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Regulation of the Day 194: Facebook Friends

by Ryan Young on August 10, 2011

in Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

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Missouri has a new law that bans teachers from becoming Facebook friends with any current or former student. The goal is to prevent inappropriate teacher-student relationships.

There are several points to make here. The first is that this is what parenting writer Lenore Skenazy calls “worst first” thinking. It’s rooted in black swan bias, a cognitive defect in the human brain that overestimates the frequency of rare but horrifying risks. Black swan bias has led to, among other things, the creation of the TSA.

Here, the concern is pedophilia. Statistically, it is extremely rare. But it is so horrifying that legislators and the parents who vote for them take precautions completely out of proportion to the actual threat. They assume the worst first. Ready, FIRE!, aim. [click to continue…]

Are Text Messages an Antitrust Issue?

by Ryan Young on March 17, 2011

in Economy, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Text messages cost 20 cents to send, even though they use a fraction of a penny of bandwidth. What gives? Antitrust authorities want to know.

Over at The American Spectator, I explain that it is likely a case of unbundling:

Maybe phone companies are unbundling texting from their other services. That way the only people who pay for text messages are the people who use them. If phone companies don’t have to provide texting service for people who don’t want it, they can keep costs down and charge lower prices.

This is much more fair to customers:

Why not just give all customers unlimited texting and charge a higher monthly bill? That would punish people who don’t text, such as this writer. By eschewing the flat rate and tolerating a few texts per month from family and friends who haven’t been properly trained, non-texters can save $50 or more per year.

Monopolists (and oligopolists) don’t behave that way. Companies competing against each other on price do. Trustbusters are forgetting something else, too. If a monopoly exists at all, it is very temporary.

It turns out that a young company called Beluga makes a free texting application for smartphones. Few things are as temporary as monopoly (or oligopoly) power. Since Beluga bypasses the texting cartel, you can have unlimited texting without the $5 monthly fee. Think of it as Skype for the text messaging set.

Read the whole article here.

LibertyWeek 95: Tea Party in a China Shop?

by Richard Morrison on June 1, 2010

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Richard Morrison and Jeremy Lott welcome special guest David Freddoso to Episode 95 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We take a look at Tea Party politics in the next Congress, climate secrecy at the University of Virginia, consumers getting SLAPPed in court and the Blago corruption trial proceeding in Chicago.

LibertyWeek 93: Tea Party Euro Trip

by Richard Morrison on May 17, 2010

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Richard Morrison and Jeremy Lott welcome Reason magazine Senior Editor Michael Moynihan to Episode 93 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We take on the high-profile congressional primaries, Chuck Schumer’s hypocritical stance on privacy, the fight for wine liberation in New York, passing the buck on debit card fees and we embark on a Tea Party Euro Trip.

Radia reacts to Zittrain in NY Times

by Gary Howard on July 27, 2009

in Tech & Telecom

CEI Information Policy Analyst Ryan Radia responds to Jonathan Zittrain’s “Lost in the Cloud” in today’s New York Times.  Read it here or see below.

To the Editor:

In discussing the privacy risks that have accompanied the growth of the Internet, Prof. Jonathan Zittrain rightly bemoans the willingness of governments to violate individuals’ privacy rights. Unfortunately, he proposes new legal restrictions that would stifle online innovation while doing little to enhance consumer privacy.

Mr. Zittrain proposes a “fair practices law” that would require companies to release personal data back to users upon request. Such a rule may sound workable, but purging specific data across globally dispersed server farms is no simple endeavor. Who is to pay for the implementation of such privacy procedures – especially for free services like Facebook or Twitter that have yet to turn a profit?

A better approach to online privacy is to educate users on safeguarding personal information. Ultimately, however, the only foolproof approach to protecting sensitive data online is to simply not disclose it.


Is Facebook Violating Federal Wiretapping Laws?

by Ryan Radia on May 14, 2009 · 2 comments

in Privacy, Tech & Telecom

Facebook has been at the center of a controversy involving its moderation policies and The Pirate Bay, a popular Bittorrent tracker that was found guilty of copyright infringement by a Swedish court last month. Since early April, Facebook has enforced a “site-wide” ban on links to The Pirate Bay – including those in private messages.

This practice may run afoul of federal wiretapping statutes that bar service providers from “intercepting” private messages, according to an article that appeared on Wired Threat Level last week. Wired quotes Kevin Bankston, a senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who explains that Facebook’s practice raises “serious questions about whether Facebook is in compliance with federal wiretapping law.”

It’s important to draw a distinction between the traditional notion of “wiretapping” and Facebook’s “interception” of user messages, which doesn’t involve any human intervention. Regardless of how the courts may interpret ancient laws like the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, an automated computer system flagging and deleting certain strings from user messages simply isn’t comparable to a third party secretly listening in on a private phone conversation.

Besides, Facebook makes clear to its users from the get-go that their messages and postings are subject to a set of rules (which Facebook lays out in plain English). If Facebook believes a message or posting is against the rules, it can block or remove it. This is not an unreasonable rule; many online discussion forums have enforced similar policies since the Web’s early days. Such filtering is possible only if sites can “examine” messages to identify misconduct.

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LibertyWeek 41: SCOTUS Scurry

by Richard Morrison on May 5, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist team up with special guest co-host Jeremy Lott to bring you Episode 41. We begin with a farewell to famed quarterback, Republican Congressman and former CEI Distinguished Fellow Jack Kemp. We then move on to China’s flu-related roundup of Mexican nationals, the race to replace Justice Souter and the new opportunity to SuperPoke the President of the United States. We round out the show with Andrew Cuomo’s allegations of scandal and a modest helping of Olympic News.

LibertyWeek 33: Drinking Our Way to Economic Health

by Richard Morrison on March 10, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Welcome to Episode 33 of the LibertyWeek podcast, with your hosts Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist and technical producer (and this week’s special guest) Ryan Young. After bidding our friend Thor Halvorssen a very happy birthday, we get a fresh recap from Ryan Young on the events of the Free State Project’s recent Liberty Forum in Nashua, New Hampshire (photos). Google’s CEO spurns Twitter (transcript via TechCrunch) in Technology News, John McCain and Richard Shelby say that the government should end the bailouts and let poorly-managed banks go bankrupt, and brewers pin their hopes on robust St. Patrick’s Day sales in this week’s edition of Beer News. Next, we go abroad for Scandal Watch where the Chinese government is cracking down on sub-optimal milk quality and finally back home to America for Olympic News, where the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee is calling it quits.

The honor of Tweet of the Week™ goes to dan_hayes of Reason.tv!