Internet Freedom Starts At Home

Foreign Policy:

American-made technology has turned up around the Middle East and North Africa over the past year -- from Syria to Bahrain to Saudi Arabia, from pre-revolutionary Tunisia to Egypt -- in contexts that leave no doubt that the software and hardware in question were being used to censor dissenting speech and track activists.

Read the whole story at Foreign Policy

Comments

[Mr MOTO]

11:54 AM on 04/05/2012

Echelon .... Room 641A ....

[Trustfunded1]

11:38 AM on 04/05/2012

They hate us for our Freedoms!!!

LOL!!!

[April22]

11:20 AM on 04/05/2012

Interesting, no mention of the new $2 billion US National Security Agency's (NSA) data collection facility (expected to be 5 times the size of the US Capitol - 1 million suare feet) now under construction in Bluffdale, Utah!

Codenamed "Stellar Wind" will be able to sift through the complete contents of domestic commuinications - private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and even all sorts of personal data trails, such as parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases and any other digital "pocket litter" from "listening posts" throughout the country, by 4 satellites positioned around the globe, undersea cables, and picking up microwave links!

There is also a Multiprogram Research Facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Are these facilities for domestic spying designed for a time in the future - a complete financial collapse, war or martial law?

If not, then why is the government turning against its own citizens, wherein we are now ALL suspect?

http://www.alternet.org/visions/154641/exposed

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

[Quinny]

01:01 PM on 04/05/2012

Very sharp comments indeed. These agencies - like the NSA
and the Dept.Of Fatherland, oops, I mean, Homeland Security
were NOT created to protect the American public. They were
created to protect our "leaders" FROM the American public...

Sleep Tight America...

Selah

[AllenPapapetrou]

11:15 AM on 04/05/2012

This only news to those who haven't been watching tech news.

[RespectMyAuthoritah]

10:31 AM on 04/05/2012

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing."

They Thought They Were Free [But Then It Was Too Late], by Milton Mayer
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

[April22]

11:27 AM on 04/05/2012

All so true!

Even the "right" to elect governmental officials and change the tide of government is now no more than an illusion.

[Blackspeare]

10:29 AM on 04/05/2012

You can't deny it that the Internet has opened up the channels of communication and information to the unwashed masses in a most profound way. I remember in the 60's when LBJ got his civil rights and great society legislation passed the general public hardly knew what it was all about until it was being implemented. All we had then were the 6pm news, which was never controversial and newspapers which relatively few read thoroughly.

[Ilovestuff]

10:24 AM on 04/05/2012

Two things, our Federal Government and the UN. Both are licking their lips to regulate the internet into something that is not remotely free. Just as most everything in the world they touch, they use the buzz words of safety in place of control.

[jettymichael]

10:22 AM on 04/05/2012

The internet has no fixed address.

[Judane]

09:52 AM on 04/05/2012

Obviously this would only be news if it was happening under the Bush administration.

Since Obama is in the White House....nothing to see here citizens....move along.

[April22]

10:34 AM on 04/05/2012

Oh please, not everyone's ability to reason is filtered through a dicotomous haze!

[Fnordpocalypse]

12:14 PM on 04/05/2012

So the fact that there are numerous stories about this on the web proves your point how?

[dfranz]

09:42 AM on 04/05/2012

It's like the militarty industrial complex. They need a war somewhere so they can sell their product. You can believe that if anyone has lobbyists pushing congress to regulate the internet it is these software companies.

[April22]

11:34 AM on 04/05/2012

The top 5 arms dealers on the planet are the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council - US, China, Russia, UK, France!

The US is #1, with close to 40% of all weapons sold, followed by Russia, France, UK and China.

[ZombieSM]

09:38 AM on 04/05/2012

" Internet Freedom Starts at Home "

Of course when you post ANYTHING on this subject / story line you get the...

" Comments are monitored by our moderators before being published."

Such a contradiction HufPo, but it's not even a surprise.

[Mr MOTO]

09:27 AM on 04/05/2012

Stop the fear campaign and get back to telling us how bad Google is!

[Now tense]

09:26 AM on 04/05/2012

We need an audit of what percentage of U.S. citizens are having their information collected, I bet it would be shocking, not just on the internet either. How much city surveillance gets sent to fusion centers? Cities do get all of this surveillance equipment with grants, and I know nothing actually comes for free. All of this just makes me paranoid about my paranoid government, and I don't have anything to hide!

[Logicalthinker10]

09:24 AM on 04/05/2012

I said this a long time ago when President Obama made his comment about the information curtain in Iran.

[mandeep1803]

09:23 AM on 04/05/2012

NO WAY! Are you telling me that governments are flaming hypocrites???

On a side note, if sarcasm was a currency, I would not need to work to pay for my grad school.