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Clinton Calls For "Ground Rules" Protecting Internet
dbune writes "Hillary Clinton has called for ground rules to protect the World Wide Web against wrongdoing and harm after the world watched as Egyptian authorities cut Internet access during its recent political crisis. She said 'For the United States, the choice is clear; on the spectrum of Internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness.'"
Hillary,
Talk to your boss and let him know that a "kill switch" is a bad idea.
Thanks,
The Internet
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
'For the United States, the choice is clear; on the spectrum of Internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness,'
Good. Now tell the RIAA and MPAA to leave us the hell alone.
> "For the United States, the choice is clear; on the spectrum of Internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness"
Oh that's good - I'll let Julian Assange know.
we place ourselves on the side of openness
Horsepuckey. They're just jealous that the same shutdown ability doesn't exist here in the Untied States.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The internet must be open and fair to all American companies which have the money to fund our election campaigns, to spread the word of those companies wonderful products and good deeds, to keep the world safe from people we don't like, and to prevent all of those with ideas that differ from ours from speaking out. Can't we all just get behind my version of freedom?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
For the United States, the choice is clear; on the spectrum of Internet freedom, we place ourselves on the side of openness
That's quite rich considering your government just shut down 84,000 websites "by mistake": http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-shuts-down-84000-websites-by-mistake-110216/
...is to allow the private entities which own the servers, networks, technology, and businesses to manage it themselves.
For many organizations, the internet is about profit, growth and accessibility. Those organizations have an obligation to ensure the functional operation and security of their systems, if they'd like to say doing what they do. No connection = no revenue. Having government involvement with the internet will hinder one or all of those facets, even if the intent is for the betterment of society and the world. Just like the economy -- eventually it will right itself without too many dicks stirring the pot.
In short, Secretary Clinton, GTFO of its business.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Some guy that works for Google was on the news the other day saying that cutting off the Internet accelerated the public protests by letting everyone know that the regime was scared. So, taking steps to ensure that a regime like Mubarak's can't do that in future is counter-productive if you consider the protests in Egypt to have been a good thing.
but I fixed that for ya.
Yes, nothing to see here...it's "openness" as long as it is in the best interest of the United States. What a load of bs. DNS records all over the world taken over by force, Julian Assange threatened with assassinations, kill switches, patriot acts...just a plantation with a different name.
yep our Government has always been open and Honest, listening to its people... NOT! not when its easier to cover everything up, and lie to us. I am sure they will tell us one thing and do another.
Good luck with that. I am sure you will be able to get all those Muslim countries to sign up to the ground rules for the Internet right after they sign up for gender equality, freedom of religion, freedoms of speech and the end of forced marriage, "honour" killings, and victimisation of minorities.
I read in the newspaper that the US will help the citicens of Iran to keep the internet running. Obama and Clinton promised that. I find that extremely hypocritic behaviour. Where was the US when Egypt's internet was shut down? Oh yeah, they liked Mubarak so they did nothing. But they don't like Ahmadinejad so now they help the Iranian people. And in the meantime Obama wants a kill switch so he can switch the internet off whenever he wants.
-- Cheers!
Clinton is clearly positioning herself for another Presidential run in 2012. Obama's track record on openness and freedom for the Internet is abysmal, but few if any of his transgressions came out of the State Department. If Clinton can separate herself from her boss on this issue, she can make inroads to the young and energetic netizens who helped Obama so much in '08.
If I'm right, expect her to start making noises about cutting the budget and ending wars in the near future.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Out of the Ruins
Out from the wreckage
Can't make the same mistake this time
We are the children
The last generation
We are the ones they left behind
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change
Living under the fear, till nothing else remains
We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond
Thunderdome
Looking for something
We can rely on
There's gotta be something better out there.
Love and compassion
Their day is coming
All else are castles built into the air.
And I wonder when we are ever gonna change
Living under the fear till nothing else remains
All the children say
We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond
Thunderdome
So what do we do with our lives
We leave only a mark
Will our story shine like a light
Or end in the dark
Give it all or nothing
We don't need another hero
We don't need to know the way home
All we want is life beyond
Thunderdome
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
Hmmm meanwhile at home they are pressing an anti-piracy law spending millions of $$$ for corporate benefit..meanwhile unemployment is a record levels (15-20 %). Is this how we want our tax money spent? Not me. RIAA and MPAA you enforce your IP, not the American public.
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
From Wikipedia:
In baseball, ground rules are special rules particular to each baseball park (grounds) in which the game is played. Unlike the well-defined playing field of most other sports, the playing area of a baseball field extends to an outfield fence in fair territory and the stadium seating in foul territory. The unique design of each ballpark, including fences, dugouts, bullpens, railings, stadium domes, photographer's wells and TV camera booths, requires that rules be defined to handle situations in which these objects may interact or interfere with the ball in play or with the players.
