Tech at Night: Clarence Thomas is right about regulation

As I sit here at nearly 1am, I fear I may be getting my second cold, 7 days from the previous one. I blame tourists.

Clarence Thomas once wrote something very true about regulation, and the ever-growing power of unaccountable regulators: “We seem to be straying further and further from the Constitution without so much as pausing to ask why.”

FCC, in what it’s been up to under Obama, shows he’s right.

With Net Neutrality it ignored the law and the Constitution, including the first amendment rights of ISPs. now they’re micromanaging VOIP phones and genuinely threatening our privacy with restrictions on encryption.

I’ve long said most Americans don’t care much about privacy. We can tell that by their behaviors online. However the use of strong encryption is one of the ways that those who do care, can protect themselves.

There’s no such thing as a cryptographic backdoor that only the government can use. Any weakening of cryptography weakens it against all threats. That is intolerable.

We don’t even need FCC micromanagement of Internet. Competitive markets do a better job.

Might ICANN risk the privacy of domain name holders? This is why the US must keep oversight, so we can react to bad ideas like this.

There’s no way that comprehensive patent reform is a good idea. The last big patent bill, the ABA-endorsed America Invents Act, made things worse. Don’t pass another big bill.

“JEB” Bush spoke the truth about Snowden. Other Republicans must match him on this.

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