The Cloud: Trojan Horse For Internet Takeover

From Prison Planet.

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Despite the corporate-driven hubbub surrounding the inevitability of “the cloud” replacing personal hard drives as the pre-eminent storage center for all web content, this system represents another dangerous trojan horse for the establishment to complete their agenda to regulate and shut down the free Internet...

Obama Administration Expresses Support For Mubarak As Protester Shot Dead In Egypt

From Prison Planet.


Authorities shut down Internet and text messaging as riots threaten to topple regime

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, January 28, 2011

The Obama administration expressed its support for under fire Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak even as footage emerged of a protester being shot dead by Mubarak’s security forces in Cairo, as the government shut down the Internet, land lines and the mobile phone network in a desperate bid to cling on to power amidst widespread rioting.

Joe Lieberman's Campaign To Trample The First Amendment Is Proceeding Right On Schedule

From Zerohedge.

As if it wasn't enough that America's ruling oligarchs were sufficiently happy with abdicating their governing duties to the Federal Reserve, they have now decided to imitate China in every possible way, and in addition to making up economic data as they go (for actual numbers just look around you, for all the other imaginary bullshit there's the BLS), they have now proceeded to wipe their ass with the first amendment, on their way to converting the US to a complete banana republic. After Joe Lieberman made a mockery of Internet freedom of speech (and of Amazon's independence) he has now decided to step up his campaign against un-coopted journalists everywhere, precisely as we suspected would happen next in the USSA. Per MSNBC, the Independent Connecticut senator has told Tableau, a Seattle company that allows Web users to post charts, to remove several charts describing the release of WikiLeaks material. The company removed the charts on Thursday, following the lead of Amazon, which had taken down the WikiLeaks documents themselves. The punchline: none of the charts contained any classified data: "The charts were not produced by WikiLeaks, but by a freelance journalist. And they contained no classified or secret material. The charts merely depicted how many times each country, or topic, was discussed in the cables." In other words, as Bill Dedman concludes: "these charts were journalism."...

And From Salon's Glenn Greenwald


Those are the benign, purely legal documents that have now been removed from the Internet in response to Joe Lieberman's demands and implied threats. He's on some kind of warped mission where he's literally running around single-handedly dictating what political content can and cannot be on the Internet, issuing broad-based threats to "all companies" that -- by design -- are causing suppression of political information. I understand Tableau's behavior here; imagine if you were a small company and Joe Lieberman basically announced: I am Homeland Security and you are to cease being involved with this organization which many say is a Terrorist group and Enemy Combatant. What Lieberman is doing is a severe abuse of power, and even for our anemic, power-revering media, it ought to be a major scandal (though it's not because, as Digby says, all our media stars can process is that "Julian Assange is icky").

If people -- especially journalists -- can't be riled when Joe Lieberman is unilaterally causing the suppression of political content from the Internet, when will they be? After all, as Jeffrey Goldberg pointed out in condemning this, the same rationale Lieberman is using to demand that Amazon and all other companies cease any contact with WikiLeaks would justify similar attacks on The New York Times, since they've published the same exact diplomatic cables on its site as WikiLeaks has on its (added: the only diplomatic cables posted on the WikiLeaks site thus far are the ones published by the newspapers with which WikiLeaks partnered -- such as the NYT, Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc. -- and they include those newspapers' redactions; no other cables have yet been posted to the WikiLeaks site). What Joe Lieberman is doing is indescribably pernicious and if "journalists" cared in the slightest about their own self-interest -- never mind all the noble things they pretend to care about -- they ought to be vociferously objecting to this.

Motion Picture Association Of America Wants To Know If Anti-Counterfeiting Agreement Can Be Used Against Wikileaks

Now isn't this interesting? Movie studios want to take out Wikileaks. Playing their role as the propaganda wing of the ruling corrupt American corporate mafia perhaps?

