Filed under: 1984, ACTA, Big Brother, Censorship, copyright, Dictatorship, Empire, Fascism, file sharing, internet, internet blackout, internet censorship, internet police, internet policy, internet regulations, ISPs, nanny state, orwell, Police State, RIAA, verison | Tags: graduated-response policy, Motion Picture Association, Recording Industry Association of America
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.
Global treaty could ban file-sharers from Internet after ‘three strikes’
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 2-party system, 2nd Amendment, 9/11 Truth, Al Gore, anti gun, Barack Obama, brownshirts, bush, climategate, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, Fairness Doctrine, Fascism, free specch, George Bush, Global Warming, global warming hoax, government bureaucrat, Gun Control, internet, Internet 2, internet blackout, internet censorship, internet police, john yoo, left right paradigm, nanny state, Neolibs, New World Order, NWO, obama czar, political dissent, provocateur, supreme court, truth movement | Tags: Information Czar
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.”
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.
Bloggers and news organizations must declare war on Cass Sunstein
Sunstein: BAN Conspiracy Theories Against Global Warming and U.S. Government
Filed under: 1984, 9/11 Truth, Anti-War, Barack Obama, Big Brother, brownshirts, Censorship, CIA, climate change, climategate, cointelpro, Communism, Concentration Camp, conspiracy theories, corruption, CRU, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, end the fed, enemy combatant, Fairness Doctrine, False Flag, Fascism, FBI, FCC, FEMA, free speech, Global Warming, global warming hoax, government bureaucracy, government bureaucrat, government control, government crimes, Hadley CRU, hoover, Internet 2, internet censorship, internet police, JFK, journalism, Martial Law, MK ultra, MLK, nanny state, Nazi, New World Order, NWO, obama, obama czar, obama deception, Oliver North, orwell, Police State, political dissidents, progressive, Protest, provocateur, scandal, Sean Hannity, stasi, stasi tactics, Sunstein, Surveillance, tax, trilateral commission, truth movement, u.s. constutiton, warrantless wiretap, White House, ww1, WW2 | Tags: Alien and Sedition Acts, Church Committee
Obama Advisor: BAN Conspiracy Theories Against U.S. Government
Sunstein: Taxation and censorship of dissenting opinions “will have a place” under thought police program advocated in 2008 white paper
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
January 14, 2010
The controversy surrounding White House information czar and Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein’s blueprint for the government to infiltrate political activist groups has deepened, with the revelation that in the same 2008 dossier he also called for the government to tax or even ban outright political opinions of which it disapproved.
Sunstein was appointed by President Obama to head up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an agency within the Executive Office of the President.
On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” the man who is now Obama’s head of information technology in the White House proposed that each of the following measures “will have a place under imaginable conditions” according to the strategy detailed in the essay.
- 1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
That’s right, Obama’s information czar wants to tax or ban outright, as in make illegal, political opinions that the government doesn’t approve of. To where would this be extended? A tax or a shut down order on newspapers that print stories critical of our illustrious leaders?
And what does Sunstein define as “conspiracy theories” that should potentially be taxed or outlawed by the government? Opinions held by the majority of Americans, no less.
The notion that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing JFK, a view shared by the vast majority of Americans in every major poll over the last ten years, is an example of a “conspiracy theory” that the federal government should consider censoring, according to Sunstein.
A 1998 CBS poll found that just 10 per cent of Americans believed that Oswald acted alone, so apparently the other 90 per cent of Americans could be committing some form of thought crime by thinking otherwise under Sunstein’s definition.
Sunstein also cites the belief that “global warming is a deliberate fraud” as another marginal conspiracy theory to be countered by government action. In reality, the majority of Americans now believe that the man-made explanation of global warming is not true, and that global warming is natural, according to the latest polls.
But Sunstein saves his most ludicrous example until last. On page 5 he characterizes as “false and dangerous” the idea that exposure to sunlight is healthy, despite the fact that top medical experts agree prolonged exposure to sunlight reduces the risk of developing certain cancers.
To claim that encouraging people to get out in the sun is to peddle a dangerous conspiracy theory is like saying that promoting the breathing of fresh air is also a thought crime. One can only presume that Sunstein is deliberately framing the debate by going to such absurd extremes so as to make any belief whatsoever into a conspiracy theory unless it’s specifically approved by the kind of government thought police system he is pushing for.
Despite highlighting the fact that repressive societies go hand in hand with an increase in “conspiracy theories,” Sunstein’s ’solution’ to stamp out such thought crimes is to ban free speech, fulfilling the precise characteristic of the “repressive society” he warns against elsewhere in the paper.
“We could imagine circumstances in which a conspiracy theory became so pervasive, and so dangerous, that censorship would be thinkable,” he writes on page 20. Remember that Sunstein is not just talking about censoring Holocaust denial or anything that’s even debatable in the context of free speech, he’s talking about widely accepted beliefs shared by the majority of Americans but ones viewed as distasteful by the government, which would seek to either marginalize by means of taxation or outright censor such views.
