Sergey Brin, Google Co-Founder, Says Internet Freedom Facing Greatest Threat Ever

Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin looks on during a question and answer session following the launch of the new Google Instant during a special launch event September 8, 2010 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

LONDON, April 16 (Reuters) - The principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the Internet's creation are facing their greatest-ever threat, the co-founder of Google Sergey Brin said in an interview published by Britain's Guardian newspaper on Monday.

Brin said the threat to freedom of the Internet came from a combination of factors, including increasing efforts by governments to control access and communication by their citizens.

Brin said attempts by the entertainment industry to crack down on piracy, and the rise of "restrictive" walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms, were also leading to greater restrictions on the Internet.

"There are very powerful forces that have lined up against the open Internet on all sides and around the world," Brin was quoted as saying. "I am more worried than I have been in the past. It's scary."

He said he was concerned by efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the Internet.

Brin said the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.

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Comments

[InventPeace]

06:19 PM on 05/31/2012

Before congress enacts censorship on internet, they might pause and think: how will this play in other countries IE " USA censors internet ?" sounds like what we are being told about china every other day. Lets get back to basics, the BILL OF RIGHTS ! Freedom of speech, arms, press, opinion, etc etc ... lets not go the way of Stallin so fast... come on congress wake up, being re-elected isn't as important as doing the right thing for your country.

[InventPeace]

06:14 PM on 05/31/2012

The more the super rich get richer, and the more the congress is worried about the super rich donating to their re-election campaigns, the more they will tighten control (take away your freedom of speech). Internet was initially a very free place (1992) and not commercialized either.. now its really neither anymore. Welcome to demockracy courtesy of lobbyist snakes ! Eventually the wise will only use internet as information source as censorship will take away freedom of speech. Thankfully we can go back to other pre-internet methods. Did you know that the state of Georgia has already gone back to paper and pencil election ballots because electronic voting machines are so easily censored (hacked).

[TJStarfire]

07:58 PM on 04/17/2012

Internet has faced its greatest threat since the worship of Mammon started taking it over, Sergay is one of the worst threats the people in this world have to face every day! That person loves himself and disparages the value of others He is a worshiper of Mammon.

[Mark Mark]

05:08 PM on 04/17/2012

To many people the Internet consists of Amazon, eBay, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Wikipedia and some porn sites. Half the users would be just fine if that is all they had to access to.

People don't care what doesn't effect them. Since most people don't steal music, they don't care. The fun days of the Internet died with corporate takeovers. Look at the fun site JumpTheShark. It was insanely simple and fun to read. It is now a generic cookie cutter gossip site.

People created simple sites that were fun to read. Now people create sites with the express purpose of trying to get bought out by Google, Yahoo or some other billion dollar corp

[Al Schrader]

12:34 PM on 04/17/2012

If this net becomes compromised, I already have the technology for an alternate net. And in the not too distant future there is another technology coming - neutrino tech. Neutrino particles can travel through the Earth because they pass "between" the atoms in the spaces that exist there. What this means is you can send a signal through the Earth. Your tiny internet dish antenna will point at an angle through the Earth in a kind of "micro-cluster" of tiny dish antennas arranged in a sphere (of course I own this technology).....Alfred-

[dveloperz]

11:53 AM on 04/17/2012

In your face spying:

"President Barack Obama insisted Thursday that without government spending, “Google, Facebook would not exist.”
Obama made the remark at a campaign fundraiser while criticizing the budget passed by House Republicans. Obama said the Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget would, among other things, cut funding for research.

“I believe in investing in basic research and science because I understand that all these extraordinary companies that are these enormous wealth-generators — many of them would have never been there; Google, Facebook would not exist, had it not been for investments that we made as a country in basic science and research,” Obama said. “I understand that makes us all better off.”

[William Bradley]

04:12 PM on 04/17/2012

That's not "spying," that is simple fact.

[Megalodon8]

12:13 AM on 04/20/2012

"In Your Face" conspiracy theory. Spying my eye.

Obama was simply stating a FACT. Where is the spying?

[dveloperz]

11:51 AM on 04/17/2012

"Richardson elaborated on the ACLU’s concerns with CISPA, and why they’ve been adamantly against it since the initial committee markup.

Ideally, Richardson said, there would be a limitation placed in the legislation making it so that the information gathering efforts pertain only to cyberthreats, with Congress setting up an explicit road map to set up which agencies will be granted access to the data obtained from private companies.

“Here it’s a free-for-all” she said, citing that data obtained through CISPA could theoretically end up in the Department of Defense or in the hands of the National Security Agency. Preferably, and this is something that Jeschke agrees with, the Department of Homeland Security, a civilian agency, would be the sole recipient given control of the data.

Otherwise, Richardson said, “It’s allowing them [companies] to go straight to the military.”

[dveloperz]

11:50 AM on 04/17/2012

Here's a funny joke:

"Facebook, arguably the highest-profile supporter of the bill, given its vast resources of personal information, reiterated its support Friday in a statement released by Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of public policy.

