Big Government

MP3 Speech at Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania Conference

On Saturday, I gave a talk at the Pennsylvania Libertarian Party state convention.  There were so many great folks there and it was a pleasure to speak to a savvy, friendly audience.  Richard Schwarz did a pitch-perfect introduction that set the tone for the talk.  It’s hard not to like a guy who is always wearing a Phillies baseball cap.

Meanwhile, in Russia…

It’s going to be much harder to view the full web in Russia before the year is out. President Putin has signed a law that, as of November 1st, bans technology which lets you access banned websites, including virtual private networks and proxies. Internet providers will have to block websites hosting these tools. The measure is ostensibly meant to curb extremist content, but that’s just pretext — this is really about preventing Russians from seeing content that might be critical of Putin, not to mention communicating in secret.

No to (some) secret EU court proceedings

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg today ruled in favour
of the German civil liberties activist and pirate party member Patrick
Breyer (Commission vs. Breyer, C-213/15 P): It ordered the Commission
to give the press and the public access to the pleadings exchanged in
completed court proceedings. In the present case Breyer successfully
demanded the Commission disclose Austrian pleadings concerning the
non-transposition of the controversial EU Data Retention Directive.