Big Brother tightens choke hold on Internet ~ By Jerome Corsi

What? The U.N. has something to do with this? Jerome Corsi brings this report on the highly controversial moves to "censure" the internet to prevent us from getting our news from anywhere but government controlled or regulated news media.

Big Brother tightens choke hold on Internet

JEROME CORSI

By Jerome Corsi

December 19, 2010 ~ 9:12 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi's Red Alert (requires free registration) the premium online newsletter published by the current No. 1 best-selling author, WND staff writer and senior managing director of the Financial Services Group at Gilford Securities.

The United Nations is now joining the Obama administration and Democratic commissioners on the FCC in an attempt to regulate the Internet, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.

"The U.N. is reacting to concerns of member governments, including the United States, that the Internet has made companies like WikiLeaks possible, while the FCC is more concerned about conservative news outlets on the Internet that are increasingly undermining government attempts to control the news through sympathetic mainstream media outlets," Corsi wrote.

"What is at stake is the future of electronic free-speech rights, as governments around the world realize how much less control government authorities have with a robust and critical press able to operate freely on the Internet."

READ FULL STORY at WorldNetDaily.com

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Is Facebook deserving of gov't intervention? ~ By Phil Elmore

In this column, Phil asks, “Who is responsible for your online privacy?” That is an important question. Whether it is Facebook, or any other social networking site, what you include in your content that is open and public is pretty much up to the user. But what Phil mentions here is that there are people that want the government to regulate the online social networks and other sites on the web, so that the consumer is protected. And of course, as Phil points out, it is unnecessary for the government to get involved. It is up to the users to be vigilant.

Who, then, is truly responsible for your privacy online? A company that fails to fully disclose how it will use your personal information is not dealing with you fairly or honestly; your assumption of risk does not include deception of that type. Likewise, if a company tries to trick you by making it difficult for you to opt-out of programs that compromise your privacy, it is less than reputable. You and you alone, however, are ultimately responsible for your privacy. If you post personal data online, you must take the time and effort to determine how that information will be used, if at all – and you must remain ever vigilant to changes in the policies of those sites you do frequent.

If you use necessary prudence, taking responsibility for your consumer data privacy should not feel onerous. To use the Internet is not a license to turn off your brain. Buyer beware ... and user be warned.

By Phil Elmore

Posted: May 06, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

Who is responsible for your online privacy? Is it the social networking sites you use? Is it your government?

As reported in CNET, the "tracking and targeting of consumers online" has, according to a coalition of consumer privacy groups, become "alarming" – so much so that these same groups are now agitating for government intervention and control.

Several busybody senators are already pushing to do just that. New York's Sen. Chuck Schumer, who never met a government regulation he could not embrace, recently asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into the privacy policies of the popular social networking site Facebook. Schumer and several other senators are reacting to public outcry over recent changes to Facebook's seemingly fluid user agreement – an outcry that for some reason includes the far-left activist group MoveOn.org, among others.

Facebook defended its "instant personalization pilot program" (the default setting for which is "on" – users must find it among their account settings to turn it "off") by saying that it "is an evolution of an idea Facebook has focused on since day one – to give people an easy way to share with their friends." This prompts one to wonder how sharing data with third-party websites that wish to sell you goods and services has anything to do with your "friends." Facebook's official statement continued, "We hope that instead of quickly dismissing sites being more personalized, that people take the time to try out new experiences ... [such as what] their friends have to say about restaurants and sharing favorite artists and albums." There is, of course, an assumption of risk you, as the user, must accept whenever you sign up for a site on which you post information about yourself. Facebook's executives think you'll get used to the idea in time.

This isn't the first time Facebook has come under fire for sharing with third parties information that users post to it. In late 2007, faced "with its second mass protest by members in its [then] short life span, Facebook, the enormously popular social networking website, [pulled back] some aspects of a controversial new advertising program." Among the aspects of the program rejected by users at the time was the sharing with people on users' "friend lists" of information regarding what those users were purchasing on certain third-party websites.

Even as you read this, a massive new Internet privacy bill proposed this week could potentially turn your Internet experience into a bureaucratic maze of legal indemnification agreements, sign-ups, sign-outs and releases. "The draft bill's chief proponent – Rick Boucher, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet – said it's designed to strike a middle ground between privacy protection and the need for online companies to benefit from interactive and targeted advertising." The bill "would require companies to get a user's explicit approval ... before [those companies] 'knowingly collect' information about a person's medical history, financial records, Social Security Number, sexual orientation or precise geographic location. … [T]he bill appears to codify what is accepted practice by reputable online companies."

No one should be surprised that the gears of government are grinding inexorably toward such popular websites. The FTC was turning its baleful collective eye on "Consumer Data Privacy" even before Schumer and Boucher got into the act.

READ FULL STORY at WorldNetDaily.com

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Obama's hope to control the Net ~ By Phil Elmore

It is important for you to read this commentary, as Phil explains the problems with net "neutrality." It isn't a good thing, as you will see.

Obama's FCC wants to protect you from yourself and from the onerous freedom of choice. Obama's appointed staff of Marxist czars wants to stop ISPs from managing their own property on the assumption that the equipment owned by these service providers belongs to everyone. This is collectivism. This is Marxism. This is your government grinding your civil liberties underfoot in the name of freedom. This is your president urging that you be controlled in the name of setting you free. This is those in power further deepening that power in the name of protecting the powerless.

This is countless lesser tyrannies, and this is wrong.

By Phil Elmore

Posted: April 08, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

Advocates of smaller government received some rare good news this week concerning government regulation of the Internet. Where your government is concerned, however, there is no shortage of alternate paths to the same regulated, restricted and controlled future. Almost before the news had broken, statist supporters of government Internet control were already scheming to circumvent a legal ruling that has erected the smallest of roadblocks in their collective path.