So a "ground rule" that warrants an Internet kill switch in my ballpark, doesn't necessarily mean that you can hit the kill switch in your ballpark.
In other words, the US is allowed to hit the Internet kill switch in their ballpark (ground rule). Egypt isn't (no ground rule).
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Damn! The first time I read Clingon instea of Clinton. That would be newsworthy alright! ( I need more coffee )
we place ourselves on the side of openness
Horsepuckey. They're just jealous that the same shutdown ability doesn't exist here in the Untied States.
The Untied States? That is quite a interesting spelling in this context.
Let's be real for a minute indeed. I suppose you're talking about the "protection" the USA offered to other countries against the evil USSR, even though both countries had enough cumulative fire power to blow up the planet ten times over. How much do you think such a promise was worth? Sorry, but "In case of a global thermonuclear war we'll make sure the planet will be blown up only twice over" still doesn't sound very safe to me.
Rest assured, the real reason it became fashionable to bash the US is all the freedom people lost worldwide due to the politics of W. post 9/11. USA may get a thumbs up from me for finally ending the cold war, but two thumbs down for the 9/11 aftermath.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Presumably, then, by "openness" Ms. Clinton means "subject only to regulation by big media," because until the Obama administration makes material strides to back the FCC in regulating real net neutrality, that's what we get. Our internet speech may not be impeded by the red-herring "kill switch," but it surely will by the Verizons and Comcasts and AT&Ts that control the packets.
On a related topic, the NYT has an article about how the Mubarak regime exploited Internet's weaknesses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/technology/16internet.html
I firmly believe the revolution in Egypt was aided by closing the internet. People walked away from their keyboards and got outside. If they wanted to see what was happening they had the Al jazeera sattelite at a freinds house. But without communncation their imaginations could soar a bit and they could look awayf from the screen.
Circuses are well known to keep the roman masses happy.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
She's using the terms interchangeably... this does not make me any more comfortable.
Florida is drifting away as we speak.
Emotions are mixed on the issue.
Hillary, via her official position as Sect. of State was advocating not just for the security of the internets but was also encouraging dissent and the tolerance of it by all governments. How about Hill you go talk to the Justice dept. about tolerating dissent in this country too? Or is it ok for the US to harrass, track and arrest those who dissent and wish (insert # of elected officials here) removed from power and/or the actual form of government changed? This applies to those on the left/middle/right who at any given time in the past 20 years have advocated peacefully for such ideas.
Frankly, I do not believe the US (federally or at state/local level) would tolerate the kind of events which took place in Egypt or Tunisia.
Even if we make it so the megalomaniacs and powermongers can't touch the Internet, they'll just find a way around it like cutting all power to the grid....
You said "rape" twice...
Just pointing that out...
Ian Ameline
It is not exectly the same, but in USA this switch is called "Senator Joseph Lieberman (CT)" .
839*929
s/USA/Mubarak Regime/ and it reads a bit different.
Even worse if you consider that 'massive attack' could mean too many Lady Gaga songs being illicitly downloaded for the MPAAs liking.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's the Peter Principle. People rise to their own level of incompetence.
However, let's be real for a minute. The kill switch is a bad idea, but we all should know that the government would only use it in the case of massive attacks from a foreign entity
Which 'reality' do you live in where the government would never abuse its power for its own ends?
From TFA: "protecting both transparency and confidentiality" Yeah, those are basically mutually exclusive.
Okay, he's gone. Obama can't roll back the clock, he has to deal with the reality he's presented, including having the House controlled by Republicans. Most things people of being critical of are a result of the need for pragmatism. Packing up and going home from Afghanistan is a bad idea. Closing Guantanamo needs to happen, but what do we do with the prisoners? How we deal with them will set legal precedent far into the future. Most Americans supported the protesters in Egypt, but the government had to tread a fine line. What would've happened if they were suppressed and crushed? We still need them to keep the Suez open and play nice with Israel. It's easy to criticize, but the dealing with reality is much more difficult. Maybe the US deserves the most criticism because it's the most powerful, but there are many nations that don't have problems of their own. The UK's surveillance of it's people puts the US's to shame. France's treatment of immigrants is shameful. Italy's PM makes a farce of their government. Everyone has their problems, but I don't usually see the Americans piling on with negative sentiment towards other countries, especially fellow democracies. If the US does something wrong, it needs to be pointed out. However, let's keep things in the realm of reality, like with this kill switch. Be against it because it's yet another power that the government doesn't need, no matter what the intentions. There's no need to suggest the US is anything like these authoritarian dictatorships that would actually use such a power to suppress its people. It simply isn't true.
