Choking the Internet
How much longer will your favorite sites be on line?
by Wayne Madsen
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/madsenchokingtheinternet12dec05.shtml
December 12, 2005
Forward courtesy of Jon Logan <jon7@pacificcoast.net>
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MAD20051212&articleId=1448
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 (AOL) 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.
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