Tuesday, the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that, as written by CNET's Declan McCullagh, the "Federal Communications Commission does not have the legal authority to slap Net neutrality regulations on Internet providers." McCullagh went on to point out that "Tuesday's decision could doom one of the signature initiatives of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat. Last October, Genachowski announced plans to begin drafting a formal set of net neutrality rules – even though Congress has not given the agency permission to do so. ... Net neutrality proponents responded ... by saying the FCC should slap landline-style regulations on Internet providers, which could involve price regulation, service quality controls, and technological mandates."

Price regulation. Service controls. Mandates. Do these terms disturb you? Do they disturb you further because they come on the heels of an autocratic federal agency being told it does not have the authority to control what it is attempting to control? Reporters covering the "net neutrality" ruling have blithely speculated as to whether the government might reclassify broadband Internet services as telecommunications services, giving the FCC the authority to enact price controls. This would be the first step in destroying the free market Internet Service Providers (ISPs) serve.

Price controls destroy the normal, natural, practical exchange of value for value among consumers and providers, invariably inviting further government intervention. This is socialism. This is collectivism. Barack Hussein Obama's supporters hate it when the president's critics point this out, but this is why his administration is bad for our country, for our economy and for our liberties.

READ FULL STORY at WorldNetDaily.com

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Obama's totalitarian plans for the Net ~ By Phil Elmore

Commentary from WorldNetDaily

By Phil Elmore Posted: February 04, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern © 2010 The Internet, the network of networks through which we communicate and transfer data worldwide, is an integral part of modern society. Any threat to the Internet, and to the free exchange of information thereon, arguably threatens American society and American security. A threat to the Internet silences the voices of millions of people engaged in free speech in the largest public square imaginable. A threat to the Internet endangers commerce domestically and internationally. A threat to the Internet is now a threat to the fabric of our technologically saturated world. While some might welcome the disconnection of the countless plugs running from the World Wide Web to the phones in our pockets and to the brains in our skulls, they are the minority. When the Internet became infrastructure, we became its dependents as surely as we continue to create its content. Previously in Technocracy, we called Barack Hussein Obama "our technology dictator," in recognition of his initially shrewd and subsequently overexposed use of multiple media to inflict his visage on us. Obama's omnipresence on every flickering screen and in every possible venue competed only with his steadfast refusal to give up his personal data device, flouting years of White House security tradition and forcing the people who take care of such things to provide him with a specially prepared PDA hardened against hacking. Obama has, from the first days of his presidency, displayed a distinct technological savvy – which has, in his every word and deed, quickly manifested itself as a desire to control every technological venue in which Americans might conceivably find utility, entertainment or employment. Mr. Obama has wasted no time implementing this destructive, invasive, oppressive worldview where the Internet is concerned. He is, after all, the man who previously sought the power of a collective "off" switch for the Web – in the form of a Senate bill that would give the White House "the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet." We covered the dangers of "net neutrality" in October after first, perhaps optimistically, suggesting that an Internet controlled by the United States and its commitment to individual rights would prevent the establishment of thoughtcrime. It has become clear that a government empowered to enforce its vision of net neutrality will only do harm, interfering in commerce while opening the door to the institution of the very thoughtcrime the concept of "net neutrality" is intended, idealistically, to prevent. Should we be surprised, then, that Barack Hussein Obama is an ardent supporter of this most recent evolution of a once high-minded principle? Obama has said, "I'm a big believer in net neutrality," and he wants to empower the unelected, unaccountable autocrats at the FCC to force you and your Internet Service Provider to toe his totalitarian line. Even if they lose the court battle over whether Obama can impose new government rules on the Internet, they intend to do it anyway. The overlords at the Federal Communications Commission are even now plotting and scheming to find a way around the law and our court system, inflicting their controls on us regardless of what we want, what our judges say or what the Constitution might contain. READ FULL STORY >

Washington To Close Internet To Bloggers, End Open Internet Freedom ~ By Capt. Karl

From The Liberty Tree Lantern

By Capt. Karl October 20, 2009 Phil Kerpen, who this Capt. Karl was honored to meet with and discuss liberty and economic issues in the town of Howard, WI (near Green Bay) as part of an Americans for Prosperity town hall meeting last year, sent the following letter in grave concern of our freedom and liberty with regards to our usage of the Internet. This is just another in a long series of very serious concerns with the mounting oppression and despotism through Socialist and Communistic principles of control and manipulation of our society and even our communication, news and information sources. As so many things these behaviors by the U.S. Government are really getting serious and certainly approaching a line in the sand if not over it already. Please read Phil’s letter to me, which I am sharing with you below, and get active in stopping the additional loss of our rights and freedoms:

Dear Karl, As important as all the fights are that we’re in right now, perhaps the biggest of all is the fight over whether the government will take over the Internet. That’s because as long as the Internet is free, we can use it to communicate, educate, and organize. Tea parties, townhalls, and AFP events would be very difficult to organize if government owned and controlled the Internet and chose to interfere with it. That’s what’s at stake this week as the Federal Communications Commission decides on Thursday whether to move forward with so-called “net neutrality” regulations. The net neutrality movement is an outgrowth of the larger so-called media reform project of radical left-wing activists like Robert McChesney who seek to destroy private control of the country’s communications systems. I discussed McChesney and the so-called media reform movement last night on the Glenn Beck show, and you can watch that clip here. I’ll be on with Glenn again tonight to discuss net neutrality specifically. ... (You can see the video of Phil Kerpen on Glenn Beck below)

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Glenn Beck Clips 10-20-09 Seg5- Phil Kerpen; Obama Says He Is FOR Net Neutrality