Soviet-style Control is the Internet Agenda of the White House.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a simple evaluation of where Americans stand today in terms of rights guaranteed under the Constitution. The freedom and self-determination of American citizens is being threatened by the executive branch of federal government. The White House in recent days has announced its determination to ignore the Bill of Rights with respect to the Internet.
- The "flag" program to report fellow citizens whose views they disapprove. http://bit.ly/2fkn57 It brings to mind certain programs in Germany during the rise of Hitler, where citizens would report on other citizens, children would report on parents and teachers, etc.
- The program to take control of the Internet during "emergencies" http://bit.ly/1rMlP "Emergency" is never defined. The executive branch of federal government is completely free to declare when an emergency exists and to NOT declare when it is ended.
- The program to harvest data from social networking sites. http://bit.ly/X62Ph When Google mines data, it's mildly troublesome, but when government does the same thing, it's far worse. The difference is that Google ultimately has no control over the lives of people that use the Internet.
As American citizens, let's put 2 and 2 together. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". Though the quotation is not attributed to America's founders, it does express the view of many or most of them. The federal government that we have allowed to become far more powerful than our Constitution appears to allow is now taking steps to control powerless citizens in the free expression of ideas, to spy on powerless citizens without criminal warrant and to discipline powerless citizens into conformity with its objectives.
It is hard to conclude that the federal government's mindset towards the Internet has not changed. What country does it remind you of?
At this point, freedom-loving Americans might also want to re-think an area of legislation that has been debated for years, namely "net neutrality" (the de-privatization of Internet pipes). It is a thorny problem, but the argument against it is that control of socialized Internet pipes ultimately devolves to a government whose motivations can no longer be trusted and whose power is no longer restricted. The opponents of net neutrality would say "Choose your enemy... a Telcom that might want to throttle the bandwidth of competitors or a government that might want to throttle the bandwidth of detractors." An ugly choice to be sure.
