The EU, in declining to impose net neutrality regulations, adds to the growing mountain of evidence that whatever political support may have existed in the past for net neutrality regulation -- has rapidly evaporated.

• The EU's lead Digital official, Neelie Kroes, said: "We have to avoid regulation which might deter investment and efficient use of the available resources."

This important official International development comes on the heels of:

• The mid-term election results showing net neutrality did not garner any measurable political support;
• House Chairman Waxman's endorsement of short-term enforcement-only authority in proposed legislation;
• ~300 members of this Congress writing the FCC in opposition to Title II telephone regulation of the Internet; and
• No evidence of any actionable net neutrality problems to address in the sector.

Simply, all of the official developments and evidence that matter since the FCC proposed to regulate the Internet as a telephone network last spring, have been in opposition to it.

Hackers have discovered a new serious security vulnerability in certain Android smartphones that is not easily or quickly patched because of Android's open and fragmented platform -- per Joseph Menn's report in the FT.

• Specifically an HTC Android browser vulnerability enables a hacker to take broad control of an Android device.

The potential security implications of this are even more serious than they first appear.

Google's latest privacy controls are a bad joke, certainly not sufficient to warrant the FTC completely absolving serial privacy violator Google from all responsibility in the Google WiSpy Affair, especially given that other law enforcement bodies have found misrepresentation of facts and violation of users' privacy.

• Hopefully, the FCC's investigation of Google WiSpy will not look the other way like the FTC apparently did, when a Fortune 200 company with the industry's longest privacy violation rap sheet, was caught red-handed violating millions of Americans' privacy and found to have misrepresented facts and misled investigators, got off without any FTC sanction, oversight or accountability whatsoever.

Why are Google's latest privacy controls insufficient?

First, Google's leadership is clearly not publicly supportive of more privacy controls, but openly skeptical and defiant that Google does not need to alter its approach to innovation to better protect privacy and security.

Google's 'Wi-Spy' vacuuming of all of everyone's WiFi signals was no "mistake" -- as Google has repeatedly asserted -- but part of a purposeful and comprehensive Google business expansion plan to enter, catch up and compete with SkyHook Wireless, Google's only significant competitor in mobile location services. (In September, Skyhook sued Google for deceptive and unfair trade practices and patent infringement.)

Press reports of AOL's interest in buying or partnering with Yahoo appear to have missed another potential serious deal complication -- antitrust scrutiny.

• Let me be clear, I am not suggesting an AOL-Yahoo combination on its own would raise direct traditional antitrust issues, but its hard to see how it would not attract substantial antitrust/collusion scrutiny given all the indirect antitrust red flags an AOL-Yahoo tie-up would raise -- i.e. Google vs Yahoo-Microsoft, Google-ITA Software, Google's tying of search and Google Maps for Google Places/Android, etc.

First, AOL is financially-dependent on Google; Google is Yahoo's biggest and most stable long-term client feeding AOL with about a fifth of its revenues -- via a recently signed 5-year agreement for Google to continue to be AOL's search monetization engine. This deal was negotiated by AOL's CEO, a former longtime senior executive at Google. Simply in antitrust terms, AOL can be viewed as a satellite of Google, because AOL has hitched its financial/business/growth wagon to Google Search, Google Mobile/Android and potentially Google Places.

The PCCC's handling of its own 0-95 net neutrality record in the mid-term election is a political case study of what happens when one ignores The First Law of Holes: When in a hole, stop digging.

Even though the PCCC has no one else to blame for digging itself into a big hole by mass emailing their list of 95 candidates who pledged support for net neutrality to reporters and bloggers prior to the election, the PCCC appears intent on continuing to dig their political hole deeper.

What do the mid-term election results mean for the FCC?

First, FreePress' version of net neutrality was completely repudiated in the election.

• Every single one of the 95 House and Senate candidates that FreePress/PCCC got to publicly pledge support for net neutrality -- lost their election in the mid-terms. Yes, that is indeed a 0-for-95 record here.
• The FCC should take note that the main "political" driver behind trying to make net neutrality into a national grass roots issue, FreePress/PCCC/Moveon.org, could not get the issue to register on the election radar screen, and where ever they did attract a candidate endorsement of their position, they failed 100% the time in having that candidate get elected.

Second, most of the FCC's business is not political or partisan -- and it need not be. (The 1996 Telecom Act was almost unanimous. And the overwhelming majority of FCC decisions are 5-0.)

Every single one of the 95 FreePress/PCCC House and Senate candidates that took the www.NetNeutralityProtectors.com pledge: "I believe in protecting net neutrality -- the First Amendment of the Internet," lost in the mid-term elections Tuesday.

• So the best available national proxy vote gauging political support for FreePress/PCCC's vision of net neutrality lost unanimously 95-0.

As I blogged Friday in: "Tuesday's Net Neutrality's National Referendum" post FreePress/PCCC unwisely made net neutrality a measurable election issue by seeking public pledges from 95 House and Senate candidates before the election.

This means FreePress can no longer legitimately claim their net neutrality movement has significant grass roots political support.

This also means the FCC can see clearly that political support for net neutrality does not extend much beyond the email lists of the extreme left: FreePress, PCCC, and Moveon.org.

Simply, FreePress's long and loud claim that net neutrality was an important political issue to the American people has been exposed as completely untrue.

Google won't allow you to opt-out of their location tracking for search, we learn from CNET's Chris Matyszczyk's outstanding post "How Google stops you hiding your location."

• Kudos to Mr. Matyszczyk for spotlighting this latest "creepy line" Google default mandate.

What does this mean?

First, it means that Google has not learned much from its serial privacy problems, like Google setting a default that everyone's house should be included in StreetView photographing and Spi-Fi signal recording, and everyone that signed up for Google Buzz by default should share their Gmail addresses with the public.

Second, it means that Google profiles and tracks your location by default and that you can't opt out from Google knowing where you are, you can only select what local setting Google will use to customize your search results.

Radical supporters of net neutrality have chosen to try and make the mid-term election a national referendum on net neutrality.

• FreePress' close ally, The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) has created a website NetNeutralityProtectors.com, which lists 95 House and Senate candidates that have taken their net neutrality pledge: "I believe in protecting net neutrality -- the First Amendment of the Internet..."

To make it easier to track the electoral performance of candidates who have take the PCCC/FreePress net neutrality pledge, here is a Net Neutrality Election Tally Sheet, listing the 95 candidates so that one can print out and record the outcomes on election night.

To put this preview in perspective, net neutrality supporters have been able to get:

• Only 10 candidates in the 37 U.S. Senate races to take their NN pledge -- all Democrats; and
• Only 85 candidates in 435 U.S. congressional races to take their NN pledge -- again all Democrats.

To get a handle how the PCCC/FreePress net neutrality supporters are projected to fare on election night Tuesday, the Tally Sheet includes the election predictions of the non-partisan independent Cook Political Report: