Tech Policy Podcast

Last week, the National Security Agency (NSA) announced it was ending a surveillance practice known as “about collection.” It’s one piece of a larger puzzle called “Section 702,” the legal authority behind some of the programs first revealed to the public in the Snowden leaks of 2013. While “about collection” is focused on surveillance of foreign communications, Americans’ data are routinely swept...

Yesterday, at the Newseum in Washington, DC, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai outlined his vision for the future of Internet regulation, including a plan to undo "Title II." In 2015, Pai's predecessor, Tom Wheeler, reclassified broadband Internet as a "common carrier" service under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act. Net neutrality activists say that public utility regulations are necessary to have a fr...

How does immigration impact the tech sector? Recently, President Trump ordered federal agencies to review the H-1B visa program, which is used by many tech companies to fill roles they claim can't be filled by Americans. As a candidate, Trump took tough stances on immigration. Should tech companies be worried? Could the review actually improve the program by rooting out fraud and abuse? What role...

Congress and the White House tried, and failed, to repeal and replace Obamacare. Since then, their focus has shifted to other priorities — in particular, reforming America’s tax code. It’s been decades since Congress did any significant reform, but there’s generally widespread agreement that our tax code is too long, too complicated, and riddled with loopholes. What would a lower corporate tax rat...

Is tech policy stuck in the past? Does innovation move faster than government’s ability to keep up? Are we fighting over what to do with last year’s products, when we should be planning for what lies ahead? Evan is pleased to welcome to the show Austin Carson, Executive Director at TechFreedom. Previously, he worked in Congress on a variety of tech policy issues, including encryption, cybersecurit...

Would you agree to stand in a police line-up if you never committed a crime? Probably not. But if you have a drivers’ license, you might be in a perpetual, digital line-up. 18 states allow the FBI to scan your license photo, and many states allow local law enforcement to do the same. One in two American adults — that’s about 125 million people —  are in the FBI’s facial recognition database, and m...

HomeAway, Airbnb, and other short-term rental platforms are at war with cities across the country. Nashville’s Downtown has the highest hotel rate in the U.S. — even pricier than New York and San Francisco. Despite that, the city council passed a law capping the number of second homes in a neighborhood that can be rented out to tourists. In a lawsuit brought by the Beacon Center, a local think tan...

Earlier this month, Wikileaks published 9,000 pages of hacked CIA files. The haul, dubbed “Vault 7,” catalogues some of the spy agency’s hacking techniques, including exploits of Android and iOS phones, and even Samsung Smart TVs. When the feds discover vulnerabilities in the products we use, should they tell the companies so they can patch things up? Or does the government sometimes need to keep...

Who's in charge of the universe? "Innovative space activities" like asteroid mining and private missions to Mars raise key questions for countries and their regulators. Can you "plant a flag" on an asteroid? How can countries cooperate in space without interfering with each other? Is the "weaponization of space" a growing concern between the US, Russia, and China? Congress is trying to figure out...

Blogging in the United States isn’t risk free. You might get deluged by trolls, or even receive death threats. But it’s nothing compared to what happens in Ethiopia when bloggers find themselves on the wrong side of their government. Endalk Chala is the founder of Zone 9, named in reference to an infamous Ethiopian prison divided into eight zones — the oppressed country itself being the ninth. A d...

Big-box retailers have long griped that untaxed online sales put them at a competitive disadvantage. Congress is exploring legislation to “level the playing field,” but will the solution be worse than any perceived problems caused by e-commerce? Supporters of bills like the “Marketplace Fairness Act” say that states and cities are being starved of lost revenue from Internet sales. But critics char...

Should the government pay for broadband? In his joint address to Congress, President Trump laid out plans to spend a lot of taxpayer money on infrastructure. Many in the tech community want some of that money to go toward broadband, but will that actually help get people online? What about subsidies? Uncle Sam has long subsidized telephone service for low-income Americans. Will broadband subsidies...

