A lot of companies are criticizing the proposal, but unlike five years ago, they’re weighed down by the existence of an entire ransomware industry that depends on cryptocurrency. We also dig into the proposal of a global regulatory alliance, Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”), to impose some fairly strict requirements on cryptocurrency transactions. My view: this decision was overdetermined, a perfect storm of bad politics, poor decisions by China Telecom, and the fact that no American company has ever been licensed to do in China what China Telecom has spent 20 years doing in the United States. Maury Shenk and I dig into the FCC’s decision to kick China Telecom off the U.S. Dave criticizes the broad language, the assumption that hacking for the government teaches things you can’t learn in the private sector, and the use of criminal penalties where reporting obligations would suffice. I plug a podcast on the topic released by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. In this episode, Dave Aitel and I dig into the new criminal law the House intelligence committee has proposed for workers at intelligence agencies. The proposal is driven by the bad decisions of three intel agency alumni who worked for the UAE, doing phone hacking and other intrusions under the sobriquet of Project Raven.
