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US Funding Stealth Internets to Circumvent Repressive Regimes
snydeq writes "The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy 'shadow' Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks. According to a report from CBS News: '...by the end of the year the State Department will have spent $70 million on efforts to provide alternate pathways for dissidents to access the Internet and telecommunications services. One group received $2 million to develop an "Internet in a suitcase" that could be easily carried and set up in a foreign country.'"
This kinda thing is an act of war?
localhost$shadowtubez start
==Welcome to ShadowTubez==
Fight the Power, with the help of the USA!
(Connecting to shadowtubez.us.gov to establish freedom fighter credentials...)
Doh!
So, will we Americans be able to use this shadow internet and mobile phone networks to access what PROTECT IP tries to block?
As the article says "The revolution will be broadcast...", but it leaves out "straight to the US govt who will then decide if they want to a)let you carry on in your attempt to self govern (provided the US can profit from it) or b)arrange for a leak of information that will crush you"
This is pure propaganda. The very last thing the US wants is for genuine freedom of information. What it does want is failsafe communication with its own sympathisers, clients and agents. People make comments along the lines of "what about if they start censoring us?" Did you not notice? Will you consider your news media uncensored simply because nobody puts a 2 minute ad on national TV or a full page ad in the NYT explaining that it's already happened? Wake up. Did you not notice that you are never allowed to hear or read your enemies' words directly or in full? You are only allowed to digest small pieces, decontextualised and presented by public relations people masquerading as journalists. You can identify the real journalists if you have a good memory: they are the people who used to ask hard questions, who were also unafraid to cross frontlines and ask hard questions of the enemy, who are no longer welcome, whose access is rescinded and whose names and reputations are slandered and traduced and who are finally ignored. In their place you have the shame and disgrace of "embedded" journalists, people who are a do not deserve to be called journalists and who have made a compact to deceive you. The English language media is now a rather glossy and expensive upgrade of Pravda. Why on earth would the government legislate censorship when it can be outsourced, bought and paid for? This is how free speech and an uncensored media works in a country with free speech enshrined in the constitution and tested and protected in law. How well do you think it will work in projects funded and controlled by the CIA? Does anyone truly believe these projects exists to counter repression? They exist to promote one kind of repression over another.
it [the government] is there to uphold the rules that the majority of the nation agrees upon.
I'm probably gonna get a -1 flamebait for this, but I'll counter this point anyways. There is no need to have a government, if its sole function is to uphold the rules of the majority. If the Fed didn't exist, people would still agree that, say, stealing is bad; we don't need a government to affirm this conviction. But I do agree with you: we do have a federal government that imposes (better word) the will of the majority on everyone. E.G. if most people don't like drugs, hey, "we should ban them!" "Don't like gays? Hey, make their marriages illegal!" I think that's a better way to look at it.
I'm of the mind that what we're seeing is a regrowth of the powerful families system that has dominated government throughout most of human history, but in this iteration it's "corporate aristocratic" families instead. To me, it's roughly analogous to ancient Rome - the masses have at least the illusion of say and can get some things changed if they complain loudly enough, but for the most part things are run by, or on the behalf of, the powerful, wealthy, and privileged organizations of the day. The dissolution of the traditional large and extended noble family system created something of a power vacuum for a newer social unit to exert its interests through government... instead of the Julia, the Flavia, and the Cassius families, we have the Monsanto, Koch Industries, and ExxonMobil families.