Cuomo's new Usenet target: Comcast

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has found that Comcast won't cave in to his anti-Usenet vendetta as quickly as some other companies, so he's threatening a groundless legal action against Comcast.

The news media have fallen into line, routinely referring to newsgroups as "child porn" in covering Cuomo's censorship campaign. Cuomo may be taking advantage of Comcast's unpopularity for surreptitiously blocking packets in a ham-handed attempt to limit traffic. But tell me, "net neutrality" people, where are you? Isn't an attack on NNTP an attack on net neutrality? Or does the fact that Cuomo's a Democrat make the difference?

Mass. House rejects torture restrictions

The Massachusetts legislature isn't any better than Congress at standing up to torturers. A bill which would have restricted the use of electric shock treatment to cases of "immediate risk of serious physical injury or harm to self or others" had been passed by the Senate. It hardly sounds like a difficult case, does it? But the bill to impose that restriction has been stopped in a conference committee.

This bill is directed at the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, the only institution in the country which still uses electric shocks on a routine basis. It gained notoriety when it subjected two inmates to repeated shocks on the basis of a fraudulent, unconfirmed phone call. All attempts to rein it in legally have failed so far. Torture is pretty popular with politicians these days.

Court overturns "wardrobe malfunction" fine

Do you remember the absurd $550,000 fine which the FCC imposed on CBS for a fleetingly exposed nipple during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime entertainment? The "net neutrality" crowd doesn't; Kevin Martin is their hero, and they want him to have lots of power because he'll use it only to make ISP's play fair. But he declared he was "disappointed for families and parents" when a federal appeals court tossed the fine out.

According to the article, "The court said the FCC deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so "pervasive as to amount to 'shock treatment' for the audience."

Government agencies keep gaining power because people with divergent goals all believe the agencies will carry out their agenda. The left wants the FCC to have the power to enforce "net neutrality"; the right wants it to have the power to enforce "decency." It gets both and everyone complains, but then they start another round of ratcheting up power.

If people ever figure out that handing power over their lives to governmental authority is a bad move, the politicians' and bureaucrats' game is doomed. But that won't happen soon.

China abolishes Net censorship??

The International Olympic Committee has reported that China has reversed its Internet censorship policy thanks to "silent diplomacy." Jacques Rogge proclaims: "For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet."

This would be the headline of the decade from China if it were true. The Great Firewall has been torn down! But as one might say to Maxwell Smart, I find that hard to believe.

Global Voices Advocacy reports that a server lockdown is in progress. The report includes a translated account of a raid on a data center:

This afternoon, I withstood the 35 degree heat and went to Shanghai Telecom's server center to take out a server that I’ve had stored there for three (four?) years already, and I came across something I never imagined.
 
There, unexpectedly, at the gate, were police! Four in total, all in plainclothes, one of which was in the process of filling out a "notification to collect evidence" form. I snuck a peek,and the sending danwei was the Beijing Haidian Office Criminal Investigation Squad.
 
... This incident scared me. Before this, I only knew that servers could be ordered to be unplugged by "the higher authority departments," but I never thought I'd see with my own eyes a machine being taken away by police.

Maybe that was the last incident of its kind. Maybe the machine will be brought right back under the new free-speech policy. Maybe Bin Laden will embrace non-violence and Bush will release all the Guantanamo prisoners who haven't been charged with anything.

But I'll retain a bit of skepticism till I see it happen.

Update: This article helps to explain things. As Rogge puts it, "Freedom of expression is absolutely a human right but there are small limitations. We are a movement of 205 nations, many of whom are in conflict, and the Games are not the place to take political or religious stances." China's Internet is indeed censorship-free -- those "small limitations" on taking a political or religious stance or mentioning unapproved facts aside.

Is Real ID dead?

Louisiana is the latest state to pass anti-Real ID legislation, adding support to the idea that the law is a dead letter. Jim Harper applauds. North Carolina's House has approved similar legislation. The article on that bill mentions some of the assaults on Americans which Real ID will implement, including denial of the right to legal representation:

For example, if the federal government does not recognize North Carolina identification cards as valid, residents employed at the Butner Federal Correctional Complex won't be able to enter their work facilities and attorneys won't be able to enter federal courthouses, [Rep.] Boylan said.

Still, the assumption that the government will just roll over and give up on Real ID is premature. The nearly-overnight reversal of the Washington left on amnesty for telecom snoops serves as a reminder of how little we can trust the Democrats and their media allies. Pro-national ID organizations like the Heritage Foundation (which has resorted to blatant lies) aren't even close to giving up.

Don't expect any help from the Supreme Court. It recently refused to consider a challenge to the Real ID provisions which allow Homeland Security to ignore any law it finds inconvenient, even though they're a plain violation of the equal protection clause.

Is Real ID dead? We'll see. Don't count the feds out until it's over.