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Verizon Terminating Copyright Infringers’ Internet Access

Verizon Terminating Copyright Infringers’ Internet Access

Wired
July 20, 2010

Verizon is terminating internet service to an unknown number of repeat copyright scofflaws, a year after suggesting it was not adopting a so-called graduated-response policy.

While it was not immediately clear whether other internet service providers were following suit, the move comes as the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are lobbying ISPs and Congress to support terminating internet access for repeat, online copyright offenders.

All the while, the United States has been privately lobbying the European Union to “encourage” so-called three strikes policies, according to leaked documents surrounding a proposed international intellectual property accord.

Verizon was not immediately prepared to comment in detail on the developments, first reported by CNET, or to detail how many of its more than 8 million broadband subscribers it has terminated — although CNET said the number was “small.” The RIAA declined comment.

“We reserve the right to do that,” Verizon spokeswoman Bobbi Henson said in a telephone interview regarding the terminations. The next day, it “disputed” the accuracy of CNET’s story.

The RIAA announced a year ago it was winding down its litigation campaign against individual file sharers, about 30,000 lawsuits in all. Instead, the music industry’s lobbying and litigation arm said it would rely on a series of accords it had reached with “leading” internet service providers, in which ISPs have agreed “on principle” to shut off internet access to customers the RIAA catches file sharing repeatedly.

At that time, in a Jan. 5, 2009 interview, Verizon spokeswoman Ellen Yu said that, in reference to the RIAA announcement: “We are not working with them on this.”

Cara Duckworth, an RIAA spokeswoman, said the same day that “We have an agreement on principle with several leading ISPs but not all, and the agreement on principle is confidential.”

Other than Verizon, none of the leading ISPs have acknowledged practicing what the content industry is calling “graduated response.” Under Verizon’s plan, the ISP notifies customers that unlawful file sharing allegedly is taking place on their accounts — file sharing discovered by the RIAA or other intellectual property holders who actively police networks and IP addresses. Internet service could be terminated perhaps after several warnings.

Italy to Require Anyone Who Uploads Video to the Internet to Obtain Government Authorization

Global treaty could ban file-sharers from Internet after ‘three strikes’

 



Obama’s Favorite For Supreme Court Justice Wants to Ban Guns, Free Speech

Obama’s Favorite For Supreme Court Justice Wants to Ban Guns, Free Speech

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
January 15, 2010


Obama’s Advisor Cass Sunstein is one of his top picks for a seat in the Supreme Court

Cass Sunstein, president Obama’s appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and the man who outlined a plan for the government to infiltrate “conspiracy groups” in order to undermine them, is in direct line for a promotion to Supreme Court Justice.

Sunstein, already in an advanced position of power in the White House as Regulatory czar, has already called for strict restrictions on gun ownership, an internet “Fairness Doctrine”, and an effective ban on free speech where dissenting opinions to those of the government are expressed.

Suntein’s name was on various shortlists to replace Justice David Souter last year following his retirement, and prior to the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor. Sunstein’s name was also touted for the Supreme Court before Obama even took office in November 2008.

His close personal relationship with Obama should set alarm bells ringing for anyone who values the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, particularly as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now aged 75, is likely to take retirement soon following illness, and with Justice John Paul Stevens now aged 90.

Sunstein and Obama go way back from their faculty days at the University of Chicago law school and are firm friends. Sunstein worked as an advisor to Obama during his presidential campaign and was drafted into the White House soon after Obama won the election.

As Obama’s “Information Czar”, Sunstein effectively interprets the law for the Executive. Sunstein operates in a similar, but much more elevated, role to that of former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who infamously re-interpreted the law to legally sanction torture under the Bush Administration.

As we highlighted in our article yesterday, Sunstein has outlined plans for the government to infiltrate “conspiracy groups”, including the 9/11 Truth Movement, in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks, as well as real meetings.

Sunstein has effectively penned the blueprint for a Cointelpro “provocateur” style program to silence what have become the government’s most vociferous and influential critics.

The specifics of the plans must be read in full in order to gauge their extreme nature and the threat Sunstein poses to the freedom in America.

On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” he proposed that “under imaginable conditions” the government “might ban conspiracy theorizing” and could “impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.”

In effect, Obama’s information czar wants to tax or ban outright, as in make illegal, opinions and ideas that the government doesn’t approve of.

Sunstein’s definition of a “conspiracy theorist” encompasses those who question manmade global warming and, most bizarrely, anyone who believes that sunlight is healthy for their bodies.

Presumably if Sunstein had been in power in the latter middle ages he would have attempted to tax and then ban the work of Galileo Galilei for subscribing to the theory that the Earth was not the centre of the universe and that it actually revolved around the Sun.

When he’s not going after those evil sunlight lovers, Sunstein advocates Internet censorship via enforced and regulated links in news pieces to opposing opinions.

Sunstein himself later retracted that proposal, explaining that it would be “too difficult to regulate [the Internet] in a way that would respond to those concerns”, and admitting that it was “almost certainly unconstitutional.”

Sunstein has also called for the re-writing of the First Amendment, and has even proposed a mandatory celebration of tax day in America.

His views on the Second Amendment have also raised serious concerns. In his book “Radicals in Robes,” he wrote: “[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine.”

Sunstein is on record attacking the Second Amendment. Watch in the following clip as he says “The Supreme Court has never suggested that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to have guns.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flfHZgT-SeI

Given his extreme actions and stated intentions, Cass Sunstein should be forced out of office and barred from practicing law with immediate effect. If president Obama has his way, however, we may very soon see his good buddy Sunstein elevated to the highest judicial position in the country.

NY Post Covers Scumstain: “An Obama Official’s Frightening Book about Curbing Free Speech Online”

Bloggers and news organizations must declare war on Cass Sunstein

Sunstein: BAN Conspiracy Theories Against Global Warming and U.S. Government

 



China Will Soon Have Power to Shut Lights Off Britain

China Will Soon Have Power to Shut Lights Off Britain

UK Telegraph
January 4, 2010

The year is 2050, and a diplomatic dispute between China and Britain risks escalating into all-out war. But rather than launching a barrage of ballistic missiles and jet fighters to destroy key British targets, Beijing has a far simpler plan for defeating its enemy. It simply turns off the lights.

At the flick of a switch elite teams of Chinese hackers attached to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launch a hi-tech assault on Britain’s computer systems, with devastating consequences. Within minutes the country’s power stations, water companies, air traffic control, government and financial systems are totally shut down.

Britain’s attempt to respond by launching nuclear-armed Trident missiles at China has to be abandoned, as the computer systems that control the weapons system are no longer functioning.

At a time when relations between China and Britain are supposed to be improving, the prospect of Beijing launching a cyber attack against Britain and its allies might seem to be the stuff of fantasy.

After all, it is only two years since Gordon Brown made a highly successful visit to Beijing where the two countries agreed to increase trade by 50 per cent by this year, and to cooperate on a range of issues, such as global warming. As one of the world’s leading economic powers, China’s role on the world stage has transformed dramatically over the past decade, with the huge wealth that Beijing has accumulated from its impressive economic growth playing a key role in supporting the global economy.

As a consequence Western policymakers have intensified their efforts to persuade China to draw on its economic prosperity and play a constructive role in world affairs, such as persuading North Korea and Iran to give up their controversial nuclear weapons programmes.

But last week Mr Brown came up against an altogether different kind of China, one that appears to have no interest in behaving like a proper ally.

For weeks British ministers and officials tried desperately to persuade their Chinese counterparts to commute the death sentence passed on Akmal Shaikh, a mentally ill 53-year-old minicab driver from North London who was convicted of smuggling four kilos of heroin into China two years ago.

Mr Brown is said to have personally raised Shaikh’s case with the Chinese premier, Wen Jiaboa, when they met at last month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen, and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, made similar entreaties to the Chinese embassy in London.

But for all the talk of improved bilateral ties between the two countries, the Chinese took absolutely no notice. At 10.30am on Tuesday, Shaikh was put to death by lethal injection in the remote province of Urumqi, and his body disposed of in an unmarked grave. And when Messrs Brown and Miliband sought to remonstrate with the Chinese authorities for pressing ahead with Shaikh’s execution, all they received from Beijing in response was a firm admonition not to interfere in China’s internal affairs.

At a stroke the cold reality of China’s attitude to the outside world was laid bare for all to see. Rather than being a partner that can be trusted to work with the West on issues of mutual concern, the Chinese have demonstrated that their default position is that Beijing’s only real priority it to look after its own interests, whether it is enforcing its zero tolerance policy on drug abuse or refusing to cooperate with global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

China’s self-centred approach to international affairs should come as no surprise to the British government. American President Barack Obama was similarly rebuffed during his state visit to Beijing last November. Mr Obama arrived in China hoping to get Chinese cooperation on a range of issues, such as North Korea, financial stability and human rights. But despite being given a warm reception in public by Chinese officials, including a private guided tour of the Great Wall, the American president left Beijing without gaining any concessions from China on any major issue.

Much of China’s reluctance to engage constructively with the West on issues of mutual concern dates back to the psychological trauma the country suffered during the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, when British gunboats routinely humiliated the Chinese government of the day. The deep feelings of resentment most Chinese feel for the humiliation they suffered continues to this day, and was even reflected in the official statement issued by the Chinese Embassy in London following Shaikh’s execution. It said the “strong resentment” felt by the Chinese public to drug traffickers was based “on the bitter memory of history”.

To ensure that there is no repeat of a time when foreign powers could push the Chinese people around with impunity, Beijing is today investing enormous effort into developing technology that would render the West’s superior military firepower useless.

There have already been well-documented instances in recent years where Chinese hackers have successfully launched cyber attacks against key Western targets, including the Pentagon and Whitehall. In 2006 Chinese computer hackers were accused of shutting down the House of Commons computer network by flooding it with bogus emails, and the Foreign Office and other key government departments have accused rogue Chinese computer experts of trying to hack in their systems.

In America Chinese hackers are reported to have attempted up to 100,000 attacks on government computers each year, and have successfully penetrated the computer systems of some of the American military’s elite units, such as US Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions.

But now Western security experts believe Beijing has authorised PLA commanders to draw up a cyber wars blueprint that would give them the capability to neutralise the West’s military firepower by 2050.

