About Jim Harper
Jim Harper is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. A Poli Sci major at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Jim served as Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly in his final year at Hastings College of the Law. Prior to becoming a policy analyst and advocate, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the U.S. House and Senate. Somehow, every situation he has ever encountered has already been depicted on Seinfeld.Posts by Jim Harper
- WashingtonWatch.com Blog Debuts
- Meta (+ It’s Friday and You’re Not Reading Anyway)
- Physician, Heal Thyself
- Save the Orphan (Works)
- Things to Ban While Driving
- Cerf: Nationalize the Internet?
- Did Contributions Buy Telecom Immunity Votes in the House?
- Well, Not Actually for Everyone . . .
- Family Security Matters: REAL ID = National ID
- TSA Background Check Includes Political Party
- The EFF Campaign Against Telecom Company Immunity
- GAO Issues Report on Privacy
- ACLU Off Course
- Nuclear Plans and Privacy
- The Kozinski Kerfuffle: Dueling Privacy Analogies
- Against Google/Yahoo! - I’m not Buying It
- Tim Lee Capitulates to NY Attorney General; Ceases Posting Golden Girls Porn to Usenet Group
- AZ Legislature: No to REAL ID
- The Future of News
- ID Checks are About Control, Not Security
- Orin Kerr: Not an Empty Vessel and Not Responsive to my Point
- Swire on Cybercrime Underenforcement
- Freedom is Diversity
- Should Google Link to Its Privacy Policy From Its Homepage?
- Check Out Melissa Ngo and “Privacy Lives”
- Kerr Defends the Third-Party Doctrine
- UK Libertarian Party: My ‘Car Crash’
- Analysis of Potential Google-Yahoo! Transaction
- Headline Writers’ Lacking Literary Knowledge
- What Will They Think of Next?
- Reversing the Course of a River
- Peer-to-Patent Video
- Don’t Bother to “LifeLock” Yourself
- L-1: The Technology Company in Your Pocket
- REAL ID Deadline Passes - Zero Compliance
- Tracking Your Race and Your Politics
- The Singing Revolution - Held Over Another Week
- Upcoming Event: See South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford Make Sense of the REAL ID Act
- Amateurs Study Cryptography; Professionals Study Economics
- NCSL Calls for Repeal of REAL ID
- MN Gov. Pawlenty Supports National ID Law
- Sensors and Social Consequences
- Monster Cable Look Like Idiots
- ALF 5: Free the Jefferson 1 Fundraiser!
- Chertoff on REAL ID - a Little Off on IT
- Cleland: Google Took $7 Billion
- Superlative REAL ID Editorial
- Obsessed by FISA? Don’t forget CALEA!
- Me on ID
- Last Mile Problem SOLVED!
- Google’s Radical Burning Man Festival Roots
- Fear the Blog Post, Baker!
- L-1 Acquires Digimarc ID Systems
- Well Played, Google. Well Played.
- “Montana Wins REAL ID Standoff”
- Defeating a Defense of Data Mining
- Lessig’s “Change Congress” Announcement
- Stewart Baker: Light on Security and History
- The Foolishness of Andrew Keen
- Mitchell: JCT is Behind the Laffer Curve
- CAN-SPAM Remains a Sideshow
- So Much for Relying on Valleywag
- Joe Nacchio to Get New Trial
- Google and the NSA: A Non-Denial Denial?
- Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant
- One Man’s TSA Experience
- Google: The End is Near!
- RateMyCop.com Enjoying Streisand Effect
- McCullagh on Mass Surveillance
- News Flash: Web Companies Collect Data!
- California Considers Rejecting REAL ID
- Watch-Listing Foolishness
- Computing “in the Cloud”? Not.
- New Telecom Surveillance Whistleblower
- Microsoft Acquires Credentica
- Schneier on REAL ID
- Freetards = Greedtards
- New Paper on Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification
- REAL ID’s Whirling Dervishes
- Senator Collins Still Working to Preserve REAL ID
- Dan Mitchell: Still Lookin’ Good
- Google PHR - Better than HIPAA?