“The concern is that companies will share sensitive personal information with the government in the name of protecting cybersecurity. Facebook has no intention of doing this and it is unrelated to the things we liked about HR 3523 in the first place - the additional information it would provide us about specific cyber threats to our systems and users,” he said."

[dveloperz]

11:49 AM on 04/17/2012

Wake up America, your freedoms are being taken:

"The points of contention reside within the details of the bill. Rebecca Jeschke, digital rights analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, struck at the most important issue that her organization, and others, have with CISPA, the language of the bill itself.

“The language is so vague that there’s a huge level of interpretation of data that could be shared,” Jeschke said.

Michelle Richardson, a legislative council at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, echoed Jeschke’s remarks.

As it stands now, she said, the bill is “broad enough to go beyond China,” referring to the frequent invocations of Chinese subterfuge and espionage aimed at U.S. private and governmental networks made by its proponents.

The data intended to be shared, titled “cyber threat intelligence” within CISPA, is defined as information that is within the intelligence community’s hold “pertaining to the protection of a system or network from” one of the following."

[dveloperz]

11:48 AM on 04/17/2012

It's called CISPA, why is not mentioned?

"Reporting from Washington—

As the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 nears its time in the congressional spotlight, supporters and detractors alike are fine-tuning their arguments in preparation for another battle over how the Internet will be influenced by federal legislation.

The core objective of CISPA is simple: Opening up greater means for communication between private entities and the federal government on issues of cybersecurity and national security.

“Today the U.S. government protects itself using classified and unclassified threat information that it identifies from attacks on its networks,” a staffer on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said, introducing the legislation on a conference call April 10. “However, the majority of the private sector doesn’t get access to this information because the government has no mechanism today for effectively sharing.”

[dveloperz]

11:47 AM on 04/17/2012

"“One of the lessons we learned in the reaction to SOPA and PIPA is that when Congress tries to legislate on things that are going to affect Internet users’ experience, the Internet users are going to pay attention,” says Burman. H.R. 3523, she cautions, “Definitely could affect in a very serious way the internet experience.” Luckily, adds Burman, “People are starting to notice.” Given the speed that the latest censorship bill could sneak through Congress, however, anyone concerned over the future of the Internet should be on the lookout for CISPA as it continues to be considered on Capitol Hill."

[dveloperz]

11:47 AM on 04/17/2012

Sounds like how they passed the Patriot Act:

"The authors of CISPA say the bill has been made “To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities,” but not before noting that the legislation could be used “and for other purposes,” as well — which, of course, are not defined.

“Cyber security, when done right and done narrowly, could benefit everyone,” Burman tells RT. “But it needs to be done in an incremental way with an arrow approach, and the heavy hand that lawmakers are taking with these current bills . . . it brings real serious concerns.”

So far CISPA has garnered support from over 100 representatives in the House who are favoring this cybersecurity legislation without taking into considerations what it could do to the everyday user of the Internet. And while the backlash created by opponents of SOPA and PIPA has not materialized to the same degree yet, Burman warns Congress that it could be only a matter of time before concerned Americans step up to have their say."

[dveloperz]

11:46 AM on 04/17/2012

CISPA is the name and your privacy is the game:

"In a press release penned last month by the CDT, the group warned then that CISPA allows Internet Service Providers to “funnel private communications and related information back to the government without adequate privacy protections and controls.

The bill does not specify which agencies ISPs could disclose customer data to, but the structure and incentives in the bill raise a very real possibility that the National Security Agency or the DOD’s Cybercommand would be the primary recipient,” reads the warning.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, another online advocacy group, has also sharply condemned CISPA for what it means for the future of the Internet. “It effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity'’ exemption to all existing laws,” explains the EFF, who add in a statement of their own that “There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cybersecurity purposes.’”

[dveloperz]

11:45 AM on 04/17/2012

Let me help Huff n' Puff do some reporting, it's called CISPA:

"Kendall Burman of the Center for Democracy and Technology tells RT that Congress is currently considering a number of cybersecurity bills that could eventually be voted into law, but for the group that largely advocates an open Internet, she warns that provisions within CISPA are reason to worry over what the realities could be if it ends up on the desk of President Barack Obama. So far CISPA has been introduced, referred and reported by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and expects to go before a vote in the first half of Congress within the coming weeks.

“We have a number of concerns with something like this bill that creates sort of a vast hole in the privacy law to allow government to receive these kinds of information,” explains Burman, who acknowledges that the bill, as written, allows the US government to involve itself into any online correspondence, current exemptions notwithstanding, if it believes there is reason to suspect cyber crime. As with other authoritarian attempts at censorship that have come through Congress in recent times, of course, the wording within the CISPA allows for the government to interpret the law in such a number of degrees that any online communication or interaction could be suspect and thus unknowingly monitored."

[rmoyuela]

10:13 AM on 04/17/2012

Freedom for what? For insulting my neighbor?