear why we’d ever need to do that!

“ Free speech” – The right of the people (see “the People”) to use government regulation to demand that private companies give us whatever we want on whatever terms we want.  Used in sentence: “That media company violated my free speech rights by making me pay for the content I wanted!” Or, “Private companies have no right to take away my free speech rights by owning and controlling private networks!”

“ Freedom” – The right of the government to control the economy. When used in a sentence: “The FCC should guarantee Internet freedom through extensive regulation of broadband networks and media platforms.”

“ Investment” – What occurs when government heavily regulates industry and technology.  More regulation guarantees more investment.

“Innovation” – Technological advances that occur only at the “edge” of networks.  It is important that when using this term, the connection to the “network” be minimized in order to belittle its role and minimize underlying speech and property rights, thus allowing the maximum leeway when confiscatory regulations are deemed necessary to benefit the “edge” (which is always).

“ Level playing field” – The placing of a thumb on the regulatory scales to favor whomever seems the least capitalistic at any given time (preferably municipally-owned utilities). To be used arbitrarily by regulators / policymakers to delimit the range of free enterprise options for successful companies via unique regulatory burdens on market leaders — even when no anti-competitive violations have occurred.

“Marketplace” – An unwieldy, red-light district that cannot be trusted by the consumer and which is always in need of a sheriff to police its dubious benefits. The free marketplace remains the mortal enemy of the State, and should never be allowed to prosper free from a deluge of regulations, proscriptions and penalties to ensure its enslavement to the “public interest.”  (See “Public interest.”)

“ Net Neutrality” – The first of the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai by the Lord.  Guarantees openness (See “openness”) and competition (See “competition”) for the people (See “the people.”)

“ Openness” – The belief that everyone and everything should be equal and free — or will be made more equal and free — through extensive regulation.

“ Open Access” – Refers to the right for companies that lack their own facilities — and without any serious chance of making it on their own — to free-ride off of existing infrastructure providers in the name of “competition.” (See “Competition.”)

“ the People” – Refers to what we want, but under the guise of everyone else, whether they actually want the same things we do or not. [Use frequently and in conjunction with “freedom.”]

“ Price discrimination” – Everyone knows discrimination is bad.  (Didn’t we have a civil war over that?)  While some economists pretend price discrimination is a crucial component underlying business models for many important goods and services, we know it is just a ruse to screw consumers. Everybody should pay the same price for everything. Period.

“ Property” – We’ll have to get back to you on this one. We’re not sure what it is.  But in the meantime, avoid any mention of it.  If pressed in court or in the media, instead play up “the public interest.” (See “Public Interest.”)

“ Public interest” – Whatever five unelected bureaucrats at the FCC think is in our best interest.

“ Reform” – Feigning the lessening of regulatory burdens while simultaneously adding new burdens to the regulated class.

“Regulation” – The preferred and politically plastic proxy to the uncontrollable and anti-consumer free-enterprise system. (See “Marketplace.”)

“ Regulatory certainty” – Adding layers of red tape to the mountains that already exist to ensure competition and investment thrive. (See “Competition” and “Investment.”)

“ Rights” – Benefits from the State. The best “rights” are accompanied by an annual appropriation. (When discussing such rights, avoid discussions of costs / taxes / inefficiencies).

“Unintended Consequences” – For law or regulation, there are none, only opportunities to perfect any given means of control.

“ Voluntary Concessions” – The pound of flesh required from any company that has the audacity to suggest is should have the right to merge with another company. Preferably, this death by bloodletting should occur over as long a period as possible. If there is a “shot clock” on the proceeding, it’d be good to stop it as much as possible.

[ Note: Rumor has it that the “FP-PK Stylebook” will soon be made available at college bookstores across America for classroom instruction in cyberlaw and media policy courses. Lawrence Lessig and Tim Wu are penning the preface.  Thanks to a generous grant from The Open Society Institute, the Stylebook will only cost $1 and bulk orders of will be accompanied by a free copy of Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinksky.]