- Politics Online Conference - Reminder
- Business Travel Group Seeks Change to REAL ID
- Soghoian or AT&VerizoMicrosNexis: Who Knows Better How to Handle Data Breach?
- What’s Wrong With This Picture?
- Proliferating Technology Forces Government Transparency
- But Seriously, Secretary Chertoff’s Warnings Against Complacency are Straw Men. What’s Happening is that People are Getting the Threat of Terrorism in Perspective. This May Panic DHS Officials Because it Threatens Their Budget, But it’s a Good Thing.
- Airport Security Technology Stuck in the Pipeline
- Copyright and Football
- Small Non-Profits to Lose Tax-Exempt Status for Failure to File Nonexistent Form
- Yes We Can
- Taxation With Representation
- DHS Was Bluffing
- Politics Online Conference - Comin’ Up!
- Your Privacy vs. The Security They’re Giving You
- ACLU (Nor Cal) Fellowship Announced
- E-Verify: Slow and Unsteady in Arizona
- REAL ID: AAMVA Moving Money Around
- Border Chaos Starts Friday
- Dan Mitchell Makes the Laffer Curve Look Good
- FISA Extension Bill in House on Monday - How Would You Vote?
- Good REAL ID Opinion Piece in L.A. Times
- Public Opinion and Public Choice Lessons in the Brewing FISA Battle
- Bull’s Blood and Revolution
- A Core 9/11 Commission Afterthought
- Privacy Advocacy Overreach
- Metcalfe’s Law + Real ID = More Crime, Less Safety
- Gary Shapiro, the New Bear Grylls
- On the Opening of Google’s New Public Policy Office
- Time Warner to Test Metered Pricing
- Sometimes It’s Rational to Move to New York
- Yoo Makes Padilla’s Case Against Yoo Look Good
- DHS: Require REAL ID for Prescriptions
- Bruce Schneier Runs an Open Wireless Network
- Data Security for Me But Not for Thee
- Heritage Pro-National-ID Event - Must See!
- Digimarc Promoting National ID
- REAL ID Regulations Issued
- Heritage Foundation Event Promoting National ID
- Voter ID and YOU
- On the FBI Biometric Database
- Government Transparency Culture Clash!
- Viguerie Bashes Fox
- Time for a New Plaxo Privacy Pandemonium?
- Cato’s Daily Podcast: Me on Data Breach
- The NSA Needs Juice
- The Great Aussie-nine Censorship Plan
- What if a Googlebomb is a Googledud?
- Odds and Ends - Catching Up on My Reading
- Australian National ID Card Abandoned
- Your Tax Dollars at Work
- Google’s Privacy Tips Video Series
- Wiki-Government
- Homeland Security Law Institute, Jan. 17-18
- A Lonely Voice on REAL ID
- Telco Immunity No-Go, At Least Until Next Year
- Well Meaning, But Without Understanding
- Defeat Terrorism
- We’re shifty, untrustworthy foreigners!
- Bill of Rights Day
- A Smaller Loss Than Before is a ‘Head of Steam’
- DHS Dangles REAL ID Compliance Money in Front of States
- Nepotism, Conflict of Interest, and Really Dumb Stuff
- TechDaily Shutting Down
- Jackass 2.5 to Debut Online, Free
- Cato’s Cavalcade of International Web Sites
- More Thinking on Fingerprinting Visitors to the U.S.
- Mocking Hippie Tech
- Everything You Need to be Anti-
- Welcome to the United States, Criminal Suspect!
- Reports from the Big Open Govt Confab
- New Copyright Bill
- Natty Jo on Telecom Immunity
- Under Market Pressure, Facebook Reverses Privacy Flub
- Digimarc Loses Money in 2007
- Where to Get Your Fake ID
- Heard of ACAP Yet?
- “Computing in the Cloud” - Love It! / Hate It!
- Which Secretary Chertoff Do You Believe?
- Which Law Firm Practice Wins - Government Contracts or Privacy?