Innocent Americans don’t like getting spied on by their government. But should they care when their government spies on foreigners? Countries do this all the time for intelligence purposes, right? Congress even authorized our government to do this in Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. But in the Digital Age, it’s increasingly common for large swaths of the American public to communicate with...

What are the privacy rights of non-US citizens? The Trump Administration’s crackdown on immigration has dominated the headlines. But while most of the focus is understandably on detentions and deportations, privacy could actually decide who stays and who goes in some cases. A recent executive order reverses long-standing policies that gave certain non-US persons rights under the Privacy Act, inclu...

Are you a “cord-cutter?” Did your ditch your cable bundle for Netflix? Or, maybe you remembered that you can still get over-the-air television for free with a cheap antennae? Watching NFL games in high-def for free is pretty sweet, but wouldn’t it be even sweeter if the games were in 4K or Ultra HD? The technology might be right around the corner for households, as broadcasters have invented a new...

Property rights in the US are rooted in the physical world — your house and your car are yours . But does this concept transfer to the digital world? It’s not so simple. When you share data about yourself in exchange for free services, who owns the data? You? The company? Third-party advertisers? This question is a lightning rod in tech policy debates over privacy, data security, and government su...

If you're a regular listener of this podcast, you've probably heard many episodes where TechFreedom President Berin Szóka rants about telecom and the FCC. That's always fun, of course, but on today's show we're bringing you a different view. For those who supported much of the Obama-era FCC's policies, how are they reacting to President Trump? Phillip Berenbroick, Senior Policy Counsel at Public K...

“Connected cars” are increasingly a staple of modern life. Today, that might just mean that your car has a 4G connection to distract your kids during a long drive. But as the “Internet of Things” continues to grow, having a connected car will mean a lot more than streaming Netflix for your backseat passengers. How will cars communicate with the roads, highways, and with each other? Recently, the F...

This week, President Trump announced his pick to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who currently serves on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, has sparked a lot of controversy among progressives over social issues, but what about his views on tech? With a solid record on warrant requirements and 4th Amendment issues, should the Left fi...

When Pokémon Go launched last summer, 40 million people were playing the game within weeks. The game provided entertainment, an excuse for kids to get off their asses, and a slew of funny — and not-so-funny — accidents involving pedestrians and drivers playing the game in the wrong place and time. This phenomenon was also the first time many Americans had ever heard of or experienced “augmented re...

Early this week, the White House confirmed that President Trump picked FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai to chair the agency. This means that Republicans have a 2-1 majority until the vacancies can be filled by candidates confirmed by the Senate. While some of his more hysterical critics pull their hair out over the impending “death of the Open Internet,” others are looking forward to a new direction at t...

The holidays are a time to eat, drink, and be merry. That last one might have been an issue for residents of Maryland if ridesharing had disappeared on December 23, two days before Christmas. That's because state regulators had until December 22 to decide whether Uber and Lyft would have to fingerprint their drivers as part of background checks. If fingerprinting were mandated, the two companies w...

We're back! After a not-so-brief holiday hiatus, we'll be back in your favorite podcast app with normal regularity -- meaning 2-3 episodes per week but sometimes different. Anyway... Evan and Berin recap some of TechFreedom's favorite issues of 2016, look ahead to 2017, and make baseless predictions on what might happen in tech policy. 150 episodes in one year ain't bad, right? But can you leave u...

If the hotel lobby had its way, what would happen to Airbnb? Well, we don’t have to wonder, because the American Hotel and Lodging Association has released model legislation to regulate short-term rentals. Will the bill level the playing field between online homesharing platforms and hotels? Or is this just an attempt by the AHLA to insulate its members from competition? Evan discusses the bill wi...

Driverless cars are all the rage in the tech world. But as our cars get smarter, will our roads keep pace? The autonomous future has the potential to drastically reduce, or even eliminate, vehicular deaths. But many experts say these cars would need to rely on real-time data collected on the road to maximize safety. Is roadside sensor infrastructure the answer? Or will the cars themselves have eve...