Posts tagged Censorship
After Failure Of SOPA and PIPA Obama and Reid Reloading With NEW Internet Bill
Feb 7th
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, following a recent anti-piracy legislative debacle with SOPA and PIPA, will lead his second effort of 2012 to push Internet-regulating legislation, this time in the form of a new cybersecurity bill. The expected bill is the latest attempt by the Democrats to broadly expand the authority of executive branch agencies over the Internet.
They won't quit until they control it all.
Details about the bill remain shrouded in secrecy. Clues available to the public suggest that the bill might be stronger than President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity proposal, which was released in May 2011. Reid said that he would bring the bill — expected to come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman — to the floor during the first Senate work period of 2012.
A classified meeting behind closed doors in October 2011 between key Senate committee leaders with jurisdiction over cybersecurity and White House officials, took place at the request of the Obama administration. Lieberman, in an interview with The Hill in October, said that past Senate cybersecurity bills were considerably stronger than the White House proposal.
The White House proposal recommended that the Department of Homeland Security be given broad regulatory authority for cybersecurity matters over civilian networks. The White House proposal also recommends that the DHS program be “developed in consultation with privacy and civil liberties experts and with the approval of the Attorney General.”
A recent bill in the House – the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act of 2011 or PrECISE Act — also empowers DHS in the event of a cyberattack, but the bill has been criticized by Reid as not giving the agency enough power. PrECISE focuses on strengthening the information sharing component between private corporations and DHS by allowing a limited amount of information to be shared between the two.
Reid favors an approach that would expand DHS authority beyond currently regulated “critical infrastructure,” such as utilities and financial institutions, to also include Internet service providers and private networks.
“Lieberman said the turf war over which agency should be in charge of implementing the government’s cybersecurity plan has been largely resolved and there is a ‘broad consensus’ that DHS is best suited to the task, with technical and intelligence support from the military and National Security Agency,” reported The Hill. source - Daily Caller
STOPPED! US Congress and Senate Withdraw BOTH SOPA and PIPA Internet Anti-Piracy Bills
Jan 20th
Freedom lives on…for now, at least
SAN ANTONIO — U.S. lawmakers stopped anti-piracy legislation in its tracks on Friday, delivering a stunning win for Internet companies that staged an unprecedented online protest this week to kill the previously fast-moving bills.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said he would postpone a critical vote that had been scheduled for Jan. 24 “in light of recent events.”
Lamar Smith, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, followed suit, saying his panel would delay action on similar legislation until there is wider agreement on the issue.
“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy. It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products,” Smith said in a statement.
The bills, known as PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House, are aimed at curbing access to overseas websites that traffic in pirated content and counterfeit products, such as movies and music.
The legislation has been a priority for entertainment companies, publishers, pharmaceutical companies and other industry groups who say it is critical to curbing online piracy, which they believe costs them billions of dollars a year. source – MSBC
Obama’s Washington Attempting To Silence The Internet With SOPA and PIPA
Jan 17th
Internet censorship in the time of the One World Government
On Wednesday, January 18, thousands of websites will go dark to protest the massive Internet censorship bill before Congress right now.
From Ars Technica: Imagine a world in which any intellectual property holder can, without ever appearing before a judge or setting foot in a courtroom, shut down any website’s online advertising programs and block access to credit card payments. The credit card processors and the advertising networks would be required to take quick action against the named website; only the filing of a “counter notification” by the website could get service restored.
It’s the world envisioned by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) in today’s introduction of the Stop Online Piracy Act in the US House of Representatives. This isn’t some off-the-wall piece of legislation with no chance of passing, either; it’s the House equivalent to the Senate’s PROTECT IP Act, which would officially bring Internet censorship to the US as a matter of law.
Calling its plan a “market-based system to protect US customers and prevent US funding of sites dedicated to theft of US property,” the new bill gives broad powers to private actors. Any holder of intellectual property rights could simply send a letter to ad network operators like Google and to payment processors like MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal, demanding these companies cut off access to any site the IP holder names as an infringer.
The scheme is much like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) “takedown notices,” in which a copyright holder can demand some piece of content be removed from sites like YouTube with a letter. The content will be removed unless the person who posted the content objects; at that point, the copyright holder can decide if it wants to take the person to court over the issue.
Here, though, the stakes are higher. Rather than requesting the takedown of certain hosted material, intellectual property owners can go directly for the jugular: marketing and revenue for the entire site. So long as the intellectual property holders include some “specific facts” supporting their infringement claim, ad networks and payment processors will have five days to cut off contact with the website in question.
The scheme is largely targeted at foreign websites which do not recognize US law, and which therefore will often refuse to comply with takedown requests. But the potential for abuse—even inadvertent abuse—here is astonishing, given the terrifically outsized stick with which content owners can now beat on suspected infringers.
Not surprisingly, the new bill is getting pushback from groups like NetCoalition, which counts Google, Yahoo, and small ISPs among its members. “As leading brands of the Internet, we strongly oppose offshore ‘rogue’ websites and share policymakers’ goal of combating online infringement of copyrights and trademarks,” said executive director Markham Erickson in a statement.