- Observation of Dark Energy Shortens the Life of the Universe
- DHS Chief Privacy Officer Sets the Blender on “Pulse”
- More on the UK Identity Breach
- What’s Wrong With This Entrepreneurial Picture?
- The Big UK Data Breach
- Valtrex for Genital Herpes
- WashingtonWatch.com Widget Makes Good
- This is Going Better Than I Expected . . .
- And You Think Bureaucrats Could do Better?
- So You Want Good Broadband Data?
- Spitzer Gives Up, Will Start Over Later
- Better Federal Web Transparency
- Politician Spammers
- Google Policy Fellowship
- So What is Privacy Anyway?
- Amazon’s Recommendation System Works!
- Identity Systems Aren’t Good Security, and Other Lessons From the Chicago Airport Fake ID Story
- An Embarrassingly Poorly Reasoned Paper
- Surveillance Infrastructure Creeps Forward in D.C.
- “Network Neutrality Squad” Announced
- How to Get REAL ID Through: Defang it!
- More From the “What’s the Point?” File
- Spitzer Angles for an Exit
- And Now For Something Completely Different
- The Comcast Kerfuffle: What About Corporate Ethics?
- Spitzer’s Speedy Flip-Flop
- Does Your Senator Support a National ID?
- WashingtonWatch.com’s Got a Widget!
- Solove’s The Future of Reputation
- On the Comcast Kerfuffle: The Market Meme
- Comcast “Traffic Shaping”?
- Jonas on Vegas
- On SSN Overuse: Fight the Power!
- FISA Machination Speculation
- McCullagh: A Law Unto Himself
- Your Pseudonym, LLP
- Jonas: Six Ticks till Midnight
- Governor Spitzer Gets it Right
- The FISA Flood
- Democrats Quiz Telecoms About Spying
- Windley on the iPhone
- Great Production Values, Substantive Lyrics, and . . .
- What Part of “Opposed to Regulation” Don’t You Understand?
- TechCrunch Picks Up the REAL ID / ITAA Story
- Breaking the Internet Network Neutrality Deadlock
- Chertoff Doesn’t Get Privacy Either
- Tyler Cowen Homes in on What Matters
- AOL, Red Hat, and Yahoo Support a U.S. National ID
- Huckabee: REAL ID “A Huge Mistake”
- My SSN Odyssey Continues
- Bureaucrats Trained to Lobby for REAL ID
- DHS Sues to Overturn State Privacy Law
- State Bureaucrats Pushing REAL ID
- DHS Privacy Committee Meets Wednesday
- Not to Mention Defining “Net Neutrality” . . .
- This will not go well . . .
- Baseless Carping from Google
- Ars Outs Justice Department Malfeasance
- Go to Work, Study-Parsers!
- Spymaster McConnell Misrepresents Role of FISA Amendment in Anti-Terrorist Efforts
- 9/11: Comprehensive US Intelligence Failures
- Information is Volatile
- You Don’t Need ID to Fly
- Michael Arrington is a Libertarian
- A Face for Radio . . .
- Eric Schmidt was Tooling Down the Road Looking for a Burger When . . .
- There’s Criticism of the FCC, and Then There’s Criticism of the FCC
- Measuring the Value of Digital Goods
- Liveblogging from the PFF Aspen Summit
- Somehow I Don’t Think Pearl Jam/AT&T is the Shot Heard ‘Round the World
- What Price (Restricted) Freedom?
- The Science of Governing
- Boston Globe Editorial on REAL ID
- CDT Report on Search Privacy
- Good Stuff from Google / The Internet is Not a Cloud!
- “fingerprints could become the next social security number”
- Votes on New FISA Law Available
- Congress Spends $130,000 per foot on I-35 Bridge
- Google/Sprint/Clearwire
- e-gold Puts on a Human Face
- The Statistics and Data Business
- Anti-Point-by-Point
- TSA’s Embarrassing “Double ID” Rule
- How About an “Open” Auction?