The Pentagon recently reported that two highly accomplished Chinese computer hackers had been recruited by the PLA to draft a detailed plan that would enable China to disable the United States’ entire aircraft carrier battle fleet, simply by launching a pre-emptive cyber attack.

This blueprint is now seen as being part of an aggressive push by Beijing to achieve “electronic dominance” over each of its global rivals by 2050, with the US, Britain, South Korea and Russia the main targets. To ensure they recruit the best hackers available it was recently reported that senior PLA officers were holding computer hacking competitions throughout the country, and recruiting the winners to their burgeoning cyber army.

“The Chinese realise that, if it came to a conventional military conflict with the West, they would struggle to compete with the West’s superior military firepower,” said a Western security source. “But by concentrating their efforts on cyber wars they believe they can develop a cheap and highly effective method of achieving technical supremacy over the West.”

The government is now so concerned about the threat posed by China’s cyber warriors that it has established a Cyber Security Operations Centre at the GCHQ listening centre in Cheltenham. Lord West, Mr Brown’s security adviser, said that Britain was developing the capability to strike back against Chinese hackers by recruiting former British hackers to GCHQ.

“You need youngsters who are deep into this stuff,” Lord West explained last year. “If they have been slightly naughty boys, very often they enjoy stopping other naughty boys.”

And he warned that any future war between world powers was more likely to be fought over the Internet than on the battlefield. “As their ability to use the web and the net grows, there will be more opportunity for these attacks,” he said.

 



Google & YouTube Censoring ClimateGate?

Google & YouTube Censoring ClimateGate?

The Google search function comes with a handy helper. Typically, when you begin to type in search terms, a drop down window will appear to provide helpful suggestions, based on the search terms Google users are typing in most often.

I mention this, because a couple of days ago, typing the word “climate” into the window resulted in “climate hack” and “climate emails” popping up near the top of the handy helper suggestion list.

Today, Google’s handy helper seems to have had a change of heart.

Search Engines Censoring ClimateGate?

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
November 30, 2009

A fantastic article written by Christopher Brooker of the London Telegraph exposing the climate change fraud rocketed to the very top of a Google News search for “global warming,” only to disappear hours later.

“What is going on at Google? I only ask because last night when I typed “Global Warming” into Google News the top item was Christopher Booker’s superb analysis of the Climategate scandal,” writes James Delingpole.

“It’s still the most-read article of the Telegraph’s entire online operation – 430 comments and counting – yet mysteriously when you try the same search now it doesn’t even feature. Instead, the top-featured item is a blogger pushing Al Gore’s AGW agenda. Perhaps there’s nothing sinister in this. Perhaps some Google-savvy reader can enlighten me.”

Another blogger noted how other versions of the article appeared, but the original had been “disappeared,” despite the fact that other London Telegraph articles showed up as the top ranked result when entering their headline.

“That is using the search string: “Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation” – which is the full headline of the piece. It shows up where it has been quoted in full by other sites, but of the Booker column there is no sign,” writes Richard North.

In addition, searches for previous Christopher Brooker articles show up as top links – it’s only this particular article that has seemingly been targeted for censorship.

The same de-listing of the article is evident on other major search engine websites like Bing and Yahoo.

Despite the fact that Google has been caught gaming its search results in the past, this is more likely an “inside job” as it were.

It appears as if one of the editors at the Telegraph has gone into the backend of the Telegraph content management system and checked an option that prevents search engines from indexing a particular article.

“My guess is that this isn’t a Google issue. The problem probably lies closer to home – there looks to be an enemy in the camp, who has probably been using this, or something like it,” writes North, referring to a code that is inserted into a web page in order to block it from being ’spidered’. This is sometimes done to prevent site ripping and other hacks, but it also has the effect of barring search engines from being able to list the page in their results.

The fact that this has been applied to just this one article suggests that some higher-up at the Telegraph from the warmist camp was concerned about how the article had gone viral and wanted to contain its spread.

The fact that this attempt at sabotage has become a story within itself will probably only mean Brooker’s article will be read by more people, so the whole ruse has backfired.

“Climategate” surpasses “Global Warming” on Google

 



Global treaty could ban file-sharers from Internet after ‘three strikes’

Global treaty could ban file-sharers from Internet after ‘three strikes’
File-sharers could be jailed under proposed ACTA provisions

Raw Story
November 4, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMIUwxEgVpY

Leaked details of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated in secret by most of the world’s largest economies suggest Internet file-sharers could be blocked from accessing the Internet if they are repeatedly accused of sharing copyrighted material, say media and digital-rights watchdogs.

And the worst-case scenario could see popular Web sites like YouTube and Flickr shut down because of a provision in the treaty that would force them to monitor everything uploaded to the site for copyright violations.

Internet law professor Michael Geist published details of “leaked” portions of the discussions on ACTA on his blog Tuesday, as a new round of ACTA negotiations began in Seoul, South Korea. The US, along with all the countries of the European Union as well as Japan, Canada, Australia and a handful of other countries, are involved in the negotiations.

“The provisions would pave the way for a globalized three-strikes and you’re out system,” Geist blogged Wednesday, referring to a proposal from copyright holders to have Internet service providers cut off service to anyone accused at least three times of illegally sharing copyrighted material.

DARPA Plans for Interplanetary Internet

 



Internet Moves Towards Global Government

Internet moves towards Global Government

EU Observer
October 1, 2009

The body responsible for managing the development of the internet, Icann, has cut its umbilical cord to the US government, a move the European Union has been demanding for four years.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees domain names – the .com, .eu, .org and so on at the end of a web address – as of 30 September will no longer be subject to review by the US Department of Commerce.

Instead, independent review panels appointed by Icann Governmental Advisory Committee (Gac) and Icann itself with the involvement of governments around the world. will perform this task.

Since 2005, the EU has been calling for reform of the governance of the internet, saying that the internet is a global resource and should not be tied to one national government – a position echoed by many other countries and a number of companies.

Read Full Article Here

 



NBC’s Meet The Press Attacks Internet & Bloggers

NBC’s Meet The Press Attacks Internet & Bloggers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28ohz-zfM6c

 



Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

Declan McCullagh
CNet News
August 28, 2009

Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.

They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

“I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness,” said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. “It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.”

Representatives of other large Internet and telecommunications companies expressed concerns about the bill in a teleconference with Rockefeller’s aides this week, but were not immediately available for interviews on Thursday.

A spokesman for Rockefeller also declined to comment on the record Thursday, saying that many people were unavailable because of the summer recess. A Senate source familiar with the bill compared the president’s power to take control of portions of the Internet to what President Bush did when grounding all aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001. The source said that one primary concern was the electrical grid, and what would happen if it were attacked from a broadband connection.

Read Full Article Here

 

Jay Rockefeller: Internet should have never existed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9xzXUQLuY

‘Thought Crime’ bill will allow government to prosecute people involved in ‘hate speech’ on the internet.

 



Chinese youth beaten to death at net addiction bootcamp

Chinese youth beaten to death at net addiction bootcamp

Joe Fay
The Register
August 4, 2009

China’s anti-internet addiction industry has claimed another victim, after supervisors at a rehabilitation camp allegedly beat a 16 year old inmate to death.

Deng Senshan had been sent to Guangxi Qihuang Survival Training Camp to “cure” him of his internet addiction, the AFP reports. His parents were paying $1000 for the treatment.

However, the youth ended up in solitary confinement shortly after arriving at the establishment, and was subsequently beaten to death by supervisors for “running too slowly”, according to the news agency.

Local police confirmed they were investigating the death of a high school student, allegedly at the hands of his supervisors.

China is in the grip of acute paranoia over the threat of internet addiction to its youth. Efforts to cure the young of their affliction range from the bizarre to the brutal, by way of out and out quackery.

Read Full Article Here

 



Australia To Enforce Mandatory Internet Censorship

Australia To Enforce Mandatory Chinese-Style Internet Censorship
Government to block “controversial” websites with universal national filter

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
October 29, 2008

The Australian government is set to impose Chinese-style Internet censorship by enforcing a universal national filter that will block websites deemed “controversial,” as part of a wider agenda to regulate the Internet according to free speech advocates.

A provision whereby Internet users could opt out of the filter by contacting their ISP has been stripped from the legislation, meaning the filter will be universal and mandatory.

The System Administrators Guild of Australia and Electronic Frontiers Australia have attacked the proposal, saying it will restrict web access, raise prices and slow internet traffic speeds.

The plan was first created as a way to combat child pornography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia,” reports the Australian Herald Sun.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy revealed the mandatory censorship to the Senate estimates committee as the Global Network Initiative, bringing together leading companies, human rights organisations, academics and investors, committed the technology firms to “protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users”. (Complete black is white, up is down, double talk).

Human Rights Watch has condemned internet censorship, and argued to the US Senate “there is a real danger of a Virtual Curtain dividing the internet, much as the Iron Curtain did during the Cold War, because some governments fear the potential of the internet, (and) want to control it.”

Speaking from personal experience, not only are “controversial” websites blocked in China, meaning any website that is critical of the state, but every website the user attempts to visit first has to pass through the “great firewall,” causing the browser to hang and delay while it is checked against a government blacklist.

This causes excruciating delays, and the user experience is akin to being on a bad dial-up connection in the mid 1990’s. Even in the center of Shanghai with a fixed ethernet connection, the user experience is barely tolerable.

Not only are websites in China blocked, but e mails too are scanned for “controversial” words and blocked from being sent if they contain phrases related to politics or obscenities.

Googling for information on certain topics is also heavily restricted. While in China I tried to google “Bush Taiwan,” which resulted in Google.com ceasing to be accessible and my Internet connection was immediately terminated thereafter.

The Australian government will no doubt insist that their filter is in our best interests and is only designed to block child pornography, snuff films and other horrors, yet the system is completely pointless because it will not affect file sharing networks, which is the medium through which the vast majority of such material is distributed.

If we allow Australia to become the first “free” nation to impose Internet censorship, the snowball effect will only accelerate – the U.S. and the UK are next.

Indeed, Prime Minister Tony Blair called for Internet censorship last year.

In April 2007, Time magazine reported that researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time. The projects echo moves we have previously reported on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.

