What a surprise that the soon to be bankrupt and out of business Time Magazine and the New York Times favor having the government control the internet and police it through licensing and regulations. The internet is the only place left to get the truth. This idea will get more traction as our economy fails. The government will want to squelch dissent and only allow their version of the truth. This is a huge risk to our freedom and liberty. If you want to find a real First Amendment issue to worry about, it is the restriction of the internet.
Time Magazine Pushes Draconian Internet Licensing Plan
Establishment mouthpiece calls for web ID system that would outstrip Communist Chinese style net censorship
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Time Magazine has enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon to back Microsoft executive Craig Mundie’s call for Internet licensing, as authorities push for a system even more stifling than in Communist China, where only people with government permission would be allowed to express free speech.
As we reported earlier this week, during a recent conference at the Davos Economic Forum, Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.
His proposal was almost instantly advocated by Time Magazine, who published an article by Barbara Kiviat - one of Mundie’s fellow attendees at the elitist confab. It’s sadistically ironic that Kiviat’s columns run under the moniker “The Curious Capitalist,” since the ideas expressed in her piece go further than even the free-speech hating Communist Chinese have dared venture in terms of Internet censorship.
“Now, there are, of course, a number of obstacles to making such a scheme be reality,” writes Kiviat. “Even here in the mountains of Switzerland I can hear the worldwide scream go up: “But we’re entitled to anonymity on the Internet!” Really? Are you? Why do you think that?”
Kiviat ludicrously compares the necessity to show identification when entering a bank vault to the apparent need for authorities to know who you are when you set up a website to take credit card payments.
“The truth of the matter is, the Internet is still in its Wild West phase. To a large extent, the law hasn’t yet shown up. Yet as more and more people move to town, that lawlessness is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. As human societies grow over time they develop more rigid standards for themselves in order to handle their increased size. There is no reason to think the Internet shouldn’t follow the same pattern,” she writes.
“The people in charge—as much as anyone can be in charge when it comes to the Internet—are thinking about it,” Kiviat barks in her conclusion, seemingly comfortable with the notion that shadowy individuals and not the Constitution itself are “in charge” of deciding who is allowed free speech.
Despite Kiviat’s mealy-mouthed authoritarianism and feigned reasonableness in advocating such a system, Mundie’s proposal is little different to a similar system already considered by officials in Communist China to force bloggers to register their identities before they could post. At the time the idea was attacked by human rights advocates as an obvious ploy “by which the government could control information” and crack down on dissent.
Indeed, the proposal was deemed too severe and the Chinese government eventually backed down. So a system considered too authoritarian and too much of a threat to freedom in Communist China is seemingly just fine and dandy in the “land of the free,” according to Kiviat and her ilk.
Unfortunately for her, Kiviat was immediately reminded about what makes the Internet such a threat to the ruling elite for whom she is a well-trained apologist – almost every comment below her article disagreed with her.
“No. A thousand times no. This benefits no one but “the people in charge,” wrote one respondent.
“Drivers’ licenses ensure a basic level of driving competency, so that 13-year-olds don’t get drunk and drive into a schoolbus. That kind of stupidity doesn’t happen on the Internet. Enough security theater! Focus on actual security. Truly awful idea, Barbara.”
“I, for one, welcome our new internet overlords. It will be a comforting time when “the law” comes along to protect people from themselves on the net, because gosh darn it, freedom is dangerous,” quips another. “Not to mention, standards only ever come about through coercive government action, and never through private parties responding to their own incentives.”
I think bloggers ought to be fingerprinted, DNA tested for abnormalities and have the information safely stored in a government vault. That way when some authoritarian ruler of pit, decides you have broken his self made tyrannic law he can prosecute you,” jokes another respondent. “For being a journalist you sure are s—-d, anonymity protects the right of free speech especially when the scary internet is most dangerous in a nation that prosecutes freedom of speech and opinion. The biggest thugs and criminals you mentioned are corrupt governments. I bet you love China’s safe internet measures huh? But there are worse than China.”
“The internet is the only thing preventing total tyranny right now, and they are trying everything they can to chill free speech. There is NO grass roots movement anywhere calling for government intervention in the internet. It is not broken. It works too well, that is a problem for tyrants,” points out another.
