Slashdot Mirror
The Internet Society is Unhappy with U.S. Govt's Internet Spying Tactics
On September 9, The Internet Society issued a position paper in which it said the group "...is alarmed by continuing reports alleging systematic United States government efforts to circumvent Internet security mechanisms," and went on to say, "The Internet Society President and CEO, Lynn St. Amour, said, 'If true, these reports describe government programmes that undermine the technical foundations of the Internet and are a fundamental threat to the Internet’s economic, innovative, and social potential. Any systematic, state-level attack on Internet security and privacy is a rejection of the global, collaborative fabric that has enabled the Internet's growth to extend beyond the interests of any one country.'" Those are tough words from an international organization that usually spends its time bringing the Internet to people in out-of-the-way villages and sponsoring the Internet Engineering Task Force. You can join the Internet Society for as little as $0 per year, and possibly help beat back some of the U.S. government eavesdropping and encryption circumvention efforts. And if you can make it to San Francisco on October 2, you can attend a (free) Internet Society discussion. Meanwhile, today's Slashdot interviewee is Paul Brigner, the Internet Society Regional Bureau Director for North America, who talks about the Internet Society in general, as well as the group's reaction to the U.S. government's online surveillance.
But no shit, Sherlock.
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What if Verizon succeeds in killing the Internet?
I've posted countless essays over the years on the importance of Net neutrality and how big ISPs are trying to turn the Internet into a pay-per-view system, rather than the open-access system it was always intended to be. I've written open letters to federal legislators; remarked on the various games being played by AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and the like; and cheered Google Fiber for demonstrating that the big ISPs are full of nonsense when they claim their backs are against the wall in terms of broadband speeds and reach.
And now, Verizon is claiming it has free speech rights to limit and block content flowing from the Internet to its customers....
Uh, are we mis-remembering history? There were no "internment camps" during the McCarthy era.
Want some more unwanted knowledge? Turns out, the State Department really was full of Communist sympathizers. McCarthy was right. Historical fact, look it up.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
He was accidentally right - he was just pretending to have a list of CommieMutantTraitors, and the whole witch hunt did a poor job of discovering them. The problem was real, though.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.