Moves to regulate the web have increased over the last two years.

– In a display of bi-partisanship, there have been calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens by both Democrats and Republicans alike.

– In December 2006, Republican Senator John McCain tabled a proposal to introduce legislation that would fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos posted by visitors on comment boards. It is well known that McCain has a distaste for his blogosphere critics, causing a definite conflict of interest where any proposal to restrict blogs on his part is concerned.

– During an appearance with his wife Barbara on Fox News in November 2006, George Bush senior slammed Internet bloggers for creating an “adversarial and ugly climate.”

– The White House’s own de-classified strategy for “winning the war on terror” targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to “diminish” their influence.

– The Pentagon has also announced its effort to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.

– In an October 2006 speech, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a “terror training camp,” through which “disaffected people living in the United States” are developing “radical ideologies and potentially violent skills.” His solution is “intelligence fusion centers,” staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will are already in operation.

– The U.S. Government wants to force bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year could be the punishment for non-compliance.

– A landmark November 2006 legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations sought to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web – and their argument was supported by the U.S. government.

– A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simply linking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.

– The European Union, led by former Stalinist John Reid, has also vowed to shut down “terrorists” who use the Internet to spread propaganda.

– The EU data retention bill, passed after much controversy and implemented in 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens’ data on phone calls, sms’, emails and instant messaging services.

– The EU also proposed legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video without a license.

– The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine. “At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites.”

Governments are furious that their ceaseless lies are being exposed in real time on the World Wide Web and have resolved to stifle, regulate and control what truly is the last outpost of real free speech in the world. Internet censorship is perhaps the most pertinent issue that freedom advocates should rally to combat over the course of the next few years, lest we allow a cyber-gag to be placed over our mouths and say goodbye to our last medium of free and open communication.

 

DARPA building search engine for video surveillance footage

Ars Technica
October 21, 2008

The government agency that birthed the Internet is developing a sophisticated search engine for video, and when complete will allow intelligence analysts to sift through live footage from spy drones, as well as thousands of hours worth of archived recordings, in order to spot a variety of selected events or behaviors. In the past month, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced nearly $20 million in total contracts for private firms to begin developing the system, which is slated to take until at least 2011 to complete.

According to a prospectus written in March but released only this month, the Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool (VIRAT) will enable intel analysts to “rapidly find video content of interest from archives and provide alerts to the analyst of events of interest during live operations,” taking both conventional video and footage from infrared scanners as input. The VIRAT project is an effort to cope with a growing data glut that has taxed intelligence resources because of the need to have trained human personnel perform time- and labor-intensive review of recorded video.

The DARPA overview emphasizes that VIRAT will not be designed with “face recognition, gait recognition, human identification, or any form of biometrics” in mind. Rather, the system will search for classes of activities or events. A suggested partial list in the prospectus includes digging, loitering, exploding, shooting, smoking, following, shaking hand, exchanging objects, crawling under a car, breaking a window, and evading a checkpoint. As new sample clips are fed into the system, it will need to recognize the signature features of new classes of search terms.

Read Full Article Here

 

EU Set to Move ‘Internet of Things’ Closer to Reality

Daniel Taylor
Old-Thinker News
November 2, 2008

If the world-wide trend continues, ‘Web 3.0′ will be tightly monitored, and will become an unprecedented tool for surveillance. The “Internet of Things”, a digital representation of real world objects and people tagged with RFID chips, and increased censorship are two main themes for the future of the web.

The future of the internet, according to author and “web critic” Andrew Keen, will be monitored by “gatekeepers” to verify the accuracy of information posted on the web. The “Outlook 2009″ report from the November-December issue of The Futurist reports that,

“Internet entrepreneur Andrew Keen believes that the anonymity of today’s internet 2.0 will give way to a more open internet 3.0 in which third party gatekeepers monitor the information posted on Web sites to verify its accuracy.”

Keen stated during his early 2008 interview withThe Futurist that the internet, in its current form, has undermined mainline media and empowered untrustworthy “amateurs”, two trends that he wants reversed. “Rather than the empowerment of the amateur, Web 3.0 will show the resurgence of the professional,” states Keen.

Australia has now joined China in implementing mandatory internet censorship, furthering the trend towards a locked down and monitored web.

The Internet of Things

Now, the European Union has announced that it will pursue the main component of Web 3.0, the Internet of Things (IoT).

According to Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media for the EU, “The Internet of the future will radically change our society.” Ultimately, the EU is aiming to “lead the way” in the transformation to Web 3.0.

Reporting on the European Union’s pursuit of the IoT, iBLS reports,

“New technology applications will need ubiquitous Internet coverage. The Internet of Things means that wireless interaction between machines, vehicles, appliances, sensors and many other devices will take place using the Internet. It already makes electronic travel cards possible, and will allow mobile devices to exchange information to pay for things or get information from billboards (or streetlights).”

The Internet of Things consists of objects that are ‘tagged’ with Radio Frequency Identification Chips (RFID) that communicate their position, history, and other information to an RFID reader or wireless network. Most, if not all major computer companies and technology developers (HP, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, etc.) are putting large amounts of time and money into the Internet of Things.

Cisco and Sun Microsystems have founded an alliance to promote the Internet of Things and further its implementation.

South Korea is at the forefront in implementing ubiquitous technology and the Internet of Things. An entire city, New Songdo, is being built in South Korea that fully utilizes the technology. Ubiquitous computing proponents in the United States admit that while a large portion of the technology is being developed in the U.S., it is being tested in South Korea where there are less traditional, ethical and social blockades to prevent its acceptance and use. As the New York Times reports

“Much of this technology was developed in U.S. research labs, but there are fewer social and regulatory obstacles to implementing them in Korea,” said Mr. Townsend [a research director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California], who consulted on Seoul’s own U-city plan, known as Digital Media City. ‘There is an historical expectation of less privacy. Korea is willing to put off the hard questions to take the early lead and set standards.’

An April 2008 report from the National Intelligence Council discussed the Internet of Things and its possible implications.

A timeline shown in the April 2008 NIC report

The report outlines uses for the technology:

“Sensor networks need not be connected to the Internet and indeed often reside in remote sites, vehicles, and buildings having no Internet connection. Smart dust is a term that some have used to express a vision of tiny, wireless-connected sensors; more recently, others use the term to describe any of several technologies that range from the size of a pack of gum to a pack of cigarettes, and that are widely available to system developers.

Ubiquitous positioning describes technologies for locating objects that may reside anywhere, including indoors and underground locations where satellite signals may be unavailable or otherwise inadequate.

Biometrics enables technology to recognize people and other living things, rather than inanimate objects. Connected everyday objects could recognize authorized users by means of fingerprint, voiceprint, iris scan, or other biometric technology.”

These trends towards internet censorship and the internet of things are undoubtedly going to continue, but restricting your free speech and violating your privacy will be harder with your outspoken resistance.

DARPA spies on analyst brains; hopes to offload image analysis to computers
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20..-image-analysis-to-computers.html

Security services want personal data from sites like Facebook

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/15/terrorism-security

UK.gov says: Regulate the internet

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/20/government_internet_regulation/

 



CNN Lies About Gori Bombings by Russia

Info War – CNN Lies About Gori Bombings by Russia

 

Russian Cameraman: CNN Aired Misleading Footage
Broadcaster showed Georgian forces attacking South Ossetia, claimed it was Russians attacking Gori

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
August 12, 2008

CNN is airing misleading footage of the war between Georgia and Russia, skewing public opinion in favor of the Georgians, according to a Russia Today cameraman interviewed this morning.

The Russia Today satellite TV company aired the interview on its English language news channel but the story is yet to appear on the Internet or in any other news outlet.

The Russian cameraman charged that CNN had used his footage of Georgian forces attacking Russian civilians in Tskhinvali, the provincial capital of South Ossetia, but then claimed it showed Russians attacking Georgians in the Georgian town of Gori.

The Georgian assault on Tskhinvali, described as an act of genocide and a war crime by Russian officials and other eyewitnesses, led to the slaughter of at least 2,000 civilians. The fact that Georgia, backed by the U.S. and Israel, were responsible for the provocation that led to the Russian response, has been buried by the majority of western corporate media.

Western media bias to skew popular opinion in favor of the U.S. and NATO client state Georgia was evident from the very start of the conflict.

As we reported yesterday, a prime example of media bias in shielding Georgia from responsibility for the carnage is the fact that news outlets like the BBC continue to report that thousands of civilians were killed in Georgia, ith the obvious inference being that these are victims of the Russian onslaught. But these victims were not killed in Georgia, they were killed in Ossetia – by Georgian forces.

As the Chimes of Freedom Blog elaborates, “While the Ossetians claimed over 1000 dead the BBC neither reported this or any newsreel coming out of Ossetia showing the destruction caused by the Georgian shelling of the breakaway republic. All we are getting is one-sided reports of the destruction being caused by the Russians.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this morning ordered an immediate halt to Russia’s military operations against Georgia.

“The purpose of the operation has been achieved…. The security of our peacekeeping forces and the civilian population has been restored,” Interfax quoted him as saying.

UPDATE: Russia Today has now posted the following on their website and uploaded a video.

 

Russian media suppressed in Georgia

Russian Hackers Continue Attacks On Web Sites
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200..1NwOoTO6GRL.Z38vINk24cA

Russia points to media bias in coverage of S.Ossetia conflict
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080810/115936076.html

Russia Today’s Web Site Attacked
http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/28835

Georgian president’s Web site moves to Atlanta
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D92G6SGO0&show_article=1

Georgia: Russia ’conducting cyber war’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/..-Russia-conducting-cyber-war.html

U.S. Media Distorts Reality Of Georgia/Russia Conflict
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=11387

 



Fairness Doctrine May Give Web Control to Government

Fairness Doctrine Might Give Control of Web Content to the Government

Business and Media Institute
August 12, 2008

There’s a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.”

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell raised that as a possibility after talking with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. McDowell spoke about a recent FCC vote to bar Comcast from engaging in certain Internet practices – expanding the federal agency’s oversight of Internet networks.