The UK’s Daily Mail reports that Phil Bissett, a 62 year old former gravedigger, transformed a steel casket into a street-legal single-seat automobile that does 100 mph, using the engine from his daughter’s 1972 VW. He acquired the casket — you guessed it — on ebay.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. The casket originally cost 1500 British pounds. He got it for just 98 pounds — about $146 at today’s exchange rate.  That’s 93 percent off!  The article doesn’t say how much he paid for the assorted spare parts from other vehicles needed to turn the casket into an automobile, nor does it explain what his daughter is doing for transportation now that the engine from her car powers his deathmobile.  Still, it’s a nice-looking little sports car, and I’ll bet it cost less and is more reliable than that fine piece of British automotive engineering I used to own, an MG Midget.

Bissett told the reporter, “I’ve learned never to go on the internet when you’ve had a drink. My friend said I’d never be able to turn it into a car but I knew I could.”

This must be what the wonks mean when they say the Internet is an “enabling technology.”

(Be sure to check out the Daily Mail link above to see the cool photos!)

Here are a few fake tech news headlines I wish I’d seen today:

• Foreign Affairs: Google, Taiwan Announce “Merger of Equals” to Counter China
• SFGate: Facebook Gives in to Privacy Demands; All Information Now Inaccessible by Default
• CongressDaily : Congress to Vote by Twitter, Hashtag Landgrab Begins for Clever Bill Acronym Titles
• Broadband Breakfast: FCC Nationalizes Broadband Providers, Free Press Says “Important First Step”
• Worker’s Daily : Obama to Create Department of Journalism, Promises End to “Media Meddling” in Politics
• Federal Times: FCC Asserts Ancillary Jurisdiction over 2010 Census, Claims Measuring Population First Step in Measuring Broadband Use (Adam Marcus)
• SearchEngineWatch: Yahoo!’s “e.g.” Browser Latest “i.e.” Competitor, Privacy Advocates Demand Yodeling Opt-In (YaHOOOOOOOOOOO!)
• Privacy Times: Google Critics Scott Cleland, Jeff Chester Form Bi-Partisan “Elgoog Institute” to Expose Google Evil
• London Times: Microsoft Pulls Windows Operating System from Europe to Protest “Great Wall of Brussels” Antitrust Protectionism
• CircleID: ICANN-DY Wall Calendar with Hotties of Internet Governance, CEO Beckstrom to Reprise Scott Brown Centerfold
• MediaPost: FTC Bans Blogging, Wikipedia as “Unfair” & “Deceptive”
• The Hill: Court Rules Bush Wiretapping Illegal; Obama Administration Vows Not to Reveal Own Illegal Wiretaps
• E-Commerce Today: Amazon.com Relocates Facilities to Amazon River to Avoid U.S. State Sales Taxes, Too Late for Carnaval
• Communications Daily: Hugo Chavez Rumored Replacement for Retiring FCC Commissioner, Promises Not to Regulate Internet
• Washington Post: Obama Makes Good on Campaign Transparency Promises, Installs 24/7 Webcams Throughout White House
• New York Times: New Study: Kids Under 13 Suddenly Start Lying about Age to Evade COPPA Parental Consent Requirement
• Gawker: State of the Net Conference Again Frustrated by Insufficient Bandwidth, Organizers Promise More Traffic Management Next Year (Adam Marcus)
• Moscow Times: Russian Hackers Demand FCC Impose Data Portability Backdoors
• Tech Crunch: Nigerian Spam Kings Applaud US CAN-SPAM Law as Useful Fiction, Good for Overseas Competition
• Daily Caprican: Caprican Communications Commission Announces Goal of Universal V-World Access, Demands V-Neutrality
• Universe Today: FCC Scraps “Gateway Device” Plan, Just Gives $1 Billion to TiVo (Adam Marcus)
• USA Today: FISA Court Judges Take Permanent Vacation, Nobody Notices (Adam Marcus)
• Seattle Times: Microsoft Unveils Own Social Networking Service, Makes All MSCE-Certified Admins “Mayors” (Adam Marcus)

Hey, they don’t pay us to be funny! Feel free to share your favorite mock headlines below.

