U.S. government’s Internet kill switch. United States Bill of Rights, First Amendment - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
We live in an incredible era of information. A quarter of the world is online. This number is growing quickly and the amount of information we consume is ballooning. The openness of the Internet gives extraordinary access to information and this is a powerful force for good.
The Internet has helped level the playing field of commerce and education, enabled the sharing of ideas and opinions, and kept companies, institutions and politicians accountable. It helps keep them honest.
With the rise of the free Internet and the extraordinary information it brings also comes misinformation. And there is misinformation everywhere - not just online, but in newspapers, in classrooms, in books and by your cable news networks. Things your elected officials, parents and friends tell you turn out to be wrong, some things are right. The Internet forces us to differentiate between what is right and what is obviously wrong. It’s a vital skill called critical thinking, which we all need to learn the truth. People who are incapable of critical thinking may find themselves being misinformed.
More and more people around the world believe that Internet access should be a fundamental right. It would be a travesty if this openness was lost. But every day around the world, more and more governments are restricting access to information online. It isn’t just in China that Internet access is limited or access censored or outright denied. The U.S. is fast overtaking China in restricting access to informed information through the Internet. On June 24, 2010 Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), proposed a bill called the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, which lays out in 196 pages his plans to give the U.S. government the right to order ISPs to cut off service and make them pay heavy fines if they refuse to comply. The bill would also sets up a sub-bureaucracy under the Department of Homeland Security called the National Center for Communications and Cybersecurity (NCCC). Sen. Lieberman explained that other countries have been enacting legislative systems that allow for such a ‘kill switch’. “Right now China, its government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war, and we need to have that here, too.”
More recently, on July 16, 2010 the U.S. government killed 73,000 Internet Blogs. The U.S. Government claimed that they took action allegedly against a handful of sites connected to movie streaming but why were over 70,000 Wordpress blogs also taken down? Blogs that have nothing to do with movie streaming or music sharing. Blogs that post critical information for an informed society. Information critical of U.S. policies, agenda and actions? The free blogging platform was taken down by its hosting provider on orders from the U.S. authorities on grounds of “a history of abuse”. More than 73,000 blogs are out of action as a result. The accounts of more than 73,000 blogs ordered wiped by the U.S, government. Unless the owners of those blogs made a backup of their websites before the U.S, government killed them the information, and the hours of hard work that went into researching, collecting, writing and posting the information, is forever lost. The U.S, government actions is far worse than what China has done. China has only cut off Internet access to foreign websites whereas the U.S. has destroyed more than 73,000 websites of its own people. The U.S. government even went as far as seizing the domain names of many of those blog sites.
According to the owner of a free WordPress platform which hosts more than 73,000 blogs, his network of sites has been completely shut down on the orders of the U.S. authorities. Blogetery.com has been with host BurstNet for 7 months but on Friday July 9th the site disappeared. The owner of the server was also gag ordered by the U.S. government - “We are limited as to the details we can provide to you, but note that this was a critical matter and the only available option to us was to immediately deactivate the server. Please note that this was not a typical case, in which suspension and notification would be the norm. This was a critical matter brought to our attention by law enforcement officials. We had to immediately remove the server.”
Due to the fact that the U.S. government isn’t sharing information and the server owner has been sworn to secrecy (gaged), it is almost impossible to confirm the exact reason why more than 73,000 websites have been completely taken down. 73,000 blogs is a significant number to take down in one swoop, regardless of what some users of the site may or may not have been doing. This is censorship, pure and simple. This appears to be just the beginning.
The U.S. government has its finger on an Internet kill switch. They are preparing to take away the only media source left that isn’t swayed by political agendas and policies. It is the only media source left that hasn’t been bought and paid to publish the government’s propaganda. Welcome Americans, to the United Socialist States.