The commissioner, a 2006 President Bush appointee, told the Business & Media Institute the Fairness Doctrine could be intertwined with the net neutrality battle. The result might end with the government regulating content on the Web, he warned. McDowell, who was against reprimanding Comcast, said the net neutrality effort could win the support of “a few isolated conservatives” who may not fully realize the long-term effects of government regulation.

“I think the fear is that somehow large corporations will censor their content, their points of view, right,” McDowell said. “I think the bigger concern for them should be if you have government dictating content policy, which by the way would have a big First Amendment problem.”

“Then, whoever is in charge of government is going to determine what is fair, under a so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine,’ which won’t be called that – it’ll be called something else,” McDowell said. “So, will Web sites, will bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?”

McDowell told BMI the Fairness Doctrine isn’t currently on the FCC’s radar. But a new administration and Congress elected in 2008 might renew Fairness Doctrine efforts, but under another name.

“The Fairness Doctrine has not been raised at the FCC, but the importance of this election is in part – has something to do with that,” McDowell said. “So you know, this election, if it goes one way, we could see a re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine. There is a discussion of it in Congress. I think it won’t be called the Fairness Doctrine by folks who are promoting it. I think it will be called something else and I think it’ll be intertwined into the net neutrality debate.”

A recent study by the Media Research Center’s Culture & Media Institute argues that the three main points in support of the Fairness Doctrine – scarcity of the media, corporate censorship of liberal viewpoints, and public interest – are myths.

 

Some Web Firms Say They Track Behavior Without Explicit Consent

Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post
August 12, 2008

Several Internet and broadband companies have acknowledged using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers, according to letters released yesterday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

And Google, the leading online advertiser, stated that it has begun using Internet tracking technology that enables it to more precisely follow Web-surfing behavior across affiliated sites.

The revelations came in response to a bipartisan inquiry of how more than 30 Internet companies might have gathered data to target customers. Some privacy advocates and lawmakers said the disclosures help build a case for an overarching online-privacy law.

Read Full Article Here


Anti-War Website Operator Threatened By Armed Thugs

Anti-War Website Operator Threatened By Armed Thugs

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
August 7, 2008

The operator of a leading alternative news and strongly anti-war website has become the target of nefarious thugs apparently in the employ of the U.S. government who have continually harassed him and ordered him to shut down his website.

Tom Feeley, owner and editor of InformationClearingHouse.info, has endured public harassment, home invasions, death threats and threats to his family simply for running a website.

Counterpunch writer Mike Whitney has circulated an e mail describing what happened to Feeley in an attempt to draw attention to the matter.

Whitney writes that earlier this week Feeley’s wife was startled to suddenly discover three well dressed men standing in her kitchen who told her that Tom must “Stop what he is doing on the Internet, NOW!”

To emphasize the point, the thug pulled back his jacket to reveal a gun while barking out the warning.

Tom’s wife was hysterical and refuses to go back to the house. She contacted the FBI but was told there was nothing they could do.

According to Whitney, “The well-dressed man told Tom’s wife that he knew where her son lived, what line of work he was in, and how many children he had.”

Subsequently, two men in a parked car a block from Tom’s mother’s house were spotted using laptops and sped off when they were approached by Tom’s son.

A similar incident had happened four years previously, when Feeley was approached by a stranger in the parking lot of Long’s Drug store in Southern California, after being forced to remain in his car by an accomplice who blocked him from opening the car door. The man told him, “You need to stop what you are doing on the web”.

Tom said the man was overweight and had his shirt untucked. Tom was taken aback, but (after collecting himself said) “What the fuck? Who do you think you are telling me what I can do?”

The man answered, “Tom, I’m just giving you some good advice. You should take my advice, Tom.”

Alex Jones has experienced similar intimidation tactics on several occasions in the past, particularly the scenario that happened to Tom in the parking lot as well as thinly veiled threats against his family.

In every single instance, the best response is to stand up and be vocal in the face of such harassment. Mafia-like thugs only continue to feed on those who put up with such treatment. The most dangerous thing to do is cower and acquiesce to the will of tyrants.

These kind of tactics will only succeed if the thugs think their actions can have any kind of effect. Every time someone in our movement is intimidated or harassed, we should respond only by re-doubling and intensifying our efforts.

I’ll tell you this about Tom Feeley; he is no bullshitter,” writes Whitney, “He is the “real deal” and completely committed to exposing the mob that is presently running our country. He does not understand why, (as he says) “They are reaching down SO far to get someone who just runs web site”. But, the truth is, they are. Someone wants him to “shut up” and they apparently have the muscle to do it. He knows he is in danger.”

Feeley is ditching his cellphone and maintaining a low profile but to his credit, refuses to cave in to the threats and will continue to publish his website.

Drawing attention to Feeley’s situation is of paramount importance to ensure his protection and also to combat head on attempts to create a chilling atmosphere and intimidate journalists and website publishers.

Thoughts On The Harassment Of Tom Feeley
http://www.infowars.com/?p=3829

Huffington Post: Still Banned in Beijing
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-w..n-post-still-ban_b_116635.html

Major International Transport Hub Censors Political Websites
http://www.prisonplanet.com/major-..ub-censors-political-websites.html

IOC Faces Heat Over Internet Restrictions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/feedarticle/7696295

 



China Spying On Internet Use In Hotels

China Spying On Internet Use In Hotels

AP
July 29, 2008


Foreign-owned hotels in China face the prospect of “severe retaliation” if they refuse to install government software that can spy on Internet use by hotel guests coming to watch the summer Olympic games, a U.S. lawmaker said Tuesday.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., produced a translated version of a document from China’s Public Security Bureau that requires hotels to use the monitoring equipment.

“These hotels are justifiably outraged by this order, which puts them in the awkward position of having to craft pop-up messages explaining to their customers that their Web history, communications, searches and key strokes are being spied on by the Chinese government,” Brownback said at a news conference.

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brownback said several international hotel chains confirmed receiving the order from China’s Public Security Bureau. The hotels are in a bind, he said, because they don’t want to comply with the order, but also don’t want to jeopardize their investment of millions of dollars to expand their businesses in China. The hotel chains that forwarded the order to Brownback are declining to reveal their identities for fear of reprisal.

Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department issued a fact sheet warning travelers attending the Olympic games that “they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public or private locations” in China.

“All hotel rooms and offices are considered to be subject to on-site or remote technical monitoring at all times,” the agency states.

The Public Security Bureau order threatens that failure to comply could result in financial penalties, suspending access to the Internet or the loss of a license to operate a hotel in China.

“If you were a human rights advocate, if you’re a journalist, you’re in room 1251 of a hotel, anything that you use, sending out over the Internet is monitored in real time by the Chinese Public Security bureau,” Brownback said. “That’s not right. It’s not in the Olympic spirit.”

Brownback and other lawmakers have repeatedly denounced China’s record of human rights abuses and asked President Bush not to attend the Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing.

Brownback was introducing a resolution in the Senate on Tuesday that urges China to reverse its actions.

Read Full Article Here


China To Censor Internet During Olympics

AP
July 29, 2008

China will censor the Internet used by foreign media during the Olympics, an organising committee official confirmed Wednesday, reversing a pledge to offer complete media freedom at the games.

“During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters,” said Sun Weide, spokesman for the organising committee.

He confirmed, however, that journalists would not be able to access information or websites connected to the Falungong spiritual movement which is banned in China.

Other sites were also unavailable to journalists, he said, without specifying which ones.

Olympic panel ends ban, says Iraq can go to games
http://home.peoplepc.com/..3421_1334520080729-294375139

China Hits Back At U.S. Stands Firm On Internet
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/2008073..sGtapUp0mOsYxUinOROrgF

Google Says Privacy Doesn’t Exist, Get Used To Everyone Knowing Everything About You
http://www.informationweek.com/b..R0QSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN

 



Press TV.com Branded “Terrorist” Website

Press TV.com Branded “Terrorist” Website

The Truth Seeker
July 27, 2008

The United States House of Representatives introduced a resolution Saturday that seeks to label several media outlets ’Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ (SDGT) organizations.

Among those media outlets named in US House Resolution 1308, introduced June 26, were several TV Stations, including Iran’s Press TV and its web site.

Based in Tehran, Press TV is an English language news service funded by the Iranian government, which has stated its intention to cover world news differently from the western dominated global news media.

Many in the Independent Internet news media regularly refer to or use reports from Press TV.

Included among those who refer to Press TV’s Internet news reports are these web sites, What Really Happened and even Google’s own news service.

How much longer before they are accused of assisting “terrorists” by referring to Press TV’s reports?

In response Saturday, Tehran said Washington sought to label Iran’s international English news services as “terrorist” because it wanted to keep international public opinion in the dark.

The resolution, sponsored by Representative Gus Bilirakis, Republican from Florida, is currently being investigated and revised by House committees before general debate on the Congressional floor.

Latest figures show that 53% of Press TV’s viewers are from the United States.

Iran: U.S. Seeks To Keep Public In The Dark
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=64725&sectionid=351020101

 



Obama’s Nazi Youth Brigade

Obama’s Nazi Youth Brigade
Presidential candidate wants domestic “security force” as powerful as U.S. military, columnist compares proposal to Hitler Youth

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
July 17, 2008

Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama has called for a “civilian national security force” as powerful as the U.S. military, comments that were ignored by the vast majority of the corporate media but compared by one journalist to the Nazi Hitler Youth.

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded,” Obama told a Colorado Springs audience earlier this month.

World Net Daily editor Joseph Farah asked if he was the only journalist in America who found Obama’s statement troubling.

“If we’re going to create some kind of national police force as big, powerful and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, isn’t this rather a big deal?” wrote Farah.

“Are we talking about creating a police state here? The U.S. Army alone has nearly 500,000 troops. That doesn’t count reserves or National Guard. In 2007, the U.S. Defense budget was $439 billion. Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean?”

KnoxNews.com is seemingly the only other media outlet to express interest in exactly what Obama is proposing.

“The statement was made in the context of youth service. Is this an organization for just the youth or are adults going to participate? How does one get away from the specter of other such “youth” organizations from Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union when talking about it?” wrote Michael Silence.

Obama’s proposal smacks of an expanded version of an existing program in which hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers have been trained and recently dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.

It is also reminiscent of the supposedly canned 2002 Operation TIPS program, which would have turned 4 per cent of Americans into informants under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department.