From Techdirt


The folks over at Open Acta Mexico sent over their report on an open information meeting at the Ministry of the Economy in Mexico about ACTA last week. There were two oddities that they called attention to. The first is that there was an MPAA representative at the meeting, who apparently asked whether or not ACTA could be used to block access to "damaging" sites like Wikileaks. As the Open Acta Mexico people asked, what does Wikileaks have to do with movies? It seems like an interesting question, though, and I'm assuming that the MPAA is using Wikileaks as an example of a site they deem "dangerous" to get the idea across, so that later when they designate other sites (say... The Pirate Bay....) as dangerous, they can use this to make the case it should be blocked. Nice to see the MPAA is so blatant about using copyright for censorship...

UK No Longer Free Country? Votes To Censor Internet Sites.

Digital economy bill rushed through wash-up in late night session

Government drops clause on orphan works but inserts amendment criticised as over-broad which could block sites based on 'intent'

Here is the link to the article on the Guardian.


Editor Note: Read the angry comments after the article. Still that little bit of freedom we still have to complain. How long that will last is unknown.

Cybersecurity Bills Drafted By Same Group Responsible for 9/11 Truth Hit Piece; Russia Today Covers Internet Control Coup

Attempts to seize control over the internet and track the indentity of internet users are being escalated in new cybersecurity legislation being considered in Washington.

In an AFP article, representative David Wu from Oregon fantatsizes about the Wild West of the internet.

"We cannot stand by and let the most powerful tool for connecting Americans with each other and the world remain the Wild West of technology."

Wild West? What is he talking about?

"Cybercrime is a major problem for the government, for businesses, and indeed for every American," Lipinski, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Is it really? I don't think I have ever personally experienced 'cyber crime.' Perhaps it is a threat for key infrastructure computer networks and much of the bills going through congress seem to address that, however there is fear that these bills usher in a new age of government control of the internet.

There is a House Bill which has just passed in the House, Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2009(HR 4061), which would raise nearly $400 million for cybersecurity research and development programs, scholarships, and training programs in colleges and universities as well as setting up some kind of internationally accepted cybersecurity standards and public awareness campaigns.

However in another bill in the Senate (S. 773), in Section 18, it states the President "may declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network." Under Section 14, Public-Private Clearinghouse, the Secretary of Commerce "shall have access to all relevant data concerning such networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access." The networks they are referring to are "State, local, and nongovernmental information systems and networks in the United States designated by the President as critical infrastructure information systems and networks."
However the concern rests on the fear that this might be defined loosely to include almost any network or internet site.

From an article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation we find that our private information may be once again spied on in new ways as well as tracked in the future through 'identity management.':

"the bill contains a particularly dangerous provision that could cripple privacy and security in one fell swoop...The broad scope of this provision could eviscerate statutory protections for private information, such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Privacy Protection Act, or financial privacy regulations...A privacy threat still in the cocoon is the provision mandating a study of the feasibility of an identity management and authentication program with just a nod to “appropriate civil liberties and privacy protections.” There’s reason to fear that this type of study is just a precursor to proposals to limit online anonymity."

Interestingly in one article I came upon the information that "Snowe (R-Maine) noted that the bill "loosely parallels" a set of cybersecurity recommendations contained in a report released late last year by a commission set up by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies."

The Center for Strategic and International Studies? That rang a bell. And I remember from where. Recently Arnaud de Borchgrave wrote an article attempting to equate the Fort Hood shooter with 9/11 truthers, or the movement of people who want a new investigation into 9/11. This very same Arnaud de Borchgrave is the Director for Transnational Threats at the Center For Strategic and International Studies. So someone who easily connects the 9/11 truth movement with real terrorism is a director at the center responsible for helping to create the new cybersecurity legislation. Wow that can't be good.

It must also be noted that Arnaud de Borchgrave also wrote a book on Cybersecurity, namely 'Cyber Threats and Information Security.' Here on Amazon.

It must be however also noted that the actual commission which I believe Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R- Maine) was referring to does not include the name of Arnaud de Borchgrave on its list of members. Still it's interesting to see the general crowd from which the legislation is coming and it's probably a good idea to keep a close eye on how some of these think tanks have their influence on actual legislation.

Ironically you must watch Russia Today to find out about anti-corporate/pro liberty opinions on the new moves of the corporate state monster. Is that an outlet which might need to be 'shut down' in an emergency? Ah, welcome to the United States of Guatemala.