Shortly after Time Magazine started peddling the proposal, the New York Times soon followed suit with a blog this morning entitled Driver’s Licenses for the Internet? which merely parrots Kiviat’s talking points.
Of course there’s a very good reason for Time Magazine and the New York Times to be pushing for measures that would undoubtedly lead to a chilling effect on free speech which would in turn eviscerate the blogosphere.
Like the rest of the mainstream print dinosaurs, physical sales of Time Magazine have been plummeting, partly as a result of more people getting their news for free on the web from independent sources that don’t feed at the trough of the military-industrial complex. Ad sales for the New York Times sunk by no less than 28 per cent last year with subscriptions and street sales also falling.
“The Internet, where newspapers are generally free, has siphoned off circulation and advertising,” conceded an October 2009 NY Times article, which is precisely why establishment publications like the Old Gray Lady and Time are pushing proposals that would strangle the blogosphere and in turn eliminate their competition – while devastating free speech all in one foul swoop.
22 Comments
JimQ
Death of the web moves closer as UN calls for policing cyberspace
Paul Joseph Watson, Alex Jones & Steve Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, February 1, 2010
Calls to introduce a licensing system to police the Internet on behalf of a powerful UN agency represent the latest salvo in a long-running battle to kill free speech on the web and bring an end to the powerful digital democracy that has devastated the carbon tax agenda of the UN by exposing the Climategate scandal.
UN International Telcommunications Union secretary general Hamadoun Toure told the World Economic Forum in Davos this past weekend that global treaties need to be enacted in the name of stopping cyber warfare.
Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.
“We need a kind of World Health Organization for the Internet,” he said.
“If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to drive and you have to have insurance.”
Andre Kudelski, chairman of Kudelski Group, said that people should be forced to “have two computers that cannot connect and pass on viruses”. Since using the Internet requires a computer to connect to a network, it seems unclear as to how this would work without blocking off entire areas of the Internet altogether.
Globalists are invoking the threat of cyber attacks by nation states in order to accomplish their real agenda of stifling and regulating out of existence the last true outpost of free speech – the Internet. The establishment is furious at the level of influence individuals and small political groups have been able to wield by means of the world wide web, particularly over the last few years.
Climategate is a perfect example of the power of the digital democracy that authoritarian enemies of free speech want to crush. The Copenhagen global warming conference was completely devastated by the Climategate revelations which appeared just days before elitists convened to ram through their CO2 scam. As a result of bloggers feverishly pursuing the Climategate story, the entire foundation of the UN’s IPCC has been totally eviscerated and the global warming hoax is on its last legs.
The power to cripple entire branches of their control freak agenda within a matter of weeks has the globalists hopping mad, which is why their mission to eliminate real free speech on the web is accelerating.
“Don’t be surprised if it becomes reality in the near future,” writes ZD Net’s Doug Hanchard. “Every device connected to the Internet will have a permament license plate and without it, the network won’t allow you to log in.”
The graphic below illustrates how you would be blocked from using the Internet if your device had not obtained government permission to access the network.
Another method would be to make the use of fingerprint scanners that are included on a lot of new computer models mandatory. You would have to register your fingerprint at a central government data center and then scan each time you want to access the Internet. Misbehave online and your access will be denied.
“One thing is for sure,” concludes Hanchard, “A lot of money is going to be spent trying and sooner or later, everyone may have to pay with an Internet cop instant messaging you – “license and registration please”.
It seems certain that cyber security problems will be exploited or even manufactured to justify the move to Internet licensing. Authorities need to create a strong pretext to justify measures that would otherwise be rightly rejected for what they truly represent – government regulation and censorship of the web that would outstrip anything the Communist Chinese have attempted.
Internet censorship bills currently working their way into law in the UK, Australia and the U.S. legislate for government powers to restrict and filter any website that it deems to be undesirable for public consumption.
In the UK, legislation slated as the “Digital Economy Bill“, currently being debated in the House of Lords, would allow the Home Secretary to place “a technical obligation on internet service providers” to block whichever sites it wishes.
Under clause 11 of the proposed legislation “technical obligation” is defined as follows:
A “technical obligation”, in relation to an internet service provider, is an obligation for the provider to take a technical measure against particular subscribers to its service.