TIPS lived on in other guises, such as the Highway Watch program, a $19 billion dollar Homeland Security-run project which trains truckers to watch for suspicious activity on America’s highways.

More recently, ABC News reported that “The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort…..to aid with criminal investigations.”

Since authorities now define mundane activities like buying baby formula, beer, wearing Levi jeans, carrying identifying documents like a drivers license and traveling with women or children or mentioning the U.S. constitution as the behavior of potential terrorists, the bounty for the American Stasi to turn in political dissidents is sure to be too tempting to resist under Obama’s new program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVjcRkeKFsc

 

Obama Wages Cyberwar

Wired
July 17, 2008

Since the start of the year, the Bush administration has kickstarted a $30 billion effort to shore up cyber security, installed a new “czar” for online defense, and reserved the right to snoop on everyone’s net traffic, to ward off a digital attack.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says the White House is still asleep at the switch, when it comes to network defense.

“We know that cyber-espionage and common crime is already on the rise. And yet while countries like China have been quick to recognize this change, for the last eight years we have been dragging our feet,” he said in a speech today at Purdue University, focusing on unconventional threats.

His recommendations on network security were vague, mostly. But they did include some subtle digs at the current administration.

As President, I’ll make cyber security the top priority that it should be in the 21st century. I’ll declare our cyber-infrastructure a strategic asset, and appoint a National Cyber Advisor who will report directly to me.

The current cyber chief serves under the Department of Homeland Security. He also, it should be noted, had no experience in security, whatsoever.

And while Obama avoided some of the more bellicose rhetoric that’s been been skipping around the government — like the Air Force’s calls for network “dominance” — he did highlight his concerns about a potential online takeover of our country’s infrastructure.

To protect our national security, I’ll bring together government, industry, and academia to determine the best ways to guard the infrastructure that supports our power…. We need to prevent terrorists or spies from hacking into our national security networks. We need to build the capacity to identify, isolate, and respond to any cyberattack. And we need to develop new standards for the cyber security that protects our most important infrastructure –- from electrical grids to sewage systems; from air traffic control to our markets.

Intelligence officers and security officials claim hackers have been able to shut down American power grids. That’s an assertion our cohorts at Threat Level have vigorously contested.

Obama Bans Signs from German Rally
http://infowars.net/articles/july2008/220708Obama.htm

Obama Advisor: Prosecuting Bush and Cheney Risks a Cycle of Criminalizing Public Service
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34929

Obama’s “Civilian National Security Force”
http://www.infowars.com/?p=3417

 



Internet Police: G8 Ratifies Crackdown on Illegal Downloads

Internet Police State: G8 Ratifies Crackdown on Illegal Downloads

Charles Arthur
London Guardian
July 10, 2008

The heads of the G8 governments, meeting this week, are about to ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which – it’s claimed – could let customs agents search your laptop or music player for illegally obtained content. The European Parliament is considering a law that would lead to people who illicitly download copyrighted music or video content being thrown off the internet. Virgin Media is writing to hundreds of its customers at the request of the UK record industry to warn them that their connections seem to have been used for illegal downloading. Viacom gets access to all of the usernames and IP addresses of anyone who has ever used YouTube as part of its billion-dollar lawsuit in which it claims the site has been party to “massive intentional copyright infringement”.

It seems that 20th-century ideas of ownership and control – especially of intellectual property such as copyright and trademarks – are being reasserted, with added legal muscle, after a 10-year period when the internet sparked an explosion of business models and (if we’re honest) casual disregard, especially of copyright, when it came to music and video.

But do those separate events mark a swing of the pendulum back against the inroads that the internet has made on intellectual property?

‘A finger in the dyke’

Saul Klein, a venture capitalist with Index Ventures who has invested in the free database company MySQL, Zend (the basis of the free web-scripting language PHP) and OpenX, an open-source advertising system, is unconvinced. “In a world of abundance – which the internet is quintessentially – that drives the price of everything towards ‘free’,” he says. “People don’t pay for any content online. Not for music, not for video. They get it, either legally or illegally.”

Is that sustainable? “The model of suing your best customers and subpoenaing private information is doomed to failure,” Klein observes. “It’s putting a finger in the dyke. It won’t change the macro trend, which is that there’s an abundance of information. Copyright owners need to find new ways to generate income from their product. The fact is, the music industry is in rude health – more people than ever before are going to concerts, making it, listening to it. It’s the labels that are screwed. The artists and managers are making money. The labels aren’t.

Read Full Article Here

Europe votes on anti-piracy laws

BBC
July 7, 2008

Europeans suspected of putting movies and music on file-sharing networks could be thrown off the web under proposals before Brussels.

The powers are in a raft of laws that aim to harmonise the regulations governing Europe’s telecom markets.

Other amendments added to the packet of laws allow governments to decide which software can be used on the web.

Campaigners say the laws trample on personal privacy and turn net suppliers into copyright enforcers.

Piracy plan

MEPs are due to vote on the so-called Telecom Packet on 7 July. The core proposals in the packet were drawn up to help European telecoms firms cope with the rapid pace of change in the industry.

Technological and industry changes that did not respect borders had highlighted the limitations of Europe’s current approach which sees national governments oversee their telecoms markets.

“The current fragmentation hinders investment and is detrimental to consumers and operators,” says the EU document laying out the proposals.

But, say digital rights campaigners, anti-piracy lobbyists have hijacked the telecoms laws and tabled amendments that turn dry proposals on industry reform into an assault on the freedom of net users.

Among the amendments are calls to enact a Europe-wide “three strikes” law. This would see users banned from the web if they fail to heed three warnings that they are suspected of putting copyrighted works on file-sharing networks.

In addition it bestows powers on governments to decide which programs can be “lawfully” used on the internet.

A coalition of European digital rights groups have banded together to galvanise opposition.

“[The amendments] pave the way for the monitoring and filtering of the internet by private companies, exceptional courts and Orwellian technical measures,” said Christophe Espern, co-founder of French rights group La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net) in a statement.

The UK’s Open Rights Group said the laws would be “disproportionate and ineffective”.

The Foundation for a Free Internet Infrastructure (FFII) warned that if the amendments were accepted they would create a “Soviet internet” on which only software and services approved by governments would be allowed to run.

“Tomorrow, popular software applications like Skype or even Firefox might be declared illegal in Europe if they are not certified by an administrative authority,” warned Benjamin Henrion, FFII representative in Brussels, in a statement.

“This is compromising the whole open development of the internet as we know it today,” he said.

Read Full Article Here

U.S. Homeland Security Defends Laptop Searches At Border

Christian Science Monitor
July 11, 2008

Is a laptop searchable in the same way as a piece of luggage? The Department of Homeland Security believes it is.

For the past 18 months, immigration officials at border entries have been searching and seizing some citizens’ laptops, cellphones, and BlackBerry devices when they return from international trips.

In some cases, the officers go through the files while the traveler is standing there. In others, they take the device for several hours and download the hard drive’s content. After that, it’s unclear what happens to the data.

The Department of Homeland Security contends these searches and seizures of electronic files are vital to detecting terrorists and child pornographers. It also says it has the constitutional authority to do them without a warrant or probable cause.

But many people in the business community disagree, saying DHS is overstepping the Fourth Amendment bounds of permissible routine searches. Some are fighting for Congress to put limits on what can be searched and seized and what happens to the information that’s taken. The civil rights community says the laptop seizures are simply unconstitutional. They want DHS to stop the practice unless there’s at least reasonable suspicion.

Legal scholars say the issue raises the compelling and sometimes clashing interests of privacy rights and the need to protect the US from terrorists and child pornographers. The courts have long held that routine searches at the border are permissible, simply because they take place at the border. Opponents of the current policy say a laptop search is far from “routine.”

“A laptop can hold [the equivalent of] a major university’s library: It can contain your full life,” says Peter Swire, a professor of law at Ohio State University in Columbus. “The government’s never gotten to search your entire life, so this is unprecedented in scale what the government can get.”

Read Full Article Here

Digital copyright: it’s all wrong. The ACTA draft is Scary.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/pe..06/09/1212863545123.html

FCC Chairman Seeks to End Comcast’s Delay of File Sharing
http://www.washingtonpost.com/w..08/07/11/AR2008071102917.html

They’re Watching Us: U.S. Army Contract for “Internet Awareness Services”
https://www.fbo.gov/index?tab..218cda1e&cck=1&au=&ck=

Google’s spycar revs up UK privacy fears
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/07/google_spycar_slammed/

Viacom to Violate YouTube User’s Privacy
http://noworldsystem.com/2008/07/10/..-user%e2%80%99s-privacy/

 



Radical Iranian Bloggers Could Face Death

Radical Iranian Bloggers Could Face Death

Daily Tech

July 8, 2008

A draft bill in the Iranian parliament is set to give bloggers the death penalty, if the government deems their writing as advocating corruption, prostitution, or desertion of Islam.

If so classified, bloggers will join those guilty of the above crimes in the real world to be branded as mohareb (an enemy of God) and “corrupt of the earth” – making him or her eligible for punishments ranging from exile, to amputations, to execution.

Further, if the bill becomes law, punishment bestowed by the system “cannot be commuted, suspended, or changed.”

Iranian bloggers and human rights activists fear the ease in which the government could casually accuse bloggers of offending the country’s strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Anti-censorship activist group Global Voice Online notes that about 18 months ago the Iranian government demanded bloggers register their websites, although the initiative failed to produce meaningful results. Bloggers widely considered registration as an enabler for future government suppression, and many proudly displayed an “I do not register my blog/site” badge in defiance of the mandate.

“Mentioning ‘blogging’ among crimes such as kidnapping, raping, armed robbery makes accusing bloggers easier than before… Such a law will harm the mental security of society more than the poor bloggers, who do not know what awaits them,” said Iranian blogger Mojtaba Saminejad. According to a Wikipedia bio linked by his “About Me” page, Saminejad spent 21 months in an Iranian prison beginning in 2005, including an alleged 88 days of solitary confinement and torture, due to a 2004 post reporting the arrest of three other bloggers. His official charges listed Saminejad as having insulted Iran’s head of state and “endangering national security.”

