ICYMI: Remarks at Annual Phoenix Center Rooftop Policy Roundtable – Is Privacy Policy the Next Mattress Tag?

What we don’t need is something akin to the government’s mattress tag requirements – a bewildering agreement users blindly accept without understanding its purpose.

June 24, 2019 0

Questions for Witnesses in Tomorrow’s Net Neutrality Hearing

Net neutrality was created at a time when the only large firms conducting Internet business were ISPs. It was sensible for lawmakers to focus on ISPs in 2003. But today’s Internet is dominated by non-ISP edge services that routinely abuse personal information. Internet law need to leap forward to the present day.

February 6, 2019 0

Books, Books, and more Books!

If you’re a fan of books on tech and tech policy this is a particularly good time for you because so much new stuff is hot off the presses. Here’s a short list of the books in my reading queue at the moment, along with a couple of longish journal articles.

January 23, 2019 0

Thanks for the Sideshow, Let’s Get Back to Work

We need clarity about our antitrust standards as they apply to the Internet, safeguards for personal data, and reverse auctions to bring better broadband to rural America. None of that is terribly sexy, but it’s all important.

November 7, 2018 0

Shane and Richard on Wi-Fi, Security, and Europe

In this edition of the podcast, Shane and Richard talk about setting up a Wi-Fi network for optimal security and performance, recent developments in security, and what’s going on in Europe with copyright enforcement and privacy.

September 24, 2018 0

Don’t Ask Zuckerberg about Shadow Profiles

At a minimum, Facebook needs to reorganize the company in such a way that a single CEO can exercise effective control over its major pieces. An Alphabet-like reshuffling with a new level of management would at least signal seriousness about improvement.

May 22, 2018 0

The Truth about Internet Privacy

The surest way forward is to increase the FTC’s authority to police data gathering practices across the Internet economy for the whole country.

April 9, 2018 0

Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS Does Nothing for Privacy

Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS service provides a very modest performance for web browsing – about 1/100th of a percent – and no meaningful improvement in privacy. Heh, that’s great!

April 5, 2018 0

Will Rinehart Explains the Cambridge Analytica Story

It’s obvious that some of this story is hokey, but you’re not sure which part. You’ve come to the right place because Will Rinehart lays it all out in this podcast.

March 27, 2018 0

Tim Berners-Lee is Depressed about the Web

The web’s greatest shortcoming, as well the greatest shortcoming of the Internet before the web, is the absence of tools for commerce in the plumbing. The web needs to provide each user with a persistent identity – or more, and they don’t need to be real – and a dance card for all the permissions we’ve given for data collectors to record our activities.

March 16, 2018 0