A “technical measure” is a measure that — (a) limits the speed or other capacity of the service provided to a subscriber; (b) prevents a subscriber from using the service to gain access to particular material, or limits such use; (c) suspends the service provided to a subscriber; or (d) limits the service provided to a subscriber in another way.
In other words, the government will have the power to force ISPs to downgrade and even block your internet access to certain websites or altogether if it wishes.
The legislation comes in the wake of amplified UK government efforts to seize more power over the internet and those who use it.
For months now unelected “Secretary of State” Lord Mandelson has overseen government efforts to challenge the independence of the of UK’s internet infrastructure.
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Mandelson also wants to impose harsh policies, via the Digital Economy Bill, that would see users’ broadband access cut off indefinitely, in addition to a fine of up to £50,000 without evidence or trial, if they download copyrighted music and films. The plan has been identified as “potentially illegal” by experts.
The legislation would impose a duty on ISPs to effectively spy on all their customers by keeping records of the websites they have visited and the material they have downloaded. ISPs who refuse to cooperate could be fined £250,000.
As Journalist and copyright law expert Cory Doctrow has noted, the bill also gives the Secretary of State the power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes, without Parliamentary oversight or debate.
This could include the authority to appoint private militias, who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files in addition to the blocking of websites.
Mandelson and his successors will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any digital transgression he deems Britons to be guilty of.
Despite being named the Digital Economy Bill, the legislation contains nothing that will actually stimulate the economy and is largely based on shifting control over the internet into government hands, allowing unaccountable bureaucrats to arbitrarily hide information from the public should they wish to do so.
Mandelson began the onslaught on the free internet in the UK after spending a luxury two week holiday at Nat Rothschild’s Corfu mansion with multi-millionaire record company executive David Geffen.
The Digital Economy Bill is intrinsically linked to long term plans by the UK government to carry out an unprecedented extension of state powers by claiming the authority to monitor all emails, phone calls and internet activity nationwide.
Last year the government announced its intention to create a massive central database, gathering details on every text sent, e-mail sent, phone call made and website visited by everyone in the UK.
The programme, known as the “Interception Modernisation Programme”, would allow spy chiefs at GCHQ, the government’s secret eavesdropping agency, the centre for Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) activities (pictured above), to effectively place a “live tap” on every electronic communication in Britain in the name of preventing terrorism.
Following outcry over the announcement, the government suggested last April that it was scaling down the plans, with then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith stating that there were “absolutely no plans for a single central store” of communications data.
However, as the “climbdown” was celebrated by civil liberties advocates and the plan was “replaced” by new laws requiring ISPs to store details of emails and internet telephony for just 12 months, fresh details emerged indicating the government was implementing a big brother spy system that far outstrips the original public announcement.
The London Times published leaked details of a secret mass internet surveillance project known as “Mastering the Internet” (MTI).
Costing hundreds of millions in public funds, the system is already being implemented by GCHQ with the aid of American defence giant Lockheed Martin and British IT firm Detica, which has close ties to the intelligence agencies.
A group of over 300 internet service providers and telecommunications firms has attempted to fight back over the radical plans, describing the proposals as an unwarranted invasion of people’s privacy.
Currently, any interception of a communication in Britain must be authorised by a warrant signed by the home secretary or a minister of equivalent rank. Only individuals who are the subject of police or security service investigations may be subject to surveillance.
If the GCHQ’s MTI project is completed, black-box probes would be placed at critical traffic junctions with internet service providers and telephone companies, allowing eavesdroppers to instantly monitor the communications of every person in the country without the need for a warrant.
Even if you believe GCHQ’s denial that it has any plans to create a huge monitoring system, the current law under the RIPA (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) allows hundreds of government agencies access to the records of every internet provider in the country.
In publicly announced proposals to extend these powers, firms will be asked to collect and store even more vast amounts of data, including from social networking sites such as Facebook.
If the plans go ahead, every internet user will be given a unique ID code and all their data will be stored in one place. Government agencies such as the police and security services will have access to the data should they request it with respect to criminal or terrorist investigations.
This is clearly the next step in an incremental program to implement an already exposed full scale big brother spy system designed to completely obliterate privacy, a fundamental right under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Similar efforts to place restrictions on the internet are unfolding in Australia where the government is implementing a mandatory and wide-ranging internet filter modeled on that of the Communist Chinese government.