Another Iranian blogger notes that Iranian Parliament president Ali Larijani said the bill was discussed for “hours” with the country’s Judiciary before a draft was settled. After the number of executions last year almost doubled, from 177 to 317 according to Amnesty International, the Iranian government said the punishment is not given casually, and results only after an extensive legal process.

A censored version of the internet sees wide use in Iran, and young, tech-savvy Iranians have joined the rest of the world in blogging about everything from menial personal gossip to obscenities and questioning the government. The Iranian government actively filters out content it considers obscene, including websites promoting pornography, heresy, or political dissent.

The Iranian government considers blogging a threat to “mental security,” a doctrine that human rights advocates consider to be a scapegoat used in the government’s historically oppressive policies. It joins a variety of other countries, including Yemen and China, in monitoring online expression for politically and morally sensitive material.

The draft bill still needs inspection from the Guardian Council, which ensures the bills’ adherence to the Iranian constitution and Islamic law, and then needs to be “rubber-stamped” by a conservative government watchdog before being made into law.

 

Russian blogger sentenced for “extremist” post

Chris Baldwin
Reuters
July 7, 2008

A Russian man who described local police as “scum” in an Internet posting was given a suspended jail sentence on Monday for extremism, prompting bloggers to warn of a crackdown on free speech online.

Savva Terentiev, a 28-year-old musician from Syktyvkar, 1,515 kilometres (940 miles) north of Moscow, wrote in a blog last year that the police force should be cleaned up by ceremonially burning officers twice a day in a town square.

Convicted on charges of “inciting hatred or enmity”, Terentiev was given a one-year suspended term on Monday, Russian news agencies reported.

Free speech campaigners said the ruling could create a dangerous precedent for free speech on the Internet, a vibrant forum for political debate in a country where the mainstream traditional media is deferential to authority.

“This was an absolutely unjustified verdict,” Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA centre in Moscow, a non-governmental group that monitors extremism, told Reuters. “Savva for sure wrote a rude comment … but this verdict means it will be impossible to make rude comments about anybody.”

Read Full Article Here

Joe Lieberman all set to label US Jews as more likely to be “homegrown terrorists”
http://mparent7777-1.livejournal.com/814290.html

Fearmongering On An Internet Meltdown
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/t..web/article4271879.ece

AP: Right to free speech not guaranteed online
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/AP..ctions_not_guaranteed_online_0707.html

Congress Studies How Online Use Is Tracked
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200807..=AuMBBb0JkMsxGvh4ui0tdwlk24cA

Web & Media Moguls Conduct Meeting
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080707/media_uncertainty.html?.v=4

Internet Flaw Could Let Hackers Take Over Web
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?..zxdxcmkx&show_article=1

 



Governments step up blogger arrests

Governments step up blogger arrests

Jonathan M. Gitlin
Ars Technica
June 17, 2008

No matter what you think of blogging, Internet-based citizen journalism is a real threat, not just to traditional media business models but to totalitarian governments. How do we know that bloggers are drawing blood? Because some governments are hitting back harder and harder; last year saw a tripling in the number of bloggers arrested around the world compared to 2006, according to a report from the University of Washington.

“Last year, 2007, was a record year for blogger arrests, with three times as many as in 2006. Egypt, Iran and China are the most dangerous places to blog about political life, accounting for more than half of all arrests since blogging became big,” said Assistant Professor Phil Howard, lead author of the World Information Access Report. Howard also suggests that the real number of arrests may be much higher, as not every arrest makes it into the media.

The report separates the reason for arrests into six categories: violation of cultural norms, blogging involved with social protest, blogging about public policy, blogging about political figures, exposing corruption or human rights violations, and finally “other.” In addition to Iran, Egypt and China, Middle Eastern regimes in Syria and Saudi Arabia, and South East Asian nations such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand also figure in the report. 2007 saw 36 bloggers arrested around the world, and since 2003 at least 64 have been arrested, with a total of 940 months of prison time served.

Even liberal democracies are not immune; France, Canada, the USA, and UK have all arrested people following their blogging activity since 2004. However, some of these cases might not seem so egregious; last year a blogger was arrested in Los Angeles following his postings about his attraction to young girls, and the beginning of 2008 saw an arrest in the UK after one Gavin Best used his blog to threaten a police officer’s family following his arrest for a large number of thefts.

Another troubling trend has been the complicity of western Internet firms such as Yahoo and Google, both of whom have handed over details of bloggers to the Chinese government, despite publicly condemning such policies.

Are Bloggers ’Killing’ Old Media in Campaign Coverage?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg..magazine_b_108073.html

Kentucky Settles Internet Censorship Suit, Agrees to Lift Ban on Blogs
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2676

France To Ban Illegal Downloaders From Internet
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4165519.ece

EU Says China Internet Control Unacceptable
http://www.breitbart.com/article..o6d&show_article=1

Air Force Spreads Cyber Command to All 50 States
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/06/air-forces-50-s.htmlmore

Death of the Internet! Long Live Internet 2!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/technology/15cable.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

 



Secret Plan To Kill Internet By 2012

Secret Plan To Kill Internet By 2012

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
June 11, 2008

ISP’s have resolved to restrict the Internet to a TV-like subscription model where users will be forced to pay to visit selected corporate websites by 2012, while others will be blocked, according to a leaked report. Despite some people dismissing the story as a hoax, the wider plan to kill the traditional Internet and replace it with a regulated and controlled Internet 2 is manifestly provable.

“Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP’s all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These ’other’ sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet,” warns a report that has spread like wildfire across the web over the last few days.

The article, which is accompanied by a You Tube clip, states that Time Magazine writer “Dylan Pattyn” has confirmed the information and is about to release a story – and that the move to effectively shut down the web could come as soon as 2010.

People have raised questions about the report’s accuracy because the claims are not backed by another source, only the “promise” that a Time Magazine report is set to confirm the rumor. Until such a report emerges many have reserved judgment or outright dismissed the story as a hoax.

What is documented, as the story underscores, is the fact that TELUS’ wireless web package allows only restricted pay-per-view access to a selection of corporate and news websites. This is the model that the post-2012 Internet would be based on.

People have noted that the authors of the video seem to be more concerned about getting people to subscribe to their You Tube account than fighting for net neutrality by prominently featuring an attractive woman who isn’t shy about showing her cleavage. The vast majority of the other You Tube videos hosted on the same account consist of bizarre avante-garde satire skits on behalf of the same people featured in the Internet freedom clip. This has prompted many to suspect that the Internet story is merely a stunt to draw attention to the group.

Whether the report is accurate or merely a crude hoax, there is a very real agenda to restrict, regulate and suffocate the free use of the Internet and we have been documenting its progression for years.

The first steps in a move to charge for every e mail sent have already been taken. Under the pretext of eliminating spam, Bill Gates and other industry chieftains have proposed Internet users buy credit stamps which denote how many e mails they will be able to send. This of course is the death knell for political newsletters and mailing lists.

The New York Times reported that “America Online and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.”

The first wave will simply attempt to price people out of using the conventional Internet and force people over to Internet 2, a state regulated hub where permission will need to be obtained directly from an FCC or government bureau to set up a website.

The original Internet will then be turned into a mass surveillance database and marketing tool. The Nation magazine reported in 2006 that, “Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets–corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers–would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.”

Over the past few years, a chorus of propaganda intended to demonize the Internet and further lead it down a path of strict control has spewed forth from numerous establishment organs:

  • Time magazine reported last year that researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time.
  • The projects echo moves we have previously reported on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.

  • In a display of bi-partisanship, there have recently been calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens by both Democrats and Republicans alike.
  • The White House’s own recently de-classified strategy for “winning the war on terror” targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to “diminish” their influence.

  • The Pentagon recently announced its effort to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.

  • In a speech last October, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a “terror training camp,” through which “disaffected people living in the United States” are developing “radical ideologies and potentially violent skills.” His solution is “intelligence fusion centers,” staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will go into operation next year.

  • The U.S. Government wants to force bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year could be the punishment for non-compliance.

  • A landmark legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations seeks to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web – and their argument is supported by the U.S. government.

  • A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simply linking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.

  • The European Union, led by former Stalinist and potential future British Prime Minister John Reid, has also vowed to shut down “terrorists” who use the Internet to spread propaganda.

  • The EU data retention bill, passed last year after much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens’ data on phone calls, SMS messages, emails and instant messaging services.

  • The EU also recently proposed legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video without a license.

  • The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine. “At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites.”

The development of a new form of internet with new regulations is also designed to create an online caste system whereby the old internet hubs would be allowed to break down and die, forcing people to use the new taxable, censored and regulated world wide web.

Make no mistake, the internet, one of the greatest outposts of free speech ever created is under constant attack by powerful people who cannot operate within a society where information flows freely and unhindered. Both American and European moves mimic stories we hear every week out of state controlled Communist China, where the internet is strictly regulated and virtually exists as its own entity away from the rest of the web.

The Internet is freedom’s best friend and the bane of control freaks. Its eradication is one of the short term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate their populations under tyranny by eliminating the right to protest and educate others by the forum of the free world wide web.

Corporations Plan To Pull Plug On The Free Internet
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2008/061208_pull_plug.htm

Ransomware: Hackers can hold your PC files for ransom
http://blogs.computerworld.com/rans..are_armageddon_approaches

Record Percentage Of Americans Use Internet For Politics, Survey Finds
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/record-percenta.html

Copyright deal could toughen rules governing info on iPods, computers
http://www.canada.com/topics/t..ae997868-220b-4dae-bf4f-47f6fc96ce5e

Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/1..&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

 



ISP’s confirm ’End of The Internet’ by 2012

ISP’s confirm ’End of The Internet’ by 2012

Ipower
June 8, 2008

Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP’s all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These ’other’ sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet.

Dylan Pattyn *, who is currently writing an article for Time Magazine on the issue, has official confirmation from sources within Bell Canada and is interviewing a marketing representative from TELUS who confirms the story and states that TELUS has already started blocking all websites that aren’t in the subscription package for mobile Internet access. They could not confirm whether it would happen in 2012 because both stated it may actually happen sooner (as early as 2010). Interviews with these sources, more confirmation from other sources and more in-depth information on the issue is set to be published in Time Magazine soon.

