Stop the Spying

A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press."

-- George Seldes

As our free press was largely subsumed into a propaganda arm of the government, the Internet began to serve the original functions of a free press. As such, the Internet became a prime target by governments, to be subjugated the same as governments have thoroughly subjugated other media.

The game works like this: Two steps forward, one step back. Just as a frog will jump out of a pot of boiling water, yet will remain if the water in the pot is brought up slowly to a boil, governments crush our inalienable rights, incrementally.

Now and then, the courts will appear to strike down some insult to our Constitution, but that is largely for show. We are allowed to believe that the system is working, albeit slowly.

The apparent rush to jam through the myriad unconstitutional laws is no mere error. It is done by sheer audacity, before the facts can be made known. While we have a somewhat still free Internet, the totalitarians are vulnerable.

Government wedded to corporations is generally known as fascism, or recently, as the 5th Estate. It involves looting the wealth of nations, under the auspices of "privatization".

A recent case that comes to mind is where Bechtel managed to privatize water in Bolivia. That was quickly recognized as a war on the poor. After bloodshed, Bolivia has regained its resources (including oil) and those resources now serve the people of that country, and do not simply line the pockets of a few with massive wealth.

In the US, the Haves managed to install one of their own into power, who quickly set out to transfer as much of the wealth into the hands of his cronies, as he possibly could. Social Security looked like one of the few remaining massive pools of wealth, so that remains a ripe plum.

And machinations are underway to privatize the Internet. That will insure escalating power for the Haves and curb the free press threat that the Internet currently represents to totalitarianism, at the same time.

While Japan, South Korea and much of Europe have fast Internet connection speeds, America's bandwidth has been held back. While much optic fiber has been laid, much remains unlit, and is accurately termed "dark fiber". The strategy is similar to having parked oil tankers teaming with oil, offshore, while proclaiming an oil shortage in order to jack prices up.

Now as a result, some communications companies are engaging in "Packet shaping". "Packet shaping" is the Internet form of wire tapping. It allows them to examine the contents of what is being sent to their customers and to control that content. Those that want to keep the Internet free from privatization, are pushing "Net Neutrality", which opposes packet shaping. Packet shaping allows companies to throttle down speed of any given content and to speed up traffic that serves the companies' interests first. They then no longer are principally carriers, they have become publishers, as if controlling editorial content. That should make them liable for all content as publishers.

The race is on to grant these companies immunity to engage in such spying and to control all content. Some companies, such as AT&T, have announced their intention to team with RIAA and to detect music files that are passing through their systems. A recent case found a women liable for 10,000 times the value of 24 songs she was found guilty of getting. US President George Bush immediately hailed the case as an example that the system is working. More recently AT&T said its spying was to protect the children, which is another tell that they are engaged in massive spying, not just for a war on terrorism with foreigners.

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