Sunday, July 04, 2010

Guess Who Really Hates Your Freedoms?

Guess Who Wants to Kill the Internet?


"It would be hard to think of anyone who has done more to undermine American freedoms than Joseph Lieberman.
Since 9/11, the Independent senator from Connecticut has introduced a raft of legislation in the name of the “global war on terror” which has steadily eroded constitutional rights. If the United States looks increasingly like a police state, Senator Lieberman has to take much of the credit for it.
On October 11, 2001, exactly one month after 9/11, Lieberman introduced S. 1534, a bill to establish a Department of Homeland Security. Since then, he has been the main mover behind such draconian legislation as the Protect America Act of 2007, the Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, and the proposed Terrorist Expatriation Act, which would revoke the citizenship of Americans suspected of terrorism. And now the senator from Connecticut wants to kill the Internet.
According to the bill he recently proposed in the Senate, the entire global internet is to be claimed as a “national asset” of the United States. If Congress passes the bill, the US President would be given the power to “kill” the internet in the event of a “national cyber-emergency.” Supporters of the legislation say this is necessary to prevent a “cyber 9/11” – yet another myth from the fear mongers who brought us tales of “Iraqi WMD” and “Iranian nukes.”
Lieberman’s concerns about the internet are not new. The United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which Lieberman chairs, released a report in 2008 titled “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat.” The report claimed that groups like al-Qaeda use the internet to indoctrinate and recruit members, and to communicate with each other.
Immediately after the report was published, Lieberman asked Google, the parent company of You Tube, to “immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations.” That might sound like a reasonable request. However, as far as Lieberman is concerned, Hamas, Hezbollah and even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are terrorist organizations.
It’s hardly surprising that Lieberman’s views on what constitute terrorism parallel those of Tel Aviv. As Mark Vogel, chairman of the largest pro-Israel Political Action Committee (PAC) in the United States, once said: “Joe Lieberman, without exception, no conditions … is the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress. There is nobody who does more on behalf of Israel than Joe Lieberman.”
Lieberman has been well-rewarded for his patriotism – to another country. In the past six years, he has been the Senate’s top recipient of political contributions from pro-Israel PACs with a staggering $1,226,956."
"The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is blocking certain websites from the federal agency's computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a "controversial opinion," according to an internal email obtained by CBS News.
The email was sent to all TSA employees from the Office of Information Technology on Friday afternoon.
It states that as of July 1, TSA employees will no longer be allowed to access five categories of websites that have been deemed "inappropriate for government access."
The categories include:
• Chat/Messaging
Controversial opinion
• Criminal activity
• Extreme violence (including cartoon violence) and gruesome content
• Gaming"

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Defense Secretary Gates tightens rules for media relations

2 Comments:

Anonymous Nz said...

I've a suspicion about government control over the internet, caused by the fact that DSL has been down in my neck of the woods (West Mass) 4 days in the last 2 weeks.

Here it is: I think they are testing for a plan to simply disconnect internet access at random anytime they want, for whatever reason they have (if any), and will use the excuse that it is either undergoing maintenance or repairs, even though that is not the case.

They want to see if they can get away with censoring it by simply disconnecting it whenever and as often as they like, without actually having a legitimate reason, aside from the one they will not give, which is the real reason: because they can.

Furthermore, by doing this, they can also disconnect it for actual censorship purposes; such as to kill a story.

I wonder what they would do if this story got out? Kill it and the person telling it?

5/7/10 7:49 AM  
Blogger nolocontendere said...

You may be right Nz, I don't think anyone really knows what the government is going to do to the internet. For a long time in the beginning I thought "Gee, this technology is too powerful in the hands of the people".
The for a while I decided their spying and snooping gave them more information than the trouble it was causing.
Then there was always the increasing online commerce factor.
Now we could see a Chinese style limited internet, heavily taxed, with a tiered system of access, meaning the more you pay the more sites you can access. All of course heavily spied upon.
The vast majority will have a sort of shopping channel AOL experience, more like tame cable TV. My guess anyway.

6/7/10 11:28 PM  

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