Australian communication minister Stephen Conroy said the government would be the final arbiter on what sites would be blacklisted under “refused classification.”
The official justification for the filter is to block child pornography, however, as the watchdog group Electronic Frontiers Australia has pointed out, the law will also allow the government to block any website it desires while the pornographers can relatively easily skirt around the filters.
Earlier this year, the Wikileaks website published a leaked secret list of sites slated to be blocked by Australia’s state-sponsored parental filter.
The list revealed that blacklisted sites included “online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.”
The filter will even block web-based games deemed unsuitable for anyone over the age of fifteen, according to the Australian government.
The broad attack on the free internet is not only restricted to the UK and Australia.
The European Union, Finland, Denmark, Germany and other countries in Europe have all proposed blocking or limiting access to the internet and using filters like those used in Iran, Syria, China, and other repressive regimes.
In 2008 in the U.S., The Motion Picture Association of America asked president Obama to introduce laws that would allow the federal government to effectively spy on the entire Internet, establishing a system where being accused of copyright infringement would result in loss of your Internet connection.
In 2009 the Cybersecurity Act was introduced, proposing to allow the federal government to tap into any digital aspect of every citizen’s information without a warrant. Banking, business and medical records would be wide open to inspection, as well as personal instant message and e mail communications.
The legislation, introduced by Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) in April, gives the president the ability to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of national security.” The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president, according to a Mother Jones report.
During a hearing on the bill, Senator John Rockefeller betrayed the true intent behind the legislation when he stated, “Would it have been better if we’d have never invented the Internet,” while fearmongering about cyber attacks on the U.S. government and how the country could be shut down.
Watch the clip below.
The Obama White House has also sought a private contractor to “crawl and archive” data such as comments, tag lines, e-mail, audio and video from any place online where the White House “maintains a presence” – for a period of up to eight years.
Obama has also proposed scaling back a long-standing ban on tracking how people use government Internet sites with “cookies” and other technologies.
Recent disclosures under the Freedom Of Information Act also reveal that the federal government has several contracts with social media outlets such as Youtube (Google), Facebook, Myspace and Flickr (Yahoo) that waive rules on monitoring users and permit companies to track visitors to government web sites for advertising purposes.
The U.S. military also has some $30 Billion invested in it’s own mastering the internet projects.
We have extensively covered efforts to scrap the internet as we know it and move toward a greatly restricted “internet 2″ system. All of the above represents stepping stones toward the realisation of that agenda.
The free internet is under attack the world over, only by exposing the true intentions of our governments to restrict the flow of data can we defeat such efforts and preserve the last vestige of independent information.
ragman
Time and NYT are going broke because they SUCK. I would not read either one of these commie rags and apparently a lot of other folks aren't reading them either. I expect a bailout of these dinosaurs in the name of some vague "fairness doctrine" BS, can't have our leftist propaganda sources out of bidness, can we? Our govt is approaching the tipping point, the line-in-the-sand that will mark the end of tea parties and the beginning of true civil disobedience or worse. Outlawing our ability to communicate just may be it. They had best be careful.
JasonRines
In the 1990's, the Internet Service Provider network engineers policed the Internet. I established a legitimate opt-in email advertising market by asking close to fifty of the best and brightest of them at the time how to establish the market. Further, regulation was established in 2004 to separate legitimate and illegitimate email marketers into two camps. Simply, pay the ISP's to deliver marketing messages, no different than an advertiser paying CNN or Fox News for airing a TV commercial. The process mentioned was an inclusive one and now is demonstrating tangible results, providing ISP's legal recourse.
Microsoft is attempting to shape the blogosphere news market which of course is natural and non-surprising to establish market norms in its own favor. However, it would better serve itself and the market by including the other larger ISP's and bringing this to the table at Davos as collective feedback rather than singular feedback.
