That's what the Post told readers in noting opposition to Senator Dodd's bill. Of course just because they say that they are worried about their ability to provide cheap credit to consumers does not mean that this is actually their concern. Lobbyists sometimes do not tell the truth.

--Dean Baker

Alan Greenspan refused to acknowledge responsibility for the housing bubble again in a talk given at Brookings yesterday. It would have been helpful if the NYT had provided some additional history to point out to readers that what Greenspan was claiming was not true.

For example, Greenspan asserted that: "Unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some form of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be infeasible. ....Assuaging their aftermath seems the best we can hope for.”

Rather than using the Fed's research and ability to shape public debate to warn of the bubble, Greenspan repeatedly insisted that there was no housing bubble. He even encourage homebuyers to take out adjustable rate mortgages at the end of 2003 when fixed rate mortgages were near a 50-year low. In fact, the Fed even published a study saying that there had been no run-up in prices -- rather the widely increase was attributable to measurement error.

Greenspan also bizarrely claimed that the people taking out adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) to buy homes at bubble-inflated prices would have used fixed rate mortgages if ARMs had not been available. In fact, many buyers would not have qualified for 30-year fixed rate mortgages if banks had applied normal lending standards.

Given the enormous damage caused by the housing bubble and its collapse, the idea that the Fed could and should do nothing is bizarre. It would have been reasonable to present the views of an economist who could have explained how the Fed is not powerless to prevent an economic calamity.

--Dean Baker

About a year ago we learned that the innovative art purveyors behind the 20×200 Project had partnered with designer Matt Jones to release Get Excited and Make Things, and that all proceeds were to go to CC. We thought this was the coolest way for our friends and fans to support art and Creative Commons both – and have an exhibition-quality print to show for it! Turns out they felt the same way: a year later, Creative Commons has received a total of $13,490 from the edition, which has nearly sold out.

Good news! You can still get your very own print while at the same time showing some love for CC. There remain only 139 of the original 730 prints (varying sizes), so get one today and help us sell out the edition. If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to support CC, this is it!

This is just one of the many, many ways you can show support for the organization that has helped you and thousands of other excited makers of things tap into and become a vital part of the creativity and innovation that surround all of us on the web. Donate, shop at our online store, follow us on Twitter, join us on Facebook, and ensure Creative Commons is around for as long as creative, scientific, academic, and entrepreneurial minds need us.

Today, EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel testified in a congressional hearing on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Obama administration. David's testimony outlined the disconnect between the White House's strong message on open government and the bureaucratic resistance to transparency in general.

The Obama administration marked a sea-change in official statements of policy about the FOIA, with the president directing agencies to have a "presumption of openness." But while the president and other top officials have said the right things, government agencies are still withholding wide swaths of information, and government attorneys are reflexively defending the practice when we are forced to take our FOIA cases to court.

Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, specifically told agencies that the Department of Justice would only defend FOIA denials under very narrow circumstances. However, EFF and other transparency groups have not noticed any substantial change. So we joined these other organizations in asking the DOJ to periodically publish a list of FOIA lawsuits it has declined to defend under Holder's new guidelines. The DOJ rejected this suggestion, but in EFF's testimony today, David urged lawmakers to request this information themselves and to make it publicly available.

This could be, of course, yet another example of how transparency forces accountability. Today's hearing comes during Sunshine Week, the annual celebration of America's open government laws and the better government that they help encourage. Just this week, the media widely reported the information EFF received on how law enforcement agencies use social networking sites to gather information in investigations. We are very proud of the breadth of information EFF's FOIA work has brought to light -- information that would have remained out of the public eye without the Freedom of Information Act and our litigation.

For FOIA to do the work the law is meant to do -- foster transparency, force accountability, and fight needless secrecy -- we need to keep fighting for honest disclosure. Read David's full testimony for all of EFF's suggestions to Congress. We hope lawmakers soon do good work on this important issue.

Today, the Kentucky Supreme Court reversed a state court of appeals ruling blocking an attempt by the Commonwealth of Kentucky to seize 141 domain names allegedly tied to illegal gambling. The Kentucky Supreme Court held that while many of the arguments presented in opposition to the seizure order were "compelling" and that they "may have merit," the Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association (iMEGA) and the Interactive Gaming Council (IGC) lacked standing to bring the challenge because it was not clear that they represented any party actually affected by the order. The Supreme Court explicitly noted that "[i]f a party that can properly establish standing comes forward, the writ petition giving rise to these proceedings could be re-filed with the Court of Appeals."

The case began in late 2008 when, in a move to combat what it viewed as illegal online gambling, the Commonwealth of Kentucky convinced a state court to order the "seizure" of 141 domain names because the names allegedly constituted "gambling devices" that are banned under Kentucky law -- even though the sites were owned and operated by individuals outside of the state, and in many cases even outside of the country. Unless the sites screened out Kentucky users, the court held, the seizure order was proper. Despite the lack of extra-territorial authority of Kentucky state courts, some out-of-state registrars complied with the order and froze users' domain names.

In amicus briefs filed with the Court of Appeals and the Kentucky Supreme Court in support of a writ vacating the trial court's order, EFF, Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued that the First Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and the Due Process Clause of the Constitution prohibit state courts from interfering with Internet domain names that were registered and maintained outside the state.

EFF expects to participate as amicus in future proceedings if and when the affected domain name registrants continue their challenge to the trial court's ruling.

Virginia deploys a Web chat device for $1,000 that quadruples the number of customers that service representatives can handle simultaneously.

HTTPS is the backbone of web security. The protocol, which is also commonly known as the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), is what guarantees we can use the web to transmit sensitive information — financial, medical, or other — with relative confidence that it won't be intercepted or stolen. EFF has been arguing for years that best practices demand that all sensitive data be sent exclusively over SSL.

Unfortunately, most major providers of web-based email and other sensitive web-based services do not even give their users the option of using SSL, let alone turn it on by default. As a result, countless terabytes of sensitive data are transmitted over the Internet insecurely every day, greatly contributing to online fraud, data-theft and surveillance by authoritarian regimes.

Now, the Federal Trade Commission has officially put these companies on-notice. In a speech before an FTC roundtable yesterday, outgoing FTC Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour called on Web services services like Yahoo!, Facebook and Hotmail to start using HTTPS/SSL encryption.

Google has recently shown leadership in this space, by enabling HTTPS for Gmail, as well as making it the default behavior so that even users who don't understand security will be protected. It's time for other services (including Google Search!) to catch up with Gmail.

As Commissioner Harbour put it:

These vulnerabilities are easily preventable. Security needs to be a default in the cloud.

We couldn't agree with her more.

Worried about plans for California's "smart grid"? We are too. Energy usage data, with new hyper-close monitoring provided by the "smart grid", allows intimate reconstruction of your household activities -- like when you wake up, when you come home, and when you go on vacation.

These concerns sparked our comments to the state's Public Utilities Commission last week, calling on the agency to consider critical privacy questions as it rolls out its "smart meters" across California. Now there's a chance for you to learn more and weigh in. This Friday, the California PUC is hosting a public hearing in San Francisco from 9:30 a.m to 4:30 p.m. at its headquarters at 505 Van Ness Ave. A panel on ensuring public privacy runs from 10:30 a.m. to noon. We hope to see you there.

Steve Fletcher, Utah's CIO, and Kevin Crawford, Los Angeles' assistant general manager of IT, share their experiences on cloud computing implementation.