“However, we do not believe that the solution lies in regulating the Internet and comprising its stability and security. We do not believe that it is worth overturning a decade of settled law that has formed the legal foundation for all social media. And finally, we do not believe that it is worth restricting free speech or providing comfort to totalitarian regimes that seek to control and restrict the Internet freedoms of their own citizens.”
Dozens of law professors have also claimed the original PROTECT IP Act, which contains most of the same ideas, is unconstitutional. But the drumbeat for some sort of censorship is growing louder. source – ARS Technica
DC Liberals Sign Petition to Ban Conservative Websites
May 26th
The coming darkness
There is a movement under foot to silence Conservative websites like this one, Drudge, Fox, Michelle Malkin and many others. We have been too successful in exposing the deeds of those who would seek to enslave us – progressive Liberals. Make no mistake, the enemy of free speech is has always been and will always be the progressive Liberal.
“After hearing news the other day that the Obama administration had appointed a new position to monitor and push back against negative online press we thought some liberals in DC might think it wasn’t enough. So we sent Joe Schoffstall out to see just how far liberals would go to silence conservative speech. Joe went around Georgetown in DC with a petition to “Ban Conservative Hate Sites” that said this:
“The undersigned hereby adamantly demand that the United States government shut down right wing hate sites. The hate speech propagated by sites like the Drudge Report, Hot Air, Instapundit, Big Government, and others must not be allowed to corrupt our political discourse any longer. These sites are dangerous not only to truth and freedom but also to our society as a whole. BAN THEM NOW!”
Obama Administration To Begin Shutting Down Websites
May 14th
The coming darkness
The Obama Administration is working feverishly to stop the flow of information on the Internet. They know all too well that knowledge is a dangerous thing in the hands of a free people. The Internet is without a doubt the greatest threat to him and his policies because it relays in a nanosecond around the world all works of darkness that he is perpetrating. FEMA camps, a private civilian army, the back-room deals…all of these things would go unreported if not for the Internet. That’s why the Democrat-run Senate has introduced legislation that will give the government much more power to seize and shut down “piracy” sites. But mark my words, it will not be long when the term “piracy” is applied to any site that reposts any portion of other people’s material, sites like this one and thousands of others. Remember, the journey to Auschwitz began with just a little, yellow star.
“Senate antipiracy legislation introduced Thursday would dramatically increase the government’s legal power to disrupt and shutter websites “dedicated to infringing activities.”
A major feature of the Protect IP Act, introduced by 11 senators of all stripes, would grant the government the authority to bring lawsuits against these websites, and obtain court orders requiring search engines like Google to stop displaying links to them.
“Both law enforcement and rights holders are currently limited in the remedies available to combat websites dedicated to offering infringing content and products,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the bill’s main sponsor. The proposal is an offshoot to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act introduced last year. It was scrapped by its authors in exchange for the Protect IP Act in a bid to win Senate passage.” source – Wired
Farrakhan To Obama – “Who The Hell Do You Think You Are?”
Mar 19th
“Who The Hell Do You Think Your Are?” Farrakhan Blasts Obama For Calling For Qaddafi to Step Down
FARRAKHAN: “I warn my brother do you let these wicked demons move you in a direction that will absolutely ruin your future with your people in Africa and throughout the world…Why don’t you organize a group of respected Americans and ask for a meeting with Qaddafi, you can’t order him to step down and get out, who the hell do you think you are? source – HapBlog
NOTE: There was a YouTube video of Louis Farrakhan saying this in an interview, but YouTube, under penalty of account termination, forced me to delete the video from my account. In the past year, I have been “warned” by them 3 times, and all 3 videos were MUSLIM based content that they objected to. And in all 3 cases it was simply a clip of an interview, given by a Muslim, saying in their own words what they believe.
Chinese Authorities Act Quickly to Stamp Out Call for China’s ‘Jasmine Revolution’
Feb 20th
Chinese forces remind the world that they are experts in the art of the crackdown
Chinese authorities are moving quickly to crush any attempt for uprisings in China. The call to protest is believed to have first circulated Saturday on the Chinese news website Boxun.com, based in the United States. Mobile phone and text messaging services have been disconnected within China, and searches for “Jasmine” have been censored as Beijing anxiously tries to quell any opportunity for protests to spread across the nation. Boxun.com, as well as Twitter and Facebook have been blocked, which will make it difficult for organized demonstrations to get off the ground.
BEIJING – Several top Chinese rights activists have disappeared into police custody as a web campaign urged angry citizens to mark the Middle East’s “Jasmine Revolution” with protests, campaigners said Sunday.
Up to 15 leading Chinese rights lawyers and activists have disappeared since Saturday amid a nationwide police mobilisation, according to activists, while the government appeared to censor Internet postings calling for the demonstrations. source: Channel News Asia
Hundreds of people gathered Sunday in China's major cities of Beijing and Shanghai but were dispersed by police in both places. Photo: AP
“We welcome… laid off workers and victims of forced evictions to participate in demonstrations, shout slogans and seek freedom, democracy and political reform to end ‘one party rule’,” one posting said.
The postings, many of which appeared to have originated on overseas websites run by exiled Chinese political activists, called for protests in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and 10 other major Chinese cities.
Protesters were urged to shout slogans including “we want food to eat,” “we want work,” we want housing,” “we want justice,” “long live freedom,” and “long live democracy. source: Asia One