The main problem with globalization as I see it is that six billion citizens have been left out of the debate. That form of behavior does not indicate democratic style-government. What happens when a group of leadership relies on a population for profitable productivity but does not allow a voice to shape the political landscape? Dissent, drop in productivity resulting in complete breakdown of such a society. Some portions of this globalization attempt over the last 100 years were actually pretty good. The Internet is one such bi-product of globalization. It should be used for global debate on how we all wish to evolve forward from here. A Communism-lite system in America is not compatible with the culture, but allowing the citizenship to debate and becoming part of the political process is what our culture is all about. Failure on a global basis thus far and continuing not to allow the global citizen to become part of the political process is going to have a lot of unexpected consequences.
Flyguy
Time magazine should be closed down. They are such liars over at that joint it stinks.
Police the internet? How about we shut your asses down, Time and NYT?
Kill Bill
Axel
"Driver's license for the internet". To me, a license is a method by which a freedom of action is removed by an authority, only to be partially doled back out at the pleasure of that authority. At its best, it prevents dangerous actions, such as surgery being performed by untrained individuals, but far too often, such licensure is either simply a method of increasing governmental revenue, or a method of "rent seeking"--keeping others from doing what you and your special interest group have exclusive "rights" to be doing. See George Will's excellent article on this topic: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032101789.html
Control of the internet may be espoused by journalism companies to restrict access to news, information, and opinions, because that would return to those journalistic enterprises the exclusivity they formerly enjoyed--and their profits, too.
mjs034
I think something like the above will come to pass. The government can always lay claim to ownership of the internet, just like it can lay claim to ownership of any other asset in the country - your house, your car, etc. Fairness and free speech have nothing to do with the question. The government will do it BECAUSE IT CAN. Period. And lets face it, if there is some cyber attack, whatever that is, or a major war, the government won't even have to justify taking the internet over. They will just do it. And only a few brave souls will protest.
The only solution to this problem is to limit the government's powers. Since these powers grow every day, I am not optimistic. We are slowly morphing into some sort of fascist corporate state, with only lip service paid to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
As for Time and the NY Times, they are literally gasping their last breaths and are groping desperately for a government lifeline. Internet access restrictions and censorship fit in very nicely with this; reduced competition.
Axel
This also seems to be a perverse example of development of the corporate-government power axis (sometimes referred to as "corpgov"), wherein the need of the government for control (it can't help itself--that's what it does) melds seemlessly with the need for journalism corporations to control access to information for commercial (profit-bearing) purposes.
But, just like in Tolkien's classic Lord of the Rings trilogy, the journalism companies may today accept the rings of power from its governmental patron, only to find that they later will become hollow wraiths doing their master's bidding once "freedom of the press" is sacrificed in the fires of Mt. Doom.
TLaCour
Of course these corporations want control over the Internet, since it plays a large role in the loss of their control over the news flow (and the profits to be made therefrom). And they can go frack themselves, as can any proponents of Statist "internet licensing."
But I am confused by your objection, Jim. These organizations are proper Government-Approved and Designated Press, they are just asking that all non-Government Approved media be regulated. This is precisely what your beloved McCain-Feingold act began, regulating when and by whom political speech could be made, with a special Exemption for Government-Approved Media Corporations. TBP, and most other Internet sites, are not (yet) such Government Approved outlets of speech, so in the absence of that awful SCOTUS ruling, TBP would be prohibited from certain political speech that mentions any specific candidates starting... oh, about now (30 days before a primary).
So what is your objection, exactly? That the NY Times wants the regulation of Internet Corporations expanded to all-year, while you reckon just the 30-day-before-primary (and 60 before general election) ban is enough?
JamesS
The print news media have only got themselves to blame for their predicament and I would just love to see most of them bite the dust.
Their reporting is usually biased and increasingly reflects the personal views and perceptions of the journalists and editorial staff. These people are just journos but believe that their opinion counts more than yours. Well - the internet has challenged all that thankfully and nothing would give me greater pleasure than seeing a large bunch of biased journos thrown onto the scrap heap where they belong. These guys actually think that the world will be worse off if the print news media as we know it dies off. Yeah - right. The internet is doing very well on that front thank you.
Then you had the outrageous advertising charges that the print media used to be able to get away with. Along came the internet offering more exposure and much better value. So the print media could not screw most of you anymore. And they are not at all happy about that folks. Once again - they only have themselves to blame.
Now don't think that the Television industry is pleased with the competition it gets from the internet either so just watch them jump in to support proposals for global regulation of the internet.