It does.
You do know that the NSA has ties into every backbone carrier in the US right?
You do know that they can tap the data at will right?
Only a fool would think that the US couldn't take down not just the US internet but probably a good percentage of all the internet if need be. if the data is already flowing through those devices then only a fool would believe that those devices couldn't shut off that flow.
This kill switch is to allow the isolation of segments of the internet. Laws are already in place that allow the president to shut of connections with the rest of the world and have been since the 1930s.
What boggles my mind is the very idea that if the US government was at the point of rolling out tanks to stop protests in the street that a law would stop them from shutting off the Internet.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
See how they hate the internets, those politician cats,.. if the 'man' ever invents a time machine, you'd think they'd like go back in time and un-invent it or something. reminds me of a story of a Doctor who invented something once, and it grew big and powerful and tried to destroy him... just a fairy story though huh ..
Peace And Love Man ... :)
And I applaud them. But will you back them with equally bold actions?
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
The US is a hopeless cause, and we Americans I think would be much better off if the country broke up into smaller units. Smaller countries, with less of a concentration of power, are less dangerous, and possibly less corruptible (it takes much more work to corrupt the legislatures of a dozen countries than a single giant one).
"I'm from the Government and I'm here to help."
What a load of crap.
First, the House was controlled by Democrats for 4 years (2 under Bush, and 2 under Obama). If the Democraps really wanted to push something through, they had 2 years to do it while they had control of both Congress and the White House.
Leaving Afghanistan is NOT a bad idea, just like it was not a bad idea to pack up and leave Vietnam. It's a quagmire, and we're doing nothing but propping up a corrupt government, while the insurgents hide just over the border in Cambodia^HPakistan.
Closing Guantanamo is a matter of Constitutionality. They haven't been charged with a crime, so keeping them is unconstitutional. The President took an oath to uphold the Constitution, and he's breaking that oath. Whining about a lack of support from Congress is just that, a lame excuse.
Propping up a dictator in Egypt is OK because we "need to play nice with Israel"? WTF? It's very simple: do we, or don't we, approve of dictatorships? In my book, dictatorships are always bad. If they aren't, then why don't we have one here?
How is France's treatment of immigrants shameful? Their immigrants aren't assimilating, and the French people are free to make whatever laws they want to deal with that. If the immigrants don't like it, they can go home to their wonderful home countries. Remember, they don't have freedom of religion built into their constitution like we do, and there may be a good reason for that: our freedom of religion gets us crap like the FLDS and Scientology, and a culture where fundamentalism runs rampant (about half the US population is fundamentalist--how does that compare to Afghanistan?).
It's worse than that. Democracy actively selects for lying asshats, so even if you are smart and have good ideas you'll be beaten by the charismatic psychopath promising bread and circuses paid for with your neighbour's money (or, these days, money borrowed from the Chinese).
Ah, you're talking about Reagan and both Bushs, only instead of neighbors, it'd be all the poor in the ghettos and the middleclass not living near their exclusive ranches or in their gated communities helping the rich get richer. Or did you think their money comes from trees?
I agree with your first point. Indeed, they did have two years and didn't take full advantage.
Afghanistan was handled wrong while the US diverted resources and attention to Iraq. People called Iraq a quagmire too and wanted us to leave. We stuck around a while longer and ended up with something at least a little better. That's not to say we wouldn't have been better off never going to war in the first place. I think giving Afghanistan a little more time might let us leave in a similar manner. Not exactly victory, but not necessarily Vietnam-redux either.
I never meant to imply propping up a dictator is OK. It isn't. I think many of our foreign policy problems are a result of supporting regimes that we should not. I was just pointing out, that superpower or no, Egypt has us over a barrel with the Suez Canal and Israel unless we (or someone else) is willing to use force. Pragmatism isn't always pretty.
Not backing down on the France thing. It's bigotry. I hate the religious stupidity here, but the solution is educating the morons and not letting their ignorance infiltrate our laws. Restricting freedom to accomplish a goal is the same sort of solution as the Internet "kill switch". Bad idea.
This is all backwards. The internet needs to stay open and free, but not in the light of a political posture, rather in the wide-open Wild-West setting. Any attempt by a government power to institute controls to prevent people from doing things on the internet will be twisted, distorted and not held in honor, especially by an American system that puts someone new with their own agenda in office every four years. Instead of governments taking measures to identify criminals, whatever identifies someone as a criminal in whatever space or time, individuals need to be holding themselves accountable for the actions that tend to make governments necessary. Getting rid of criminals shouldn't be a self-assigned duty of government, but rather self-governence should eliminate the criminal activities. Whatever Hillary Cilnton really means as an 'open and free' internet ...that's not the same 'open and free' that you and I think it should be. .
