Christopher Leger

Ars Technica alerted me to a very heartening story about a Harvard Law class defending a Boston University student against an RIAA filesharing lawsuit. These students are the future of the legal profession, and they themselves understand how technology can impact the law, regardless of the tactics the RIAA use in the future. The two [...]

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Google, the New America Foundation, and the PlanetLab Consortium have put together a new toolkit to help you keep an eye on your ISP. Until and unless the federal government requires ISPs to conform to Network Neutrality, it is up to consumers to keep their ISPs honest. Tools like this are invaluable as a method [...]

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With another Obama administration official coming straight from the Biden/RIAA wing of the Democratic party, it appears less and less likely that the Obama administration will be anywhere near as consumer friendly as even the Bush administration was. I think that the odds are better than average that we may look back at Kevin Martin’s [...]

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If any office in the country needs an IT infrastructure and policy upgrade, it is the White House. It sounds woefully inadequate for even the most rudimentary office work, let alone as the base from which to run the free world.

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Just like the debacle with the Scorpion’s album cover on Wikipedia, a controversial image has made the entire Internet archive unavailable to the UK. The heavy handed approach that the UK appears to be becoming more and more comfortable using is looking more and more like the great Chinese firewall, with zero regard for personal [...]

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According to this New York Times article an unnamed telecommunications company challenged the constitutionality of the warrantless wiretapping program in a secret FISA claim and refused to comply with the order until the court ruled on the constitutional questions. Very few times do I think that telecommunication companies have their customer’s best interest at heart, [...]

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Declan McCullagh has an interesting piece on CNet today about a NSA-certified handheld that may be the next president’s portable device of choice. The General Dynamics Sectera Edge basically builds encryption and data security into every aspect of a standard Windows Mobile device. This level of data security may be a requirement for the president, [...]

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Will technology finally get used properly in all federal agencies? Washington DC is not known for rapid change, but having technology at the forefront of the changeover to the Obama administration gives me hope that agencies will become more open and responsive.

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The telcos would be laughed out of the room if they didn’t have so much lobbying power. They are deadly serious in fighting any regulation, and proponents of a fair and free Internet should redouble their efforts to enact net neutrality regulation before the situation becomes worse.

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Will a President Obama be good for Federal technology policy? Only time can tell, but his campaign’s use of technology gives me hope that he understands the opportunity that technology offers the country. As I have argued many times, an understanding of technology is missing from far too many legislators and regulators, so, hopefully, this [...]

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