Just in case you missed Adam Thierer’s unhinged rant, My Swan Song Moment: I Will Take Elmo Hostage in the Name of First Amendment Freedoms!, you’ll want to go back and read it after watching this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/NUYaHBvVS5o&hl=en_US&fs=1& Not exactly a highpoint in the history of deliberative democracy or rhetoric (in the best sense), but I suppose it beats wading through the 376 page National Broadband Plan… Anyway, given all this talk about increasing funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as a way of “saving media,” I do have to wonder: Just how far will we go in allowing taxpayer-funded muppets to rally public support for this (or future) administration’s policy agenda? I mean, if the White Houe had put Oscar the Grouch on national TV to lobby for health care socialization “reform” by explaining whatever trash-related chronic medial conditions are responsible for making him so darn cranky, I think some folks would rightly have been upset. Yes, I’m trying to be funny here but, seriously, where’s the line between harmless fun and… inappropriate use of taxpayer-funded resources for political purposes? I’m not sure. The administration probably crossed that line last September when President Obama gave a speech to kids and the Department of Education sent a proposed lesson plan to schools nationwide (later withdrawn) suggesting that pre-K-6 teachers have their students “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” But is Elmo’s meeting with Chairman Genachowski ok as a way of rallying kids—and, more importantly, their parents and everyone else who finds it cute—around a policy agenda? Any thoughts on where this line should be drawn?

What distinguishes pragmatic Internet optimists from their starry-eyed, pollyanna-ish optimist kin is the ability to recognize the real problems raised by technology. More than anything else, that means being able to appreciate great satire on the downsides of the Digital Revolution.  Robert Lanham, author of The Hipster Handbook and other satirical classics, offers the definitive guide to the “post-print world” in his “Internet-Age Writing Syllabus & Course Overview” for the fictitious college course, “ENG 371WR: Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era.” If only the arch-pessimist Andrew Keen were half so funny!

As print takes its place alongside smoke signals, cuneiform, and hollering, there has emerged a new literary age, one in which writers no longer need to feel encumbered by the paper cuts, reading, and excessive use of words traditionally associated with the writing trade. Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era focuses on the creation of short-form prose that is not intended to be reproduced on pulp fibers. Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new ” LostGeneration” of minimalists who would much rather watchLost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences. w00t! w00t! Throughout the course, a further paring down of the Hemingway/Stein school of minimalism will be emphasized, limiting the superfluous use of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, gerunds, and other literary pitfalls.

My favorite part, Week 8: New Rules:

Students will analyze the publishing industry and learn how to be more innovative than the bards of yesteryear. They’ll be asked to consider, for instance, Thomas Pynchon. How much more successful would Gravity’s Rainbow have been if it were two paragraphs long and posted on a blog beneath a picture of scantily clad coeds? And why not add a Google search box? Or what if Susan Sontag had friended 10 million people on Facebook and then published a shorter version of The Volcano Lover as a status update: “Susan thinks a volcano is a great metaphor for primal passion. Also, streak of my hair turning white—d’oh!“

Now, as it happens, I think Strunk & White, authors of the 1918 classic  The Elements of Style, would probably have appreciated Twitter’s 140 character limit (and blogging more generally) for ruthlessly, if over-zealously, enforcing their core rule for good writing:  

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

The pure Internet optimist would say, “Hurrah! Brevity is the soul of wit!” The pragmatic optimist would add, “Yes, but not the sole element of wit!”  As Mssrs. Strunk & White continued in their about “vigorous writing”:

This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

In January, we had the “Fear the Boom & Bust” rap video that pitted John Maynard Keynes v. Friedrich Hayek rapping about their respective approaches to monetary and fiscal policy, and theories of the business cycle. Now Pantless Knights (a web comic team) offers a terrific spoof of the Jay-Z/Alicia Keys video “Empire State” of mind rap video—instead of “New York,” the video celebrates the “New Dork” and the “Entrepreneur State of Mind.”

http://www.youtube.com/v/exmwSxv7XJI&hl=en_US&fs=1& PantlessKnights describes the video as a “tribute to our favorite entrepreneurs (who are all ‘new dorks’).” The lyrics offer a short introduction to start-up capitalism:

But I Don't Love You, Elmo

I have decided what my swan song moment in the field of public policy will be. For some time now I’ve been considering retiring from the public policy world since I am really quite sick of political BS in Washington, but I’ve always wanted to go out in style. So, here’s what I plan to do to end my career next week. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has just announced that he will be delivering a major policy speech outlining how the agency’s new National Broadband Plan will benefit children and families next Friday at 10:30.  According to the press release, the Chairman will be joined by Sesame Street’s Elmo when making the announcement.

So, here’s my plan… I will go to the event , rush the stage as Genachowski goes up with Elmo, grab Elmo, pull out a fake gun, put it to Elmo’s head, and then shout: “Stop regulating the Net and free speech rights now or the Muppet gets it!”