What can we do?

The reason why we’re releasing this information is because we believe we can stop it. More awareness means more mainstream media shedding light on it, more political interest and more pressure on the ISP’s to keep the Internet an open free space. We started this social network as a platform for Internet activism where we can join forces, share ideas and organize any form of protest that may have an impact. If we want to make a difference in this, we have to join together and stand united as one powerful voice against it.

Join the movement

Don’t let the Internet evolve to this:

 



Time Warner Tries Internet Rationing

Time Warner Tries Internet Rationing

AP
June 2, 2008

You’re used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?

Time Warner Cable Inc. customers — and, later, others — may have to, if the company’s test of metered Internet access is successful.

On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told the Associated Press.

Metered billing is an attempt to deal fairly with Internet usage, which is very uneven among Time Warner Cable’s subscribers, said Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable’s executive vice president of advanced technology.

Just 5 percent of the company’s subscribers take up half of the capacity on local cable lines, Leddy said. Other cable Internet service providers report a similar distribution.

“We think it’s the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure,” Leddy said.

Metered usage is common overseas, and other U.S. cable providers are looking at ways to rein in heavy users. Most have download caps, but some keep the caps secret so as not to alarm the majority of users, who come nowhere close to the limits. Time Warner Cable appears to be the first major ISP to charge for going over the limit: Other companies warn, then suspend, those who go over.

Phone companies are less concerned about congestion and are unlikely to impose metered usage on DSL customers, because their networks are structured differently.

Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning to conduct the trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details. On Monday, Leddy said its tiers will range from $29.95 a month for relatively slow service at 768 kilobits per second and a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for fast downloads at 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap. Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles that include video or phone services. Both downloads and uploads will count toward the monthly cap.

A possible stumbling block for Time Warner Cable is that customers have had little reason so far to pay attention to how much they download from the Internet, or know much traffic makes up a gigabyte. That uncertainty could scare off new subscribers.

Those who mainly do Web surfing or e-mail have little reason to pay attention to the traffic caps: a gigabyte is about 3,000 Web pages, or 15,000 e-mails without attachments. But those who download movies or TV shows will want to pay attention. A standard-definition movie can take up 1.5 gigabytes, and a high-definition movie can be 6 to 8 gigabytes.

Time Warner Cable subscribers will be able to check out their data consumption on a “gas gauge” on the company’s Web page.

The company won’t apply the gigabyte surcharges for the first two months. It has 90,000 customers in the trial area, but only new subscribers will be part of the trial.

Billing by the hour was common for dial-up service in the U.S. until AOL introduced an unlimited-usage plan in 1996. Flat-rate, unlimited-usage plans have been credited with encouraging consumer Internet use by making billing easy to understand.

“The metered Internet has been tried and tested and rejected by the consumers overwhelmingly since the days of AOL,” information-technology consultant George Ou told the Federal Communications Commission at a hearing on ISP practices in April.

Metered billing could also put a crimp in the plans of services like Apple Inc.’s iTunes that use the Internet to deliver video. DVD-by-mail pioneer Netflix Inc. just launched a TV set-top box that receives an unlimited stream of Internet video for as little as $8.99 per month.

Comcast Corp., the country’s largest cable company, has suggested that it may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per month. Bend Cable Communications in Bend, Ore., used to have multitier bandwidth allowances, like the ones Time Warner Cable will test, but it abandoned them in favor of an across-the-board 100-gigabyte cap. Bend charges $1.50 per extra gigabyte consumed in a month.

Air Force Seeks Full Spectrum Dominance Over “Any And All” Computers
http://infowars.net/articles/may2008/140508Computers.htm

Pentagon Secretly Goes To War With The Internet
http://infowars.net/articles/may2008/060508DARPA.htm

FCC proposes free Internet… as long as it’s censored
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/FCC_proposes_free_Internet…_as_long_0529.html

 



Summary of the Olympic Torch Relay Protests

CNN camera-man knocked down and kicked by police in London

http://youtube.com/watch?v=t_QqtMVGC3Y

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hRHofFA7vuQ

 

Protestor grabs Olympic torch as it journeys through London

Scott Anthony
The Observer
April 6, 2008

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ojXr6BTAjow

Despite being shielded by a 50-strong pack of British policeman and Chinese security guards, the Olympic torch parade has been continually interrupted along its 31-mile journey from Wembley Stadium to the O2 Arena by those protesting at China’s human rights record.

A Free Tibet protestor attempted to wrestle the Olympic flame from Blue Peter TV presenter Konnie Huq before being bundled to the ground by police in Ladbroke Grove; two others were taken away after trying to put out the torch with a fire extinguisher in Holland Park and the relay was temporarily stopped near Bloomsbury after three people went too close to Sir Clive Woodward. Throughout its journey, several other protestors also threw themselves in front of those carrying the torch. So far 10 people have been arrested, although this figure is expected to grow.

Read Full Article Here

 

Protesters scale Golden Gate Bridge

AP

April 8, 2008

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wzao9-BRYxI

Three people protesting China’s human rights record and the impending arrival of the Olympic torch climbed up the Golden Gate Bridge on Monday and tied the Tibetan flag and two banners to its cables.

The banners read “One World One Dream. Free Tibet” and “Free Tibet 08.”

The protesters wore helmets and harnesses as they made their way up the cables running next to the south tower of the famed span. The climb had the group suspended several 150 feet above traffic.

Reached by cell phone as he dangled from the bridge, demonstrator Laurel Sutherlin said he was worried that the torch’s planned route through Tibet would lead to more arrests and Chinese officials would use force to stifle any visible dissent.

“The leaders of China have said they’ll maintain order at all costs, and we know what that means — bloodshed and violent oppression,” he said. “If the IOC allows the torch to proceed into Tibet they’ll have blood on their hands.”

Read Full Article Here

 

Richard Gere and Desmond Tutu Speak
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and actor Richard Gere attend a candle-light vigil in San Fransisco on tuesday asking China to “talk to the Dalai Lama”.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-qwaYlqlqjo

 

Police Brutality in Paris leaves Tibetian protester with bloody mouth
An internal investigation is being sought out for claims of police ripping-away tibetian flags from demonstrators, police are seen roughing up pro-tibetians leaving one with a bloody mouth shouting “Free Tibet!”.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pwVQuJs8EsY

 

Dalai Lama backs Olympics, says violence outdated

Chisa Fujioka

Reuters
April 10, 2008

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-7z_-wqAV2Q

The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, said on Thursday he supports the Beijing Olympics and opposed violent protests that have disrupted the Olympic torch relay around the world.

“It is really deserving for the Chinese people to host the Olympic Games,” he told reporters in Japan. “(Despite) the recent unfortunate event in Tibet, my position won’t change.”

But China’s use of violence was an outdated way to suppress unrest in Tibet, he said during a brief stopover on his way to the United States for a two-week visit he said was not political.

The Dalai Lama told reporters he had sent a message to Tibetans in San Francisco, where the torch relay was held on Wednesday.

“I sent a message to the Tibetans in San Francisco area, please don’t make any violent actions,” he said.

But he added: “Nobody has the right to say ‘shut up’.”

The torch was a magnet last week for chaotic demonstrations in London and Paris and the torch’s only stop in North America turned into a game of hide-and-seek after the San Francisco route was abruptly changed by city officials.

Read Full Article Here

Recent News:

China orders Tibetans ’reeducated’ about Dalai Lama
http://www.latimes.com/news/natio..ucate8apr08,1,6576960.story

Thousands of Workers Protest in Southern China
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-4-10/68933.html

Chinese Cops Fire On Tibet Protesters Kill 8
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3683878.ece

China jails rights activist outspoken on Tibet
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSPEK11067920080403

Yahoo fund aids ’cyber dissidents’ in China
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Yahoo.._dissidents_in_04022008.html

Olympic Torch Relay in Paris; Flame Put Out, AP Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/new..bLxJNY.Lo3w&refer=home

IOC To Beijing: Don’t Censor Internet
http://news.yahoo.com/s/a..AlQ1HA7RvNKiSFs0F

Olympics ’worsening China rights’
http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=79347&videoChannel=1

China Claims Tibetans Planning Suicide Attacks
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080401/D8VP0TVO0.html

Beijing To Ban Smoking Ahead Of Olympics
http://www.breitbart.com/article..32.8zb4q4yg&show_article=1

Chinese Regime Implicated in Staging Violence in Lhasa
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-3-28/67906.html

Merkel says she will not attend opening of Beijing Olympics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/29/germany.olympicgames2008

 



GCHQ Confirms Violent Riots Staged By Chinese


GCHQ Confirms Violent Riots Staged By Chinese
PLA agents instigated unrest to justify crackdown

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
March 27, 2008

Britain’s GCHQ spy agency has confirmed the fact that Chinese People’s Liberation Army agents posing as monks staged violent riots in Tibet in order to justify a brutal crackdown, but that the demonstrations have now escalated beyond Beijing’s control.

According to a report in today’s Epoch Times, “GCHQ analysts believe the decision was deliberately calculated by the Beijing leadership to provide an excuse to stamp out the simmering unrest in the region, which is already attracting unwelcome world attention in the run-up to the Olympic Games this summer.”

Fearing that legitimate demonstrators would become more active in the months leading up to the Beijing Olympics, Chinese authorities planned to create a pretext to crush the movement by instigating violence that would sour global opinion towards the Tibetans.

According to the report, GCHQ’s geo-positioned satellites in space were able to obtain images proving that the Chinese had infiltrated agent provocateurs into Lhasa. PLA agents posing as monks were responsible for setting fire to buildings and killing non-ethnic Chinese citizens as well as police in an attempt to demonize the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan freedom movement.

However, according to the report, “What the Beijing regime had not expected was how the riots would spread, not only across Tibet, but also to Sichuan, Quighai and Gansu provinces, turning a large area of western China into a battle zone.”

Though the report seems to explain why images showed supposed Tibetans protesters inexplicably burning their own villages, it has to be cautioned that Epoch Times is a traditionally pro-Tibetan news outlet and there’s no doubt that propaganda is being used by both sides.

It’s probable that Chinese PLA agents instigated some of the violence but the fact that young Tibetans are engaging in violence completely of their own accord is largely accepted.

