Neat! Through the magic of Google, we seem to have John McCain ads on our website. This seems like a good time to note for the record that we don’t exercise any editorial control over the ads that appear on the site, and the appearance of a candidate’s ads on our site certainly don’t constitute an endorsement. So please do watch Sen. McCain’s warmongering advertisements, but feel free to head over here for a different perspective on foreign policy issues. (And in the interests of fairness, you can also check out the warmongering articles from our friends at Heritage.)
Obama snags the crucial xkcd endorsement. And for good reasons. I was rooting for Bill Richardson, but with him out of the race Obama’s probably the least-bad option on the Democratic side. And he’s got smart, tech-savvy lefties like Larry Lessig and Tim Wu on his side. It would be cool if they wound up as senior tech policy advisors in an Obama administration.
Update: And while I’m fantasizing about competent presidential advisors, let me second the suggestion that Bruce Schneier running DHS would be amazing. He might actually re-focus the bureaucracy on activities that actually make us safer, instead of confiscating shaving cream and patting down little old ladies.
Last week on the Google Public Policy Blog, Peter Greenberger of Google’s Elections and Issue Advocacy Team posted Google’s new guidelines for political advertising on the site. Most of the guidelines seem fairly straightforward and sensible to me since they relate to general principles of fairness and transparency. But sandwiched in between those principles is the following guideline:
No attacks on an individual’s personal life. Stating disagreement with or campaigning against a candidate for public office, a political party, or public administration is generally permissible. However, political ads must not include accusations or attacks relating to an individual’s personal life, nor can they advocate against a protected group. So, “Crime rates are up under Police Commissioner Gordon” is okay, but “Police Commissioner Gordon had an affair” is not.
I understand what Google is trying to do here in terms of making the Net a more civil place to engage in deliberative democracy without all the mud-slinging and name-calling. In one sense, I applaud them for that. On the other hand, the world is not a perfect place and candidates are not perfect people. And, candidates for office are not just like any other citizen in our society. They are people who will be given power over other people. Power over our lives, our liberties and fate of the nation.
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Art Brodsky’s 4,789-word article about Connect Kentucky and its offspring Connected Nation has been the talk of telecom circles over the past week.
Connected Nation is a non-profit entity that has become one of biggest players in the currently topical field of broadband data. Using their work in Kentucky as a model for mapping out broadband availability nation-wide, the group has become a driving force behind legislation that would provide grants for other states to duplicate these efforts.
Examples of legislation following the Connect Kentucky model are the Senate version of the current farm bill, H.R. 4212, which includes Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin’s “Connect the Nation Act,” S. 1190. Durbin’s bill would authorize $40 million a year, for five years, to state efforts to map out broadband inventory on the census block level.
The “Broadband Data Improvement Act,” S. 1492, by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, takes a similar approach. The goal is, in the identical language of both bills, to “identify and track the availability and adoption of broadband services within each State.”
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“Neoconservative libertarianism” is an oxymoron. And if you find it shocking that some rich entrepreneurs are libertarians, you need to get out more.
Since I’ve mentioned Ron Paul a few times in this space, I wanted to mention that after appalling examples of racist and anti-gay sentiments from his newsletters came to light, I would no longer characterize myself as a Ron Paul supporter. Before Tuesday, the only evidence of Paul’s racism I’d seen was one issue of the newsletter. I took Paul at his word that the comments in question were written without his knowledge or approval, and that the writer was let go when they were brought to his attention. But now it appears that at least a dozen issues of his newsletter over a period of some 5 years contained similarly appalling comments. I no longer find Paul’s rationalizations plausible. Whether Paul wrote the newsletters himself is irrelevant. If he is not a bigot himself, he had no qualms about associating with bigots over the course of many years. I have more thoughts on Paul’s newsletters here and here.
How big were tech issues in the furious election campaigning that just finished in New Hampshire? Not very, reports CNET’s Anne Broache. “Voters here are famously not described as tech-savvy,” she writes. “To be precise, they are famously not described as especially concerned with topics like Net neutrality and intellectual property rights that you, our dear readers, are.”
No surprise, but Broache, with help from Declan McCullough, did some real footwork to back up that disinterest, conducting a few man-in-the-street interviews with Hampshireans.
” We weren’t disappointed”, she says. “Nor, we’re happy to report, did we get punched in the face for bothering those gritty, flinty, and hardy residents with questions about Net neutrality. What we did learn is that Granite State voters are not exactly preoccupied with political skirmishes over rewriting patent law, increasing H-1B visas, and, of course, the throughly pressing concern of broadband regulation”.
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Is Frontline Wireless having a Keyser Söze moment? After convincing the FCC to largely accept its plan for public safety spectrum in the 700 MHz band, the well-connected startup may be saying “poof,” and just like that, be gone. According to Jeffrey Silva in RCR Wireless:
The future of Frontline Wireless L.L.C., the Silicon Valley-backed and politically connected startup that spent months positioning itself to bid big in the upcoming 700 MHz auction, has suddenly become shrouded in mystery.
“Frontline is closed for business at this time. We have no further comment,” Frontline said in a statement.
Ars Technica has more as does MRT Magazine, but not much more since it’s all pretty mysterious. The most significant potential impact of the news, as MRT notes, is that “If no one bids on the D Block, the spectrum would be returned to the FCC, which could reauction the spectrum with different rules.” That could be a good or a bad thing depending on the new rules.
Anyone know anything else?
It seems this week that “change” is on everyone’s lips, with every presidential candidate from Barack Obama to Duncan Hunter claiming to embody the word. But change isn’t limited to the campaign trail — with some fanfare, the National Association of Broadcasters announced this week that it was jumping in the game with some changes of its own. 
Change certainly would be welcome a the NAB, which took some rather oddball positions last year, arguing for subsidies to ensure that “no TV set…gets disenfranchised” (“One TV Set, One Vote: Broadcasters Assert Rights for Televisions“), and asserting simutaneously that broadcasters do and do not compete with satellite radio (“National Association of Broadcasters v. National Association of Broadcasters“).
So now will NAB retract these silly positions, starting out the new year fresh, with better-grounded arguments on behalf of its members? Sadly, no. The change implemented at the NAB is a new logo. And a new tagline: “Advocacy. Education. Innovation.” NAB President David Rehr says this will embody the interest group’s “reinvigorated sense of advocacy.”
Right. Now if only it can work on reinvigorating a sense of good policies to advocate.
Declan reports that Silicon Valley hasn’t lost its libertarian streak:
Boyapati isn’t the only Googler who’s braving New Hampshire’s sub-zero winter to advance Paul’s message of lowering taxes and government spending, opposing the Real ID Act, and withdrawing from Iraq immediately. Paul is the only Republican candidate for president who opposes the Iraq war and occupation.
One other former employee and five current Google engineers, who work on projects including an Asian version of Google Answers and the design of data center hardware, are staying with him in a four-bedroom group house close to Hackett Hill Road near Manchester. Boyapati says he doesn’t know any Googlers who have come east to volunteer for other candidates…
In addition to having broad support online, Paul is by far the most popular Republican candidate among Google employees. He received $22,650 in contributions from them, according to Opensecrets.org, compared with a mere $2,300 that Googlers gave John McCain. They gave no contributions to Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney.
Google employees, in fact, represent the single top contributor to Ron Paul’s campaign. They narrowly beat out men and women in the U.S. Army and Navy, who are in second and third place, respectively.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.