No surprise therefore that Sunstein has called for re-writing the First Amendment as well as advocating Internet censorship and even proposing that Americans should celebrate tax day and be thankful that the state takes a huge chunk of their income.
The government has made it clear that growing suspicion towards authority is a direct threat to their political agenda and indeed Sunstein admits this on page 3 of his paper.
That is why they are now engaging in full on information warfare in an effort to undermine, disrupt and eventually outlaw organized peaceful resistance to their growing tyranny.
Sunstein’s Paper Provides More Evidence COLINTELPRO Still Operational
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
January 14, 2009
Cass Sunstein’s white paper, entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” is an exclamation point in the latest chapter of a long history of government tyranny against citizens who organize in opposition to the government. Sunstein argues that individuals and groups deviating from the official government narrative on a number of political issues and events are a national security threat. The administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs formulates “a plan for the government to infiltrate conspiracy groups in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks, as well as real meetings, according to a recently uncovered article Sunstein wrote for the Journal of Political Philosophy,” writes Paul Joseph Watson.
 FDR, an icon for many liberals, sent the FBI after citizens who opposed his war policies. |
Sunstein’s plan is a reformulation of a long-standing effort to subvert the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. Concerted government attacks against organized political opposition began soon after the founding of the republic — specifically with the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 by the Federalists — but have gained critical momentum in the modern era.
During the First World War, the government created the Bureau of Investigation, predecessor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and appointed J. Edgar Hoover as its head. Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation, with the assistance of police and the military — described as a “citizens auxiliary” — conducted mass raids against the anti-war movement of the time, according to documents released by the Church Committee in the 1970s. The Bureau, specifically designed as a national political police force, “rounded up some 50,000 men without warrants of sufficient probable cause for arrest” for the crime of opposing the First World War.
In 1920, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer conducted a massive program in 33 cities and rounded up over 10,000 people. The Church Committee report (p.384) talks of “the abuses of due process of law incident to the raids.” According to Robert Preston (Aliens And Dissenters), the Palmer Raids involved “indiscriminate arrests of the innocent with the guilty, unlawful seizures by federal detectives” and other violations of constitutional rights. The Church Committee (p.385) “found federal agents guilty of using third-degree tortures, making illegal searches and arrests, using agents provocateurs.” Palmer and Hoover found no evidence of a proposed Bolshevik revolution as they claimed but a large number of the rounded up suspects continued to be held without trial.
The Second World War brought a new wave of government terrorism against political opponents. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a 1940 issued a memorandum giving the FBI the power to use warrantless wiretaps against suspected subversives, that is to say activists opposed to U.S. involvement in the war. FDR not only unleashed the FBI on activists, but concerned citizens as well. After giving a speech on national defense in 1940, FDR had his press secretary, Stephen Early, send Hoover the names of 128 people who had sent telegrams to the White House criticizing the address. “The President thought you might like to look them over,” Early’s note instructed Hoover.
Following the Second World War, the government engineered the immensely profitable (for the military-industrial complex) Cold War and the attendant Red Scare. In 1956, the FBI established COINTELPRO, short for Counter Intelligence Program. COINTELPRO was ostensibly manufactured to counter communist subversion, but as a numerous documents reveal the program focused almost exclusively on domestic opposition to government policies.
The Church Committee explains that COINTELPRO “had no conceivable rational relationship to either national security or violent activity. The unexpressed major premise of much of COINTELPRO is that the Bureau has a role in maintaining the existing social order, and that its efforts should be aimed toward combating those who threaten that order.”
“This is a rough, tough, dirty business, and dangerous,” former Assistant to Director Hoover, William C. Sullivan, told the Church Committee. “No holds were barred.”
This “rough, tough, dirty business” included infiltration of political groups, psychological warfare, legal harassment, and extralegal force and violence. “The FBI and police threatened, instigated and conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements,” write Mike Cassidy and Will Miller. “They used secret and systematic methods of fraud and force, far beyond mere surveillance, to sabotage constitutionally protected political activity. The purpose of the program was, in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s own words, to ‘expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize’ specific groups and individuals.”
After the Church Committee exposed COINTELPRO, the government claimed it had dismantled the program. However, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration legalized the tactics by signing Executive Order 12333.
“There is every reason to believe that even what was not legalized is still going on as well. Lest we forget, Lt. Col. Oliver North funded and orchestrated from the White House basement break-ins and other ‘dirty tricks’ to defeat congressional critics of U.S. policy in Central America and to neutralize grassroots protest. Special Prosecutor Walsh found evidence that North and Richard Secord (architect of the 1960s covert actions in Cambodia) used Iran-Contra funds to harass the Christic Institute, a church-funded public interest group specializing in exposing government misconduct,” Cassidy and Miller continue.
In addition, North worked with FEMA to develop contingency plans for suspending the Constitution, establishing martial law, and holding political dissidents in concentration camps. Since the false flag attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has worked incessantly to fine tune plans to impose martial law. It has also worked to federalize and militarized law enforcement around the country.