As the report points out, many of the Dalai Lama’s supporters are “young, unemployed and dispossessed and reject his philosophy of non-violence, believing the only hope for change is the radical action they are now carrying out”

On a personal note, having visited Tibet myself and experienced some less than cordial interactions with the Tibetan people, it has to be said that they are certainly not deserving of the angelic tag some quarters of the media lavish upon them – being tribal, aggressive and spiteful towards foreign visitors as well as hostile towards tourists from the Chinese mainland.

As we reported on Monday, former Chinese Communist Party official Ruan Ming was the first to accuse China of staging the violent riots in order to demonize Tibetans in the eyes of the international community, justify a brutal paramilitary police crackdown and force the Dalai Lama to resign.

“The demonstration on March 10 was meant to be peaceful. You can see from the pictures that the demonstration was all monks,” he explained, adding that the CCP carefully introduced violent unrest in order to “deceive the world”.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qDoxOr1VGwk

 

Olympic flame protest:”Shame on China”

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9jo66Ml1CC4

 

Chinese Kill Monks And Nuns
Times Online
March 24, 2008

Hundreds of monks, nuns and local Tibetans who tried to march on a local government office in western China to demand the return of the Dalai Lama have been turned back by paramilitary police who opened fire to disperse the crowd. Local residents of Luhuo said two people – a monk and a farmer – appeared to have been shot dead and about a dozen were wounded in the latest violence to rock Tibetan areas of China. The demonstration began at about 4pm local time when about 200 nuns from Woge nunnery and a similar number of monks from Jueri monastery marched out of their hillside sanctuaries and walked towards the Luhuo Third District government office in the nearby town. They were swiftly joined by an estimated several hundred farmers and nomads, witnesses said. Shouting “Long Live the Dalai Lama” and “Tibet belongs to Tibetans”, they approached the district government office. However, paramilitary People’s Armed Police swiftly appeared and ordered the crowd to turn back. Town residents reported that, in the ensuing melee, shots were fired and two people appeared to have died. Read Full Article Here

China Calls For Re-Education Of Tibet Monks
http://www.washingtonpost.co../2008/03/25/AR2008032501665_pf.html

Tibet Monks Disrupt Journalist Tour
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeq..tN_roGSIUQiQnfbf2NkhgD8VLNFBG0

Ex-Communist Official Accuses China Of Staging Violent Tibet Riots
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/march2008/032408_staging_riots.htm

Monk dies from Chinese food blockade
http://www.religionandspirituality.com..D=20080327-102736-6904r

Olympic Protester Sentenced to Five Years Imprisonment, Beaten
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-3-26/68071.html

EU May Boycott Beijing Olympics
http://en.rian.ru/sports/20080325/102156493.html

China Order Video Web Sites To Close
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200803..9_yTDh_C1u2YNSWRWs0NUE

China Official Paper: Crush Protesters
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200..ApG.obSITFLc1NROZK_4y42s0NUE

Plea to China to keep Olympics TV live
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b59d..dc-9229-000077b07658.html

 



China Admits Police Shot Tibet Protesters

China Admits Police Shot Tibet Protesters

John Ruwitch
Reuters
March 21, 2008

Photographic evidence of the bloody crackdown on peaceful protesting Tibetans

Tibetans in China’s tense southwestern province of Sichuan said on Friday they believed police had killed several people in anti-Chinese riots there this week, disputing official claims none died.

China’s official Xinhua news agency reported overnight that police shot and wounded four protesters this week in a heavily ethnic Tibetan part of the province, where protests broke out after anti-Chinese riots in neighboring Tibet a week ago.

The unrest has alarmed China, keen to look its best in the run-up to the August 8-24 Olympic Games in Beijing when it hopes to show the world it has arrived as a world power.

Chinese mountaineers chosen to take an Olympic torch to the top of Mount Everest said their journey there through Tibet would be a show of national unity against exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing accuses of instigating the unrest.

“We shall go all out to ensure the smooth movement of the torch relay. We must strengthen ethnic unity while hostile forces try to drive a wedge between ethnic groups,” Yin Xunping, an official with the Tibet mountaineering effort, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.

Tensions remain high in Tibet, Sichuan and other neighboring areas where the government has poured in troops.

Kangding, a heavily Tibetan town in Sichuan and a gateway to the restive region, was crowded with troops, some on patrol, some loudly practicing martial arts moves in the town square.

Drivers refused to travel into tense mountain towns.

Read Full Article Here

 

Pelosi, in Talks With Dalai Lama, Says World Stands by Tibet

Jay Shankar
Bloomberg
March 21, 2008

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3yNS6DOoUSs

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the world stands united with Tibet as she met with the Dalai Lama at his headquarters in northern India.

“The situation in Tibet is a challenge to the conscience of the world,’’ she said in the town of Dharamshala, which is home to Tibet’s government-in-exile. “We are with you to meet the challenge.’’

The Dalai Lama is trying to build international pressure on China to show restraint in dealing with the biggest protests in Tibet in almost 20 years. The Nobel Peace Prize winner says he is committed to a peaceful solution and isn’t seeking independence for the Himalayan territory.

Chinese officials blame supporters of the Dalai Lama for riots in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, last week. Authorities say protesters killed 13 people and damaged more than 500 homes. Tibetan exiles said security forces have killed about 100 demonstrators since the protests began March 10.

“We are here to join you in shedding the bright light of truth on what is happening in Tibet,’’ said Pelosi as she met with the exiled spiritual leader. “We are here to help the people of Tibet and will continue to meet the challenge of conscience.’’

Tibet had varying degrees of autonomy from China until the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949. It deployed troops there a year later and annexed the region in 1951.

Read Full Article Here

 

The video that China doesn’t want the world to see

Attytood
March 20, 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNOCTwm8D7c

This footage of the rioting in Tibet is raw and harrowing. It’s also, for the most part, not being seen in China where authorities have blocked access to YouTube.com, which has many videos on Tibet.

The ability of Beijing to control information about the crisis points to the limitations of the big U.S. Web brands and others when news breaks that the Chinese government doesn’t like. “There are a lot of people that think the Internet is going to bring information and democracy and pluralism in China just by existing,” says Rebecca Mackinnon, assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism & Media Studies Center. “I think what we’re seeing with this situation in Tibet is while the Chinese government’s system of Internet censorship controls and propaganda is not infallible by any means, it works well enough in times of crisis like this.”

The whole thing is a bloody mess as the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing draws near. I think a vast majority of people have no stomach for another boycott — most Americans would rather defeat evil on the athletic field, as Jesse Owens did in Berlin in 1936, than take our ball and go home, as Jimmy Carter did in 1980. That said, I’d like to see freedom-loving people, from the U.S. and elsewhere, figure out how to make some kind of statement this August.

This is something:

PARIS (AP) – Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet gained momentum Tuesday, with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the Beijing Olympics by VIPs at the opening ceremony.

Such a protest by world leaders would be a huge slap in the face for China’s Communist leadership.

France’s outspoken foreign minister, former humanitarian campaigner Bernard Kouchner, said the idea “is interesting.”

The problem is that a more effective protest would be one mounted by athletes — but that’s banned under the Olympic charter (anyone remember this?). I think the VIPs should attend the ceremony — and at the right moment all hold up signs in Mandarin calling for free speech and a free Tibet.

I’m sure we could convince Dick Cheney to do that.

House raids as troops try to stop protests
http://www.smh.com.au..otests/2008/03/17/1205602292959.html

Tibet Protest Spreads to Beijing
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-3-20/67846.html

Police ‘shot at Tibet protesters’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7307382.stm

Dalai Lama will resign if Tibet violence worsens
http://www.telegraph.c..s/2008/03/18/wtibet418.xml

Dalai Lama: ‘I am prepared to face China. I will go to Beijing’
http://www.independent.co.u..l-go-to-beijing-798998.html

Dalai Lama ready to talk
http://www.reuters.com/news..78572&videoChannel=1

China ships 80 truckloads of troops toward Tibet
http://www.dallasnews.com/shared..t.ART.State.Edition1.46e0b0d.html

Tibetan prisoners are paraded on trucks as China tightens its grip
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3566647.ece

‘Most wanted’ list out as China tightens pressure over Tibet
http://www.afp.google.com/arti..7sAmAo0vP8SibDFKKAg9WhfQ

 



Middle East Internet Blackouts Spur Geopolitical Suspicions


Middle East Internet Blackouts Spur Geopolitical Suspicions

Bloggers says big event could be right around the corner, Iran completely cut off

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
February 1, 2008

Unprecedented mass Internet outages throughout the Middle East and Asia after no less than four undersea Internet cables were cut without explanation are spurring suspicions that a major event of geopolitical proportions may be just around the corner.

Internet blackouts are impacting large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa after four undersea cable connections were severed. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems.

According to InternetTraffic.com, Iran has been completely cut off from the Internet, though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s blog can still be accessed.

Most notably, Israel and Iraq are unaffected by the outage.

“Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a research company that consults on global Internet issues, said the damaged cables collectively account for the majority of international communications between Europe and the Middle East,” reports CNN.

Officials say that the cause behind the severing of the cables remains unknown, but United Arab Emirates’ second largest telecom company said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors.

Is this a pre-cursor to throw a veil over an imminent staged event in the Middle East?

“What are the odds? Who benefits? asks the Crimes and Corruptions blog. “Let’s see. Iranian rapprochement: “Recent months have brought signs of a growing rapprochement between Iran and Egypt.”

“What nation would not like this and has subs which could cut the cables? Why do it? Payback as over the net business is badly damaged. Or is this a setup for more? Note the internet is working just fine in Israel.”

Over at WhatReallyHappened.com, Mike Rivero points out that the mysterious cable sabotage could portend another imperial Neo-Con crusade in the works.

“The biggest problem the Bush administration faced during Iraq were images coming over the internet that showed the horrors being visited on the Iraqi people, and exposed the government’s lies about Saddam,” he writes.

“I am greatly concerned that these undersea cable cuttings are intended to prevent the world from seeing something that is about to happen, other than through the government-controlled propaganda/media.”

It’s 2008 — Do You Know Where Your Internet Cables Are?
http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.co..u-know-where-your.html