Neutiquam erro
There is a debate currently underway in some circles about whether the internet is a force for liberation or repression. But I think that debate is largely beside the point. Egypt isn’t inspiring people because they communicated using Twitter. It is inspiring because people came together and persisted in demanding a better future.
Just who the hell in what circles are even debating that the internet isn't a force for liberation, freedom, information, knowledge, equality, and god-damned apple pie?
No really, I want a list of names and groups so I know who to exile when I'm king for a day. And really, what are their arguments, cause I'm having a hard time conceptualizing how anyone would use the internet for repression. I mean, usually the repression is in terms of denying people access to the Internet.
Now, when I told my wife this quote, she immediately said that Clinton must still be butthurt over wikileaks, which was funny. So I want to make one thing explicitly clear. Wikileaks helps, aids, and benefits Americans. I'm not really talking about South Americans, Canadians, or Latin Americans, although they benefit too. No, I'm talking about "We The People" of the United States of America. We function on facts and truths. I'm not yet so cynical that I think that everyone's an idiot and that democracy is a bad thing. WE need to know this stuff so WE can fix it as the ultimate controllers of this whole shindig. And it is broken. In places.
I like the USA, I'm a fan. But I like it because we're the good guys. If there are things that make us look like the bad guys, then that needs to be fixed. And the people in charge of those things need to be given the boot.
Most of the time we don't even know when things are broken until it's way too late. People send information to wikileaks out of a moral obligation.
Ah, you're talking about Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, only instead of neighbors, it'd be all the poor in the ghettos and the middleclass not living near their exclusive ranches or in their gated communities helping the rich get richer. Or did you think their money comes from trees?
See, it applies to both sides. heh.
See, it applies to both sides. heh.
That was actually my point and why I have no hope of ever trying to convince anyone of anything discussing politics. It's impossible to compete with self-inflicted brainwashing via tv and radio.
It's no big deal, all of Florida's seniors are just going on a cruise.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
we place ourselves on the side of openness
Until the DHS hijacks your domains.
Exactly. The way things are now, no one can agree on anything, and nothing gets done.
If the country were broken up into smaller units (larger than states, more like regional districts), there'd be more progress. For instance, suppose there were 6 main new countries created out of the USA: one comprising the New England states, one comprising the "rust belt" states, one comprising the southeast states, one comprising the heartland states, one comprising the pacific northwest states and northern California, and one comprising the southwest states and southern California. Now let's think about some divisive issues; let's start with universal healthcare. the New England and Northwest countries would probably institute Canadian-style universal healthcare pretty quickly, because there wouldn't be that much opposition to it from within their borders. The Rust Belt country might follow suit after a while. The Southeast and Heartland countries probably wouldn't do it at all, since that's probably where a lot of the opposition comes from. (I'm not sure about the Southwest country, but they might institute it before long.) How about abortion, which hasn't stopped being a giant issue over 40 years? Again, the New England and Northwest countries would probably make it legal and stop arguing about it, and the Southeast, Southwest, and Heartland countries would ban it, and that'd be the end of it.
While a lot of the friction in this country is rural vs. urban, certain regions are much more urban than rural, and vice-versa. Heartland states, for instance, are much more "red" than New England or Northwest states, and the two sides are constantly fighting. Breaking up the nation into smaller regions would stop a lot of that, because states in the different regions are much more aligned with their neighbor states than with states farther away, so not having to constantly fight over the same issues would free them up to work on other, more important issues, and each region could do things in its own way.
Going back to a Confederation would be a step in the right direction too, but I think one problem is that the states are simply too small and too numerous. If you look at the European Union, you'll see that it's mainly dominated by some very large countries: France, Germany, Italy, and UK. While not large in land area, they are large in population, compared to any of our states (remember, many of our states have huge amounts of uninhabited space, especially in the West: UT, AZ, CO, WY, MT, NV, even CA), so it'd be really inefficient to make each state do everything itself. This of course is an argument for Federalism, but the problem with Federalism in the USA, of course, is the constant in-fighting as I described above, because the different regions are just too different and can't agree on anything. Federalism at a smaller level (e.g. the New England states only) would probably work just fine, since, for instance, there isn't that much disagreement between Vermont and New Hampshire, or even Maine and Connecticut. Notice, for instance, that almost all the New England states have legalized gay marriage, another big issue these days that people are fighting about.
Now, if all these new 6-10 countries wanted to create a loose confederation, whose only responsibilities were a common defense and a shared currency, that would be a good idea. But what we have now obviously isn't working.
Jeez, can't a Democrat get credit for wanting to tax the rich these days?