As for that great bastion of competition = Microsoft - they would just love to get their grubby little hands on internet regulation. Of course they support the idea. It just irks them(and many others in IT world) that billions of people can freely use the internet and they cannot get any fee out of it. So expect them to come up with some solution for regulation/licensing which of course will have to involve them and a "fee" for service of some kind - directly (with some new software you will have to buy from them or pay them to borrow) or indirectly. Just think - each time they brought out a new version of "Windows" you might have to pay them for some new compatible internet software you will need to run on their new operating program.
Self interest is alive and well in media and IT world.
As for Governments - many will see internet regulation as a new means of extorting more tax revenue from poor Joe Citizen. The Europeans will really love that prospect so just watch them lead the charge.
TLaCour
Not just NYT and Time rag.
Police want backdoor to Web users' private data...
Anyone with an e-mail account likely knows that police can peek inside it if they have a paper search warrant.
But cybercrime investigators are frustrated by the speed of traditional methods of faxing, mailing, or e-mailing companies these documents. They're pushing for the creation of a national Web interface linking police computers with those of Internet and e-mail providers so requests can be sent and received electronically.
CNET has reviewed a survey scheduled to be released at a federal task force meeting on Thursday, which says that law enforcement agencies are virtually unanimous in calling for such an interface to be created. Eighty-nine percent of police surveyed, it says, want to be able to "exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process" through an encrypted, police-only "nationwide computer network." (See one excerpt and another.)
The survey, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, is part of a broader push from law enforcement agencies to alter the ground rules of online investigations. Other components include renewed calls for lawsrequiring Internet companies to store data about their users for up to five years and increased pressure on companies to respond to police inquiries in hours instead of days.
But the most controversial element is probably the private Web interface, which raises novel security and privacy concerns, especially in the wake of a recent inspector general's report (PDF) from the Justice Department. The 289-page report detailed how the FBI obtained Americans' telephone records by citing nonexistent emergencies and simply asking for the data or writing phone numbers on a sticky note rather than following procedures required by law.
Some companies already have police-only Web interfaces. Sprint Nextel operates what it calls the L-Site, also known as the "legal compliance secure Web portal." The company even has offered a course that "will teach you how to create and track legal demands through L-site. Learn to navigate and securely download requested records." Cox Communications makes its price list for complying with police requests public; a 30-day wiretap is $3,500.
The police survey is not exactly unbiased: its author is Frank Kardasz, who is scheduled to present it at a meeting (PDF) of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Kardasz, a sergeant in the Phoenix police department and a project director of Arizona's Internet Crimes Against Children task force, said in an e-mail exchange on Tuesday that he is still revising the document and was unable to discuss it.
In an incendiary October 2009 essay, however, Kardasz wrote that Internet service providers that do not keep records long enough "are the unwitting facilitators of Internet crimes against children" and called for new laws to "mandate data preservation and reporting." He predicts that those companies will begin to face civil lawsuits because of their "lethargic investigative process."
"It sounds very dangerous," says Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, referring to the police-only Web interface. "Let's assume you set this sort of thing up. What does that mean in terms of what the law enforcement officer be able to do? Would they be able to fish through transactional information for anyone? I don't understand how you create a system like this without it."
What police see in ISPs
Kardasz's survey, based on questionnaires completed by 100 police investigators, says that 61 percent of them had their investigations harmed "because data was not retained" and only 40 percent were satisfied with the timeliness of responses from Internet providers.
"You can be very supportive of law enforcement investigations and at the same time be very cognizant and supportive of the privacy rights of our users." --Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer, MySpaceIt also says: "89 percent of investigators agreed that a nationwide computer network should be established for the purpose of linking ISPs with law enforcement agencies so that they may exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process. Authorized users would communicate through encrypted virtual private networks in order to maintain the security of the data."
Some of the responses to other questions: "AT&T is very prompt." "Cox Communications seems to be the worst." "Places like Yahoo can take a month for basic subscriber info which is also a problem." "AT&T Mobility does not keep a log at all." "MySpace give (sic) me the quickest response and they have been very pro-police."
Hemanshu (Hemu) Nigam, MySpace's chief security officer, said in an interview with CNET on Tuesday that: "You can be very supportive of law enforcement investigations and at the same time be very cognizant and supportive of the privacy rights of our users. Every time a legal process comes in, whether it's a subpoena or a search order, we do a legal review to make sure it's appropriate."
