Internet censorship. It did not happen overnight, but slowly came to America's shores
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Internet Censorship
By Wayne Madsen
12-9-5
Internet censorship. It did not happen overnight but slowly came to America's shores from testing grounds in China and the Middle East. Progressive and investigative journalist web site administrators are beginning to talk to each other about it, e-mail users are beginning to understand why their e-mail is being disrupted by it, major search engines appear to be complying with it, and the low to equal signal-to-noise ratio of legitimate e-mail and spam
appears to be perpetuated by it. In this case, "it," is what privacy and computer experts have long warned about: massive censorship of the web on a nationwide and global scale. For many years, the web has been heavily censored in countries around the world. That censorship continues at this very moment. Now it is happening right here in America. The agreement by the Congress to extend an enhanced Patriot Act for another four years will permit the political enforcers of the Bush administration, who use law enforcement as their proxies, to further clamp censorship controls on the web.
Internet Censorship: The Warning Signs Were Not Hidden
The warning signs for the crackdown on the web have been with us for over a decade. The Clipper chip controversy of the 90s, John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness (TIA) system pushed in the aftermath of 9-11, backroom deals between the Federal government and the Internet service industry, and the Patriot Act have ushered in a new era of
Internet censorship, something just half a decade ago computer programmers averred was impossible given the nature of the web. They were wrong, dead wrong. Take for example of what recently occurred when two journalists were taking on the phone about a story that appeared on Google News. The story was about a Christian fundamentalist move in Congress to use U.S. military force in Sudan to end genocide in Darfur. The story appeared on the English Google News site in Qatar. But the very same Google News site when accessed
simultaneously in Washington, DC failed to show the article. This censorship is accomplished by geolocation filtering: the restriction or modifying of web content based on the geographical region of the user. In addition to countries, such filtering can now be implemented for states, cities, and even individual IP addresses. With reports in the Swedish newspaper Svensa Dagbladet today that the United
States has transmitted a Homeland Security Department "no fly" list of 80,000 suspected terrorists to airport authorities around the world, it is not unreasonable that a "no [or restricted] surfing/emailing" list has been transmitted to Internet Service Providers around the world. The systematic disruptions of web sites and email strongly suggests that such a list exists. News reports on CIA prisoner flights and secret prisons are disappearing from
Google and other search engines like Alltheweb as fast as they appear. Here now, gone tomorrow is the name of the game. Google is systematically failing to list and link to articles that contain explosive information about the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda, and U.S. political scandals. But Google is not alone in working closely to stifle Internet discourse. America On Line,
Microsoft, Yahoo and others are slowly turning the Internet into an information superhighway dominated by barricades, toll booths, off-ramps that lead to dead ends, choke points, and security checks. America On Line is the most egregious is stifling Internet freedom. A former AOL employee noted how AOL and other Internet Service Providers cooperate with the Bush administration in censoring email. The Patriot Act gave federal agencies the power to review information to the packet level and AOL was directed by agencies like the FBI to do more than sniff the subject line. The AOL term of
service (TOS) has gradually been expanded to grant AOL virtually universal power regarding information. Many AOL users are likely unaware of the elastic clause, which says they will be bound by the current TOS and any TOS revisions which AOL may elect at any time in the future. Essentially, AOL users once agreed to allow the censorship and non-delivery of their email. Microsoft has similar
requirements for Hotmail as do Yahoo and Google for their respective e-mail services. There are also many cases of Google's search engine failing to list and link to certain information. According to a number of web site administrators who carry anti-Bush political content, this situation has become more pronounced in the last month.
In addition, many web site administrators are reporting a dramatic drop-off in hits to their sites, according to their web statistic analyzers. Adding to their woes is the frequency at which spam viruses are being spoofed as coming from their web site addresses. Government disruption of the political side of the web can easily be hidden amid hyped mainstream news media reports of the latest "boutique" viruses and worms, reports that have more to do with the sales of anti-virus software and services than actual
long-term disruption of banks, utilities, or airlines.
Internet Censorship in the US: No Longer a Prediction Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems have honed their skills at Internet censorship for years in places like China, Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, and other countries.
They have learned well. They will be the last to admit they have imported their censorship skills into the United States at the behest of the Bush regime. Last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign blocked international access to its web site -- www.georgewbush.com -- for unspecified "security reasons." Only those in the Federal bureaucracy and the companies involved are in a position to know what deals have been made and how extensive Internet censorship has become. They owe full disclosure to their customers and their fellow citizens. http://waynemadsenreport.com/
<http://www.rense.com/disclaimer.htm>Disclaimer
Do you wish that the government would read the Constitution?