An ugly scene will no doubt follow in which several of my old friends at Common Sense Media, who are co-hosting the event, will try to talk me down from the cliff by asking me hand over the gun and to “think of the children.” But I’ll rush out the back door of the auditorium with Elmo in tow and escape in my getaway car. (I plan to live in mountains in rural Idaho and skim money off of the FCC universal service fund & the E-Rate program since I know how to rig the system from reading years of GAO reports on fraud and abuse of both!)

OK, so you get that this is all sarcasm, right? I don’t want to Secret Service showing up at my door on the grounds that I am threatening a Muppet.  And I certainly don’t want to live in Idaho. But, seriously, what is the deal with politicians appearing with puppets? That’s always freaked me out a bit. I will never forget attending a congressional hearing about children’s television issues back in 1993 and watching a surreal exchange between Rep. Ed Markey and Lamb Chop, the sock puppet.  Really, a woman with a sock on her hand (Shari Lewis) delivered testimony to Congress. No, seriously, it really happened. Check it out:

File it under “Great Moments in Democracy.”  Sadly, there have been many others like this.

But Elmo, be warned … you are going down my little red friend.

Adam says no, as have Sonia and Wayne. Adam and I have pointed out that the FTC might want to think twice about crippling advertising at a time when it’s needed more than ever—before rushing to the kind of media bailout called for by the neo-Marxists at Free Press. The Onion‘s team of leading commentators generally agrees, but points out an under-appreciated dimension of the debate.

http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/common/assets/onn_embed/embedded_player.swf?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theonion.com%2Fcontent%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2FDEATH_OF_NEWSPAPERS_ARTICLE_2_26.jpg&videoid=101088&title=How%20Will%20The%20End%20Of%20Print%20Journalism%20Affect%20Old%20Loons%20Who%20Hoard%20Newspapers%3F How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?

Planet Moron.com has taken a humorous look at the FCC’s pending National Broadband Plan (“We’re Digitally Distressed At How Much This Is Going To Cost Us.”) It’s quite entertaining.  They note:

If you are like most Americans, three questions probably pop into your mind: 1) Am I paying for this? 2) Seriously, am I paying for this? 3) Because if I’m paying for this, I’m going to be really ticked off.

Indeed, it’s probably going to cost us a lot more than we can possible imagine, especially with all the lawyering and lobbying that will accompany it.  Oh well, that’s Washington for you–we pay $2 bucks to get $1 worth of benefits. I’m voting for the National Elevator Plan instead.

Last week I received Public Knowledge’s press release and letter urging support of a “Bold National Broadband Plan.” I admire PK a great deal on several issues, but remain struck by the arbitrariness of demanding “national plans” for this-or-that technology. It occurred to me that if anybody were to actually ask me (so, don’t), I think I favor a National Elevator Plan instead. Too many Americans live in two-story homes, and/or have basements, yet have no easy access to the upstairs bathroom and Halloween decorations in the attic, or to the aunt living up there. They are forced to rely on outdated “stairs” technology. (And stairs are dangerous! So this is far more urgent than broadband! Show your outrage! Etc.!) So I ever-so-slightly tweaked the letter; this bold new campaign is meant to rectify this injustice and I hope you’ll sign on and spread the word.

Dear Friends: On March 17, the Federal Conveyance Commission (FCC) will deliver its “National Elevator Plan for America” to Congress. The purpose of the plan is to ensure that every American home has affordable access to fast and reliable elevators, which large companies and office buildings have unfairly and exclusively enjoyed for decades. Access to the second floor and basement is critical to ensuring that all Americans are able to fully participate in vertical rather than merely diagonal movement at home, not just in the workplace. We have been working for many months to ensure that our National Elevator Plan is a bold one. We have filed extensive comments, testified at three FCC workshops and met with FCC officials on numerous occasions during that time. Among other things, we urged the Commission to: 1) Promote policies that would give consumers more choice among elevators and escalators. 2) Ensure that universal service funds are used to increase access to elevators in rural areas. Not many of them asked for the elevators, but truly, what difference does that really make. 3) Refrain from using the plan to enforce intellectual property claims in digital button and display technology. Ensure that elevators are neutral and do not discriminate unfairly between floors. With just a month to go before the National Elevator Plan is delivered to Congress, we need your help to continue to advocate for affordable and robust vertical conveyance. Please sign on. Middle-Name Wayne President Public Conveyance, Inc.