Nigam said that MySpace accepts law enforcement requests through e-mail, fax, and postal mail, and that it has a 24-hour operations center that tries to respond to requests soon after they've been reviewed to make sure state and federal laws are being followed. MySpace does not have a police-only Web interface, he said.
Creating a national police-only network would be problematic, Nigam said. "I wish I knew the number of local police agencies in the country, or even police officers in the country," he said. "Right there that would tell you how difficult it would be to implement, even though ideally it would be a good thing."
Another obstacle to creating a nation-wide Web interface for cops--one wag has dubbed it "DragNet," and another "Porknet"--is that some of its thousands of users could be infected by viruses and other malware. Once an infected computer is hooked up to the national network, it could leak confidential information about ongoing investigations.
Jim Harper, a policy analyst at the free-market Cato Institute, says that he welcomes the idea of a police-only Web interface as long as it's designed carefully. "A system like this should have strong logins, should require that the request be documented fully, and should produce statistical information so there can be strong oversight," he says. "I think that's a good thing to have."
johncoster
The most frightening issue of the moment! Absolutely terrifying. Time to start breeding carrier pigeons.
Anonymous
more chain link and barbed wire!
David2
Under the guise of “protecting Americans” and choosing itself in so-called “national security,” the current Obama administration wants to be able to control the ability of people and organizations to access the Internet.
This concept on its face seems very harmless and in the best interest of the country, however, having the ability to “turn the Internet off or shutting down sites that Obama considers “dangerous” including particular political groups, individuals or organizations who espouse differing views has far reaching political, financial, moral and legal implications.
Such a policy imposed under Executive Order to control what enters Internet sites and what is shared daily would stifle free speech in direct violation of the First Amendment rights of all Americans.
During the elections in Iran, its citizens using Facebook and Twitter got out 95% of the news from Iran. In America would our social sites be shut down if enough people using them “dared” to question the current political regime in power at any given time? Sitting ominously in the Senate is the Rockefeller Bill S. 773 to takeover the Internet in emergencies. As we all know, once taken over, we will never get it back the way it was before. This is what elitists have in mind for us.
America’s brightest minds and taxpayers funds made the Internet happen, and now there are indications that the Obama administration is moving quietly to allow control of the web to move from the US to foreign powers. Such a transfer of power and control would change the future of mankind. This would be affected via our Department of Commerce.
America controls the Internet via the Domain name System (DNS), and the servers that serve the Internet. They are managed by IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which operates via the Department of Commerce, being responsible for global cooperation and coordination of the DNS, IP addressing, and other Internet protocol sources. Without these elements one would not have access to the Internet.
Over the years, the UN and others internationally have been pressing the US to give away control and management to an international body. Those thirsting for this power are the UN and the International Telecommunications Union, which coordinates international telephone communications. Their argument is that the Internet has become a powerful and dependent form of communications, that is dangerous and inequitable for one nation to control and manage.
Our President has agreed to relinquish some control over IANA and its governance. Foreign companies and countries would have a greater say in what goes on in the Internet. This is the foot in the door. Before you know it the UN will have control and censorship will begin. No control should be given to any other country or body. It is not only our Internet; it is a matter of national security, which our government is up too. The world has been allowed to share this miracle free and without censorship or restriction. Do we want to end up like the Chinese, where their communist government recently told Google to censor the Internet? Do we want the UN to use the Internet as a source of funding? Do we want the UN or any participant country to restrict what we can say or do on the net? Do we want limitations on free speech? That is what the UN has planned for us. The Internet will no longer be a vehicle of free speech. Why would we want to give away one of our most precious and greatest assets for nothing to a group that is bent on enslaving us via one-world government? Once our control is gone we will never get it back.
The Council on Foreign Relations, literary house organ that we have subscribed to for 50 years, Foreign Affairs, tells us that many governments feel that, like the telephone network, the Internet should be administered under a multilateral treaty. They view ICANN as an instrument of American hegemony over cyberspace and that its private-sector approach favors the US and gives it oversight authority, and that other nations have no say as to what goes on in the Internet. Then again, we did invent it and do own it. Its private construction was deliberately implemented to keep government out of the net, not for the US or any other government or body to control it. South Africa, Brazil and China as stooges for one-world interests are demanding an international treaty, so the UN can control it. Adding to the demands are the intellectually void countries of Zimbabwe, Cuba and Syria. These three paragons of peace and prosperity want the UN to tell us how to run our Internet.
