Bush's amnesty demands continue

There isn't much new to Bush's latest demands that the House pass the FISA bill he wants. He continues to threaten to veto the bill if it doesn't include telecom amnesty, even though he considers it vital to American security. He continues to declare that the telecom companies won't cooperate with legitimate investigations if they don't have amnesty, thus effectively encouraging such behavior. He claims that the litigation "would require the disclosure of state secrets that could lead to the public release of highly classified information," which is a bare-faced lie about how such legal proceedings work.

The one new thing, or at least one which I haven't noticed before, is his claim that "this litigation would be unfair, because any companies that assisted us after 9/11 were assured by our government that their cooperation was legal and necessary." If the administration gave this advice in good faith, then what is he worried about? The courts will dismiss the suits if they have no legal basis. If, on the other hand, the advice was duplicitous and intended to lure the telecoms into breaking the law, it doesn't take them off the hook; they should have checked with their own lawyers.

Legislator seeks to ban anonymous online speech

A bill introduced by Rep. Tim Couch in the Kentucky legislature would ban anonymous online speech. The penalty would be imposed on Web site operators, not on individuals making posts, so it isn't clear whether it would have any effect beyond making all discussion boards move out of Kentucky. This would be similar to requirements imposed by the Chinese government, and for all Couch's "protect the children" talk, it serves the same purpose -- to intimidate those who would speak freely. Correction: China withdrew its requirement last year, so Kentucky would actually be more repressive than China in this respect.

Contact info on Couch is available here. Although he wants to force everyone else to expose their email addresses to spammers, he uses a web form rather than publishing his address.

Link to the bill. Rep. Jimmy Higdon is listed as a co-sponsor.

Update: Couch has admitted the bill he proposed is unconstitutional.

"Market failure" in privacy?

Ed Felten discusses the low cash value which people seem to place on privacy, and concludes that this demonstrates a "market failure." The cause of the failure is that businesses are allegedly unable to guarantee long-term data privacy in a convincing and understandable way. However sincere the management of a company may be, it can't guarantee the behavior of future buyers.

The words "market failure" should be regarded with concern. They're usually followed by "and the government has to do something about it." Is there really a market failure in privacy, or do people simply put a low premium on privacy in their economic choices? To try to answer this, we can look at people's behavior where their privacy is entirely under their own control. There's a lot of evidence, anecdotally and from my personal experience, that they don't value their privacy enough to significantly change their behavior. I'm talking about actions such as limiting the duration of cookies, disabling JavaScript, and declining to provide their e-mail addresses. I do it, and maybe you do, but how much attention to most people pay to these things? My experience suggests not much.

This may not be totally unreasonable. The result of losing privacy to businesses is mostly annoyance. You get more junk mail and telemarketing calls, but nothing really disastrous is likely to happen.

The situations which are of greatest concern are loss of information to criminals and to the government, but neither of these are affected by a business's privacy policy. A business which is sloppy and lets crooks steal large amounts of customer data is going to suffer in its reputation; there's no market failure there. Having governments demand information, on the other hand, is something which no business can control. There is a market failure for privacy in this case, but it's government-induced. The potential consequences of having overly suspicious or hostile government officials intercept your private communications are much worse than having your phone number fall into the hands of a telemarketer, but you can't expect your ISP or phone provider to prevent it. (Indeed, your phone provider may well have broken the law to provide the government with access to private communications.)

The only market failure in privacy is in protection of your information from governmental bodies. In this case, "the government has to do something about it" isn't the solution, but the problem.

The Quantico circuit

Evidence continues to grow that the Bush administration has been running an illegal domestic surveillance program of huge dimensions.

Daily Kos smears libertarians

I need to let you know that I haven't made a single post about the FISA battle. Nor has Cato. Nor has the Technology Liberation Front blog. Nor has Reason.

All those links are just figments of your imagination. Don't believe your eyes. Believe Daily Kos: "Kos has brought this up before, but it really is worth calling out the so-called 'libertarians' and their complete and total absence during our FISA fight."

I'd have left a comment on that post pointing out that "awkawk" is lying, but I can't find any way to post a comment. I think you have to be a registered user -- which explains why the commenters cheerfully confirm the lie. Can't have outsiders interfering with their consensus reality.

University apologizes to Quaker teacher

California State University East Bay reinstated the job of Marianne Kearney-Brown, who had been fired for annotating her state loyalty oath to affirm rather than swear, and to note her refusal to take up arms. The university attached a note to the oath, stating that "[s]igning the oath does not carry with it any obligation or requirement that public employees bear arms or otherwise engage in violence."

It's very good to see the university back down where it was so obviously wrong. But that still doesn't explain why the state requires loyalty oaths of its employees in the first place. The job of a teacher is to teach, not to "defend the Constitution." Getting elected officials to observe their oaths to uphold the Constitution would be a better use of resources.