Let’s give thanks for the miracle of the modern Internet, which makes darn near any bit of fine literature or obscure doggerel available at our fingertips.  A case in point: My search for Larry the Cable Guy’s “The Story of the First Thanksgiving as Told by my Drunk Grandpa” immediately returned a readable link:

Grandpa’s Thanksgiving Story Lyrics

Please do not click on that if you are offended by crude or politically incorrect humor.  Oops, too late!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey people. You owe me.  All of you.  You owe me free broadband.  I am entitled to it, after all. That seems to be where our current FCC is heading, anyway.  And hey, Finland’s just done it, and the supposed Silicon Valley capitalists at TechCrunch are giddy with delight about it.  We’re apparently all just Scandinavian socialists at heart now.

Thus, I too have decided to throw in the towel on the idea of everyone carrying their own weight and picking up their own tab.  So, get your wallets open and ready for me because I have lots and lots of things that I believe I have an inalienable right to receive free of charge from the government (i.e, “the people”;  i.e., “YOU”).   Please let me know which of the things on my high-tech wish list that you’ll be purchasing for me and I’ll check you off my registry so I don’t have to send the cops to your house to collect:

• free broadband (fiber, Wi-Max, and whatever else is around the corner);
• a couple of free new computers (and a really fast ones, thank you very much);
• 3 new HDTVs for my home (including one of those sweet new DLP projectors that usually cost about $10,000 bucks.  And I’ll need you to pay for someone to help me install it. Or could you just come over and do that for me perhaps?);
• 3 free new DVRs for each new TV set that you are buying me (and could I get a nice universal remote to control everything, please);
• a free subscription in my area to either DirecTV, Cox Cable, or Verizon FIOS TV (with all the premium channels and sports packages… and don’t forget the Playboy Channel!);
• a free lifetime subscription to Netflix (or I guess I would settle for a free Blu-Ray player and some free movies);
• free new wi-fi router and signal extenders for my home (N-standard please, none of that B or G garbage… too slow for me);
• free mobile phone service for life + an iPhone + unlimited downloads in their app store (oh, could you have that iPhone autographed by Steve Jobs if you get a chance?);
• free Playstation or XBox + lots of games (and if I could get one of those driving wheels to play my new Gran Turismo game that would be dandy); and finally,
• free lifetime tech support when all this crap breaks down.

In closing, I thank you for your generosity.  I mean, look, I know I don’t actually deserve any of this stuff, and that there’s no good reason that you should have to pay for my free-riding ways, and there’s obviously nothing in our Constitution to support all this, but hey… screw all that!  This is my God-given birthright. I am entitled, baby!  Now get busy thinking of how you are all going to start paying for me, you selfish bastards.

Please pardon its vulgarity, but for those of you out there who are as tired of the b.s. dished out by many self-labeled “social media gurus” as I am, I think you will very much enjoy this bit of humor from freelance journalist Markham Nolan. Too funny.

Gotta love The Onion… [Make sure to keep a close eye on the messages on the Twitter pages. And I like the “E-Mom’s” advice to “Just make sure you spell everything wrong and swear a lot” to fool your kids. Great stuff.]

Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Clearly, something must be done to counter the evil corporate cabal known as “the Cloud Elders” and the “Knights Doppler” who are behind the blatant pro-weather bias displayed daily on the Weather Channel. Perhaps a Fairness Doctrine for Weather Reporting?

Thank God the hard-working folks at Fairness in Media unearthed this vicious anti-democratic conspiracy.

Weather Channel Accused of Pro-Weather Bias

I’ve been trying to catch up after a week-long cruise with my kids down in the Caribbean and as I was doing my best to sort through thousands of e-mails and articles in my RSS reader, I stopped and did a double-take when I saw some headlines from last week about how the Federal Communications Commission is spending $350,000 taxpayer dollars to sponsor a NASCAR team.  For that money, NASCAR driver David Gilliland “has agreed to use his No. 38 car as a high-speed billboard promoting the February 2009 national transition to digital television,” according to Multichannel News.