UN bureaucrats and ministers from under-developed nations in particular say the US has undue influence over how things run on line. They want a treaty under which their regimes cannot be criticized. They want Internet surveillance and the power to tax domain names to pay for universal access and, of course, to fund their regimes. They in their protestations have no intention of stopping spam because much of it emanates from their countries. They want all kinds of censorship. Can you imagine what China or Cuba’s demands would be? China and Cuba are both dictatorships. Why would such one-party states be allowed in the UN, never mind telling us how censorship would work? Both jail people for political decent and sometimes execute them. We can also throw Iran in for good measure. This is a nation with one political party that in 2003 jailed 80 journalists and activists. Then Iran wants UN control so that thousands of immoral websites can be banned. This war by the internationalists to control the Internet is not new. It began in 1999. That is when the UN proposed taxing all e-mail messages to pay for development aid.
You cannot legislate morals. That is reflected in our unsuccessful ventures into legislation of alcohol, drugs, sex and tobacco and now the UN wants to legislate all kinds of content. Are we to allow the curtailment of our First Amendment rights? We do not think so. Are we to tolerate Cyber Patrols or Net Nannies?
In addition we now have cyber crime investigators pushing for the creation of a national web interface linking police computers. 89% of police say they want to look into e-mail accounts in a broad push by law enforcement agencies to alter the ground rules of online investigations. They want laws requiring Internet companies to store data for up to five years and they want instant access to police inquiries instead of waiting hours or days for responses from Internet companies. They want emergency access like the FBI had and terribly abused that privilege to get phone numbers. In the Internet the police want information now not after a review of whether the request is appropriate.
This is where the President wants to take us and we do not like it. Be sure to contract your house and Senate representatives and let them know how you feel about this abridgment of your privacy and your rights. If you do not act now, it may be too late later. http://www.prisonplanet.com/frightening-taste-of-internet-censorship-as-major-free-speech-websites-blocked.html/print/
The Alex Jones Show with Jason Bermas 1/3: Cybersecurity Act-Government Takeover of The Internet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mFyZB0lDBU&feature=email
"The War on Internet Censorship" w/ Alex Jones & Infowars.com (STOP S.773)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFVW_lCDztE&feature=related
Internet Censorship Must Be Stopped!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8DdcVxq9hg&feature=related
Arius
It is inevitable that the US Government and Old Media will try to control the internet.
Novista
Beyond the Internet
or before ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio#Amateur_Packet_Radio_Evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system
And then,
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/operation-titstorm-hackers-bring-down-government-websites-20100210-nqku.html
"we are everywhere" LOL
I got involved with FidoNet in 1987. I still have a 'dial-up' modem tho it need not be connected to a phone line.
~They~ can throttle the Internet. What will they do when untold dissidents come out of the woodwork marrying the old technology to new techniques? Roving laptops with packet radio transmission and so on. We have a ham radio operator in the area running 10Kw SSB and TPTB don't have a clue.
When the web goes, push comes to shove, for every illicit operator they take down, it'll be whack-a-mole, not unlike the drug cartels -- nab one kingpin and three step up to take his place.
ReverseEngineer
The Internet is a CONDUIT for information. As with all the rest of the Conduits, the Illuminati seek to control this one also, just to date they have had only limited success with doing so.
The conduit of the internet is highly controllable, because it is dependent on routers that move around the packets of information. These nodes can easily be monitored and filtered for information content that passes thru them.
Websites like TBP which are a free for all for anyone to write what they think cannot last , it is only a matter of time before you need a License to run such a website and have its content vetted by the CIA. We have to protect ourselves from Terrorists spreading Propaganda of course.
The “Wild West” of the Internet is coming to a close. The People do not own the Internet, Cisco and Google own it. It is a Privately Held organ of Da Goobermint. The ability to write freely and exchange ideas in this medium is destined to go the way of the Dinosaur.
RE