- WashingtonWatch.com Partnership with PR Newswire
- REAL ID: Dead Law Walking
- Encrypt Your Stuff, People
- Cato Institute Event on Internet Gambling
- Almost No Tie Between This and Tech Policy
- Feds Seize Rocket Launcher In NJ; In flight path of Newark Airport…
- FreeP on REAL ID
- Ooooooh, We’re All Quaking in our Boots!
- NRSC - On the Barricades!
- Markets Working to Protect Privacy
- Taming - at Least Talking About - the Cookie Monster
- Using the Market to Counter Surveillance
- Government Identification and Control
- Verax, We Have a PR Problem, and PR Firm Problem
- ITAA Lobbies for National ID
- Robinson not so Keen on Keen
- Belgian Ruling: ISPs Must Protect Copyright
- Secrecy is Unsafe
- People Minding Other People’s Business
- ID, Surveillance, and Beer
- New Hampshire Joins REAL ID Rebellion
- Immigration Reform Stumbles Over REAL ID
- UnRealID in Action
- Worker Verification “Vulnerable”
- Do the Math
- DHS Acknowledges Computer Break-Ins
- The Google Public Policy Blog
- AT&T: “American Tracking & Takedown”
- Immigration Reform and the REAL ID Act
- Intellectual “Property”
- WashingtonWatch.com RSS Feeds
- Ever Hear of Killer of Sheep?
- I’ll Take the Frying Pan Over the Fire
- Announcing: Harper’s Law
- And I Get My Marriage Advice From Liz Taylor
- Congress Moves Against NSA Spying
- Google on Anonymizing Server Logs
- DHS Privacy Committee Declines to Endorse REAL ID
- Congress Backs Official Idiocy
- REAL ID Comment Campaign
- Something Was Hinky About Schneier on “Hinky”
- WashingtonWatch.com Has Gone Wiki
- Wow.
- Question Authority
- Link Analysis and 9/11
- The Border . . . is You
- Your Productivity
- If It’s Not a National ID, Then What is It?
- If You’re in North Carolina . . .
- April Fool’s Controversy Wracks TLF!!!!
- American.com 2.0
- Yes. That was an April Fool.
- Story on NAPHSIS Breach - Disappears!
- War is Peace - Freedom is Slavery - Ignorance is Strength - Copyright Law Promotes Creativity
- DEA’s “Submit a Tip” Page
- REAL ID, the Race Card
- Introducing . . . Clown Co.!
- ALF 3 in Review
- Confidentiality
- Users, Generate Some Content on Peer Production / Copyright
- Google Does a Good Thing
- In Honor of Sunshine Week . . .
- The Smart Card Alliance Thinks Privacy Is Bunk
- Blame the Internet! - Not
- Idaho Joins the REAL ID Rebellion
- Let the Sun Shine In
- Some Real World Info on Funky Beats
- A Look Over the Horizon? Look All Around!
- “Amen Brother” and Other Funky Breaks
- Sabrina Safrin at Volokh on Chain Reactions in IP
- Cavalcade of C@L REAL ID Posts
- You Can’t Compete With Tim Lee
- Gumming Up the Internet - For the Children
- The Multi-Function iPhone
- Incompetent Parents Sue MySpace
- And Speaking of Net Neutrality . . . .
- Column in WaPo on Net Neutrality
- Identity Crisis Book Forum Thursday at Cato
- Free to Choose. Free.
- “Data Mining Doesn’t Catch Terrorists”
- Open Business Models and Privacy
- Ideology and Critical Infrastructure Protection
- OK Go: Story and Meta-Story
- If Thanksgiving Travel Woes Get You Down . . .
- Why There’s No Cure for the Common Cold
- State Department Tech? Only When it Serves Us . . .
- Legal Process is Good Business
- Gannett to Use Peer Production
- Kahn on ‘Net Neutrality
- Government Doing Too Much
- Fake Boarding Pass Generator Analyzed
- Meet Grandma at the Gate This Thanksgiving!
- Does Online Vigilantism Make Sense?
- Should Government Identity Documents Use RFID?
