[24887] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Script of my national radio report yesterday re
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lauren Weinstein)
Tue Nov 3 12:00:48 2026
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2026 08:48:03 -0800
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
To: privacy-dist@vortex.com
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This is the script of my national radio tech report yesterday
discussing Congress' role in tech after the election. As always there
may have been minor wording variations from this script as I presented
this report live on air.
- - -
Yeah, so we're finally at the election, here on the west coast
election day is tomorrow further east it's already election day and no
matter who the winners and losers are, there will be a whole bunch of
important technology-related issues that the next Congress should be
dealing with.
Obviously two 800 pound gorillas right now are distrust of Big Tech
and AI. There are concerns about data centers, which something over
75% of people reportedly are opposed to, while the federal government
keeps heavily promoting them. Those are likely to be even more central
topics, if that's even possible, for the 2028 election.
Cybersecurity in all its many various aspects is another crucial
topic. Everything from protecting the power grid, water systems, and
other utility systems, to preventing hospitals and other medical
services from being disrupted by cyberattacks, to protection of the
financial system -- by the way there was an over 6 BILLION dollar
cryptocurrency attack just a few days ago, currently being blamed on
North Korea.
Then there's continuing protests from law enforcement, fire
departments, search and rescue organizations, farmers and many more
who are enormously concerned that federal government bans on Chinese
drone technology, which still has never been publicly demonstrated to
be an actual security risk, are seriously impacting the operations of
these groups in very negative, expensive, and sometimes
life-threatening ways, with equivalent and affordable U.S. made drone
substitutes simply not available in their opinions.
The situation is very similar involving federal bans on Chinese made
Internet routers -- which like with drones represent the vast majority
of available devices -- and now even some Chinese made vacuum cleaners
are being banned by the federal government!
That's only a very much shortened partial list of course. These are
all areas where it's Congress that should be taking the lead in
setting standards and regulations to help make sure that important
technologies are available, reliable, and trustworthy. But for many
years now Congress has just been handing over its own responsibilities
to the executive branch, rather than really listening to the people
whom they're supposed to represent. So many crucial technologies are
now being controlled directly by the executive branch and their
closely affiliated billionaire Big Tech CEOs. Again, these
technologies are supposed to be regulated mostly by Congress. So the
new Congress, the Congress that will be elected over the next day or
so, will have a lot to do, and a major part of that should be giving
high priority to making sure that technology serves us, serves the
people, rather than people ending up being forced to serve the whims
of Big Tech.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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