Just email it to a few of your friends.
The snoops, who are reading your emails,
are the ones who need to know what the Constitution says.
Visit:
To those who say that censorship is not happening:
It is hard to imagine that there is still anyone who will honestly claim
that censorship is not happening:
After it has been on TV documentaries,
and
after it has been in the courts,
and
after whistleblowers have come forward from the inside,
and
after so many articles have been written about it...
Google "internet censorship"
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ADBR_enUS229US229&q="internet+censorship"
and you will find 907,000 web pages of information about it.
There are SEVERAL organizations dedicated to opposing internet censorship.
Bill Maher, and other comedians, are even making jokes about it.
My own FORMER Internet Service Provider has told me that the program;
which "filters out" certain emails, was developed using guidelines from the
DEPT, OF H0ME LAND lNSECURITY.
At the same time,
the Internet Service Provider is now being told that they are now regulated
by the Federal Communications Commission;
which in turn, receives guidelines from the DEPT, OF H0ME LAND lNSECURITY.
I moderate dozens of groups and I ALMOST NEVER
see anything, at the group home page, that goes into the bulk mail folder,
AND ACTUALLY IS spam.
Real spam gets through the filter with no problem.
There comes a point when it is difficult to believe that those who
deny the censorship are not party to it.
Nothing flushes out the government shills like exposing their censorship.
Why would anyone else object?
January 31, 2006Telecom Collaborated with NSA to Spy on CustomersSan Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T Tuesday, accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications.
The NSA program came to light in December, when the New York Times reported that the president had authorized the agency to intercept telephone and Internet communications inside the United States without the authorization of any court. Over the ensuing weeks, it became clear that the NSA program has been intercepting and analyzing millions of Americans' communications, with the help of the country's largest phone and Internet companies.
Reporting has also indicated that those same companies�and AT&T specifically�have given the NSA direct access to their vast databases of communications records, including information about whom their customers have phoned or emailed with in the past. And yet little has been accomplished by this illegal spying: recent reports have shown that the data from this wholesale surveillance has done little more than waste FBI resources on dead leads.
"The NSA program is apparently the biggest fishing expedition ever devised, scanning millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls and emails for 'suspicious' patterns, and it's the collaboration of US telecom companies like AT&T that makes it possible," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "When the government defends spying on Americans by saying, 'If you're talking to terrorists we want to know about it,' that's not even close to the whole story."
In the lawsuit, EFF alleges that AT&T, in addition to allowing the NSA direct access to the phone and Internet communications passing over its network, has given the government unfettered access to its over 300 terabyte "Daytona" database of caller information�one of the largest databases in the world.
"AT&T's customers reasonably expect that their communications are private and have long trusted AT&T to follow the law and protect that privacy. Unfortunately, AT&T has betrayed that trust," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "At the NSA's request, AT&T eviscerated the legal safeguards required by Congress and the courts with a keystroke."
By opening its network and databases to unrestricted spying by the government, EFF alleges that AT&T has violated the privacy of AT&T customers and the people they call and email, as well as broken longstanding communications privacy laws.
While other organizations are suing the government directly, EFF is seeking to protect Americans' privacy by stopping the collaboration of AT&T with the illegal NSA spying program and making it economically impossible for AT&T to continue to give its customers' information to the government.
"Congress has set up strong laws protecting the privacy of your communications, strictly limiting when telephone and Internet companies can subject your phone calls to government scrutiny," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "The companies that have betrayed their customers' trust by illegally handing the NSA direct access to their networks and databases must be brought to account. AT&T needs to put a sign on its door that reads, 'Come Back With a Warrant.'"
In the suit filed Tuesday, EFF is representing the class of all AT&T customers nationwide. EFF is seeking an injunction to stop AT&T participation in the illegal NSA program, as well as billions of dollars in damages for violation of federal privacy laws. Working with EFF in the lawsuit are the law firms Traber & Voorhees, and Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP.
For the full complaint:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/att-complaint.pdf
For more on EFF's suit:
Contact:
Rebecca Jeschke
Media Coordinator
Electronic Frontier Foundation
rebecca@...
Posted at 01:41 PM
Being the one who got the message,
is like being someone who has never been robbed.
It does not mean that crime does not exist.
I have about twenty times as many responses from people who got the announcement,
but did not get the censored message.
This just means that the filter has not YET been installed in this particular pathway to YOU.