- Loathesome Police Incompetence
- Antigua: Land of the Free
- Google Office vs. Government “Request”
- Has Wu Been Reading Lee?
- How Again is this a Good Use of My Tax Dollars?
- Tower Records R.I.P.
- WSJ Weighs in Against ‘REAL Bad ID’
- Interesting Peer Production Paper
- David Friedman on the Gift Economy
- Baltimore Sun: Deep-Six REAL ID
- Cato Unbound - Migrating Toward National ID?
- Welcome Hance Haney!
- Why Not Regulation
- Privacy Debacle Top Ten
- Watching the “Lack of Competition” Meme
- Wireless Progress - and the Challenge Not Yet Met
- An Embarrassing Public Pants-Wetting
- TechCrunch Gets It
- Technology Beats Law, Part Deux
- ID-Based Security is Broken - and Can’t be Fixed
- Getting to Government Transparency
- A Cavalcade of Cross-Posting
- Broadband Bad News is Good News . . . but it’s Bad News
- Authorization = Identification or Alternatives + Authentication
- The Markle Foundation: Font of Evil II
- Tool! or “How to Ruin a Perfectly Good New Album with Talk of Copyright Policy”
- RFID Everywhere! Someday. Maybe.
- More World Cup Tech Stories
- Vacationing With RFID Chips
- Open Source and Car Culture
- Data Retention on the Move
- Ugh. U.S. Federal Political Meddling at ICANN re: TLDs?
- When is Market Power Not Market Power?
- Internet-Tapping Revealed
- “Net Neutrality” Grasstroturf
- Submitted for your Disapproval: RFID in Government IDs
- The Beauty of Derivative Works
- Consumer Demand Solves “Net Neutrality”
- TechLawJournal Parses Phone Company Denials
- Identification: Who do People Trust?
- NSA Spying. Who’s to Blame?
- Ice Cold Beer and Red Hot Surveillance
- Knitting Together the Corporate Surveillance State
- The Copyright Conversation Continues
- Copyright Conference Up for Downloading
- Alcohol Wants to be Free
- Big Brother Trips Over a Small State
- Will New Hampshire Refuse a National ID?
- Blogosphere Hails Tim Lee’s DMCA Paper
- ISP Liability in England (oh yeah, and Wales too)
- A “Promoting Progress” Data Point
- Privacy and Security Reconciled at Last!
- More Voyeurism
- Loading More into the Shopping Cart
- Tim Lee Betting Pool
- Gettin’ Intellectual About Property
- On Censorship and Third-Party Data
- Cato Unbound: “Internet Liberation: Alive or Dead?”
- Gadget Hacking - RFID
- Perspectives on Piracy
- Building the Cellular Surveillance State
- Data Security Debate on News.com
- It’s Not Just an Ideology
- CAGW on Real ID
- Savaging European Bureaucrats HOWTO
- You want a ‘blog entry, Adam? You got it!
- When Is a Market Not a Market?
- While you have been . . .
- Good Technology Used the Wrong Way
- Colossally Flawed Spam Study
- Searing Criticism, Unhappy Author
- Who’s Winning the Race to Control Spyware?
- Another Small, Grudging Advance for Contract Law
- A Small, Grudging Advance for Contract Law
- 81 Pages of Speech Restriction
- On ICANN: Wish I’da Wrote This
- Actual Artists Don’t Dislike P2P So Much
- And No One Knows How to Run RFID Systems
- RFID Everywhere? Think again.
- School + Cyber = Savin’s, but School + Cyber + Public=BIG$$
- Privacy International - Camera Phone Design Mandates
- Welcome Words from Twomey
- International Bureaucrats to Seize Control of the Internet
- Just Hit Delete, Bob!
- National ID on the March - or Maybe the Stroll
- The Markle Foundation: Font of Evil
- When Ignorant Parents Attack
- More on RFID
- PPI on RFID
- I’m Shocked - Shocked! There’s Lobbying in Washington!
- Internet Pathologies: 2 Congress: 0
- On Video Voyeurism
- Spyware Legislation Top 10