In the annuls of idiotic government spending initiatives this one has to be a potential hall of fame entry.  Over on the PFF Blog, my PFF colleague Barbara Esbin has a humorous piece explaining why:

what signal does FCC sponsorship of a stock car racer send to the beleaguered American public in this autumn of our discontent? The FCC Chairman claims that this sponsorship is an “extremely effective way for the FCC to raise DTV awareness among people of all ages and income levels across the United States who loyally follow one of the most popular sports in America.” Well, those loyal sports fans will have to be following No. 38 at the three sponsored races with some pretty high-speed binoculars to catch the DTV message. Although the $350,000 does get the government posting of its informational website URL, www.dtv.gov, along the track — doubtless not the only advertisement to lure spectator eyeballs — it is primarily receiving posting on the car’s sides and on the driver’s helmet and suit. Let’s just hope No. 38 has a large fan base, does exceeding well in the three races, and, more importantly, avoids accidents, injuries, and fleeting expletives. Maybe this is just another federal government bailout. On the same day that the FCC announced its investment in NASCAR, the Raleigh News & Observer ran an article entitled, “Global crisis threatens NASCAR.” It seems that “motor sport” team sponsorship has been down this year, “with sinking auto showroom sales, declining attendance and rising operating costs.” And let’s not even talk about the carbon footprint of stock car racing.

Of course, what’s even more pathetic about this move is that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s likely motivation for doing this is probably political:  He probably thinks this is a good way to win blue collar votes with all the NASCAR fans down in North Carolina for a future run for office. [It’s widely rumored that he will seek some office down in his home state after his tenure at the FCC is up.]  After all, NASCAR is hugely popular in that state.  I don’t know about you, but I’m none too happy subsidizing a get-out-the-NASCAR-vote effort for one of the most regulatory-minded FCC Chairmen in history.

A little XKCD-style humor:

If you don’t get it, “c” this.  Incidentally, you can easily add links to other search engines (as I have) by installing the CustomizeGoogle Firefox extension, among many other cool features.

Let’s hope things don’t turn out this badly!

And so the series continues.  The Washington Post reports that the Department of Justice has just released “a scathing report” finding that over a 5-year period the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “lost dozens of weapons and hundreds of laptops that contained sensitive information.” The DOJ’s Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that 418 laptop computers and 76 weapons were lost. According to the report:

Yesterday’s report showed that ATF, a much smaller agency than the FBI, had lost proportionately many more firearms and laptops. “It is especially troubling that that ATF’s rate of loss for weapons was nearly double that of the FBI and [Drug Enforcement Administration], and that ATF did not even know whether most of its lost, stolen, or missing laptop computers contained sensitive or classified information,” Fine wrote.  […] Many of the missing laptops contained sensitive or classified material, according to the report. ATF began installing encryption software only in May 2007. ATF did not know what information was on 398 of the 418 lost or stolen laptops. The report called the lack of such knowledge a “significant deficiency.” Of the 20 missing laptops for which information was available, ATF indicated that seven — 35 percent — held sensitive information. One missing laptop, for example, held “300-500 names with dates of birth and Social Security numbers of targets of criminal investigations, including their bank records with financial transactions.” Another held “employee evaluations, including Social Security numbers and other [personal information].” Neither laptop was encrypted.

The findings regarding lost weapons were equally troubling, if not a bit humorous:

Two weapons were subsequently used to commit crimes. In one incident, a gun stolen from the home of a special agent was fired through the window of another home. Ten firearms were “left in a public place.” One of them was left on an airplane, three in bathrooms, one in a shopping cart and two on the top of cars as ATF employees drove away. A laptop also fell off the top of a car as an agent drove off. Another weapon “fell into the water while an agent was fishing,” according to the report.

Now I know the private sector actors lose things too, but as I’ve pointed out before, if any of this happened in the private sector, trial lawyers would be salivating and lawsuits would be flying. By contrast, when the government loses personal information—information that his usually more sensitive than that which private actors collect—about the most that ever comes out of it is another report calling for “more accountability.” Few ever are actually held accountable (i.e., lose their jobs or get sued.)

I love the lolcats. (Or perhaps I should say, Iz Luvz Da Lolcats.) Here are a couple of my favorite tech-related cats from recent months:

more animals

more animals

more animals

more animals

Yo, floppy disks are dope…

Too funny. Not quite as good as the Diebold one Tim posted last week, but this is still great…

FCC Okays Nudity On TV If It2019s Alyson Hannigan