Brian Glick (War at Home) argues that COINTELPRO is a permanent feature of the government. “The record of the past 50 years reveals a pattern of continuous domestic covert action,” Glick wrote in the 1990s. “Its use has been documented in each of the last nine administrations, Democratic as well as Republican. FBI testimony shows ‘COINTELPRO tactics’ already in full swing during the presidencies of Democrats Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. COINTELPRO itself, while initiated under Eisenhower, grew from one program to six under the Democratic administrations of Kennedy and Johnson… After COINTELPRO was exposed [by the Church Committee], similar programs continued under other names during the Carter years as well as under Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. They have outlived J. Edgar Hoover and remained in place under all of his successors.”
Sunstein’s call for authoritarian action against government critics — including outright censorship in addition to the established tactics mentioned above — reveals that COINTELPRO has indeed outlived Hoover.
“Some conspiracy theories create serious risks. They do not merely undermine democratic debate; in extreme cases, they create or fuel violence,” writes Sunstein. “Even if only a small fraction of adherents to a particular conspiracy theory act on the basis of their beliefs, that small fraction may be enough to cause serious harms.”
Sunstein’s analysis dovetails with that of the Department of Homeland Security. In its now infamous report on “rightwing extremism,” the DHS insists members of the constitutionalist movement (including Libertarians and advocates of the Second Amendment) are not only violent but also virulent racists (a conclusion provided pre-packaged by the ADL and the SPLC).
If realized, Cass Sunstein’s call for outright censorship and the absurd proposal to impose fines and taxes on people who hold political views contrary to those of our rulers will naturally result in a redoubling of political activity on the part of the truth movement (specifically mentioned as “kooks” by Sunstein) and Libertarians and Constitutionalists.
As history repeatedly demonstrates, when faced with a strong and determined political opposition government invariably turns to more brutal and violent methods to enforce its will. Our rulers understand this and that is why they are hurriedly finishing their high-tech police and surveillance grid.
Filed under: Censorship, climate change, climate emails, climategate, Co2, corruption, CRU, Dictatorship, federal crimes, Global Warming, global warming hoax, global warming skeptics, google censorship, hacked emails, hackers, Hoax, inside job, internet blackout, internet censorship, internet manipulation, internet police, manipulation, media blackout, media censorship, Media Manipulation, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, scandal, youtube censorship | Tags: Anthropogenic Global Warming, Christopher Brooker, Climate Research Unit, East Anglia University
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.
Filed under: 1984, ACTA, Big Brother, Censorship, Control Grid, copyright, Darpa, Dictatorship, Echelon, Empire, european union, Fascism, file sharing, global treaty, government control, government regulations, international treaty, internet, Internet 2, internet blackout, internet censorship, Internet Filtering, internet manipulation, internet police, internet regulations, manipulation, nanny state, orwell, Police State, Surveillance, world treaty
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
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.
Filed under: 1st amendment, Communism, Dictatorship, Empire, european union, Fascism, free speech, global government, Globalism, internet, Internet 2, internet blackout, internet censorship, internet manipulation, Nazi, New World Order, NWO, socialism, US Constitution, world government | Tags: GAC, Governmental Advisory Committee
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.
Filed under: 1st amendment, 9/11, Barack Obama, catastrophic event, Congress, Dictatorship, domestic terror, domestic terrorism, Empire, Fascism, free speech, George Bush, globalist elite, Hitler, House, Internet 2, internet blackout, internet censorship, internet police, internet regulations, internet security alliance, jay rockefeller, Martial Law, Nazi, Neolibs, New World Order, NWO, obama, obama deception, rockefeller, Senate, socialism, stasi, stasi tactics, US Constitution, War On Terror, White House | Tags: Nortel, Verisign, Verizon
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.
Jay Rockefeller: Internet should have never existed
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 9/11 Truth, Airport Security, Anti-War, Australia, Big Brother, biometrics, Bloggers, Britain, California, cashless society, cell phones, Censorship, China, Cold War, Congress, Control Grid, copyright, Darpa, data mining, DHS, Dictatorship, Dissent, Echelon, Empire, Europe, european union, facebook, False Flag, free speech, George Bush, Germany, global elite, global government, Globalism, google, gps, Homeland Security, inside job, internet, Internet 2, internet blackout, internet censorship, Internet Filtering, internet of things, internet police, IOT, IP, ISP, John McCain, john roberts, korea, london, Media, michael chertoff, microchip, microchips, Microsoft, nanny state, New World Order, New York, Oppression, orwell, Pentagon, Police State, Propaganda, RFID, RIAA, Science and technology, south korea, Spy, Surveillance, Tony Blair, uav, United Kingdom, US Constitution, Verichip, War On Terror, White House | Tags: HP, incheon, intel, internet regulation, john reid, korea, motorola, National Intelligence Council, new songdo city, NIC, NWO, paul otellini, privacy, Recording Industry Association of America, seoul, u-city, Ubiquitous computing, Ubiquitous living, Ubiquitous positioning, utopia, Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool, VIRAT
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.
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/
noworldsystem.com 