How much longer will your
favorite sites be on line?
Guest Opinion
By Wayne Madsen
|  Internet
censorship. It did not happen overnight but slowly came
to America's shores from testing grounds in China and
the Middle East.
Progressive and investigative journalist web site administrators
are beginning to talk to each other about it, e-mail
users are beginning to understand why their e-mail is
being disrupted by it, major search engines appear to
be complying with it, and the low to equal signal-to-noise
ratio of legitimate e-mail and spam appears to be perpetuated
by it.
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In this case, “it,” is what privacy and computer
experts have long warned about: massive censorship of the
web on a nationwide and global scale. For many years, the
web has been heavily censored in countries around the world.
That censorship continues at this very moment. Now it is happening
right here in America. The agreement by the Congress to extend
an enhanced Patriot Act for another four years will permit
the political enforcers of the Bush administration, who use
law enforcement as their proxies, to further clamp censorship
controls on the web.
Internet Censorship: The Warning Signs Were Not Hidden
The warning signs for the crackdown on the web have been
with us for over a decade. The Clipper chip controversy of
the 90s, John Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness
(TIA) system pushed in the aftermath of 9-11, backroom deals
between the Federal government and the Internet service industry,
and the Patriot Act have ushered in a new era of Internet
censorship, something just half a decade ago computer programmers
averred was impossible given the nature of the web. They were
wrong, dead wrong.
Take for example of what recently occurred when two journalists
were taking on the phone about a story that appeared on Google
News. The story was about a Christian fundamentalist move
in Congress to use U.S. military force in Sudan to end genocide
in Darfur. The story appeared on the English Google News site
in Qatar. But the very same Google News site when accessed
simultaneously in Washington, DC failed to show the article.
This censorship is accomplished by geolocation filtering:
the restriction or modifying of web content based on
the geographical region of the user. In addition to countries,
such filtering can now be implemented for states, cities,
and even individual IP addresses.
With reports in the Swedish newspaper Svensa Dagbladet today
that the United States has transmitted a Homeland Security
Department "no fly" list of 80,000 suspected terrorists
to airport authorities around the world, it is not unreasonable
that a "no [or restricted] surfing/emailing" list
has been transmitted to Internet Service Providers around
the world. The systematic disruptions of web sites and email
strongly suggests that such a list exists.
News reports on CIA prisoner flights and secret prisons are
disappearing from Google and other search engines like Alltheweb
as fast as they appear. Here now, gone tomorrow is the name
of the game.
Google is systematically failing to list and link to articles
that contain explosive information about the Bush administration,
the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda, and U.S. political scandals. But
Google is not alone in working closely to stifle Internet
discourse. America On Line, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are
slowly turning the Internet into an information superhighway
dominated by barricades, toll booths, off-ramps that lead
to dead ends, choke points, and security checks.
America On Line is the most egregious is stifling Internet
freedom. A former AOL employee noted how AOL and other Internet
Service Providers cooperate with the Bush administration in
censoring email. The Patriot Act gave federal agencies the
power to review information to the packet level and AOL was
directed by agencies like the FBI to do more than sniff the
subject line. The AOL term of service (TOS) has gradually
been expanded to grant AOL virtually universal power regarding
information. Many AOL users are likely unaware of the
elastic clause, which says they will be bound by the current
TOS and any TOS revisions which AOL may elect at any time
in the future. Essentially, AOL users once agreed to allow
the censorship and non-delivery of their email.
Microsoft has similar requirements for Hotmail as do Yahoo
and Google for their respective e-mail services.
There are also many cases of Google’s search engine
failing to list and link to certain information. According
to a number of web site administrators who carry anti-Bush
political content, this situation has become more pronounced
in the last month. In addition, many web site administrators
are reporting a dramatic drop-off in hits to their sites,
according to their web statistic analyzers. Adding to their
woes is the frequency at which spam viruses are being spoofed
as coming from their web site addresses.
Government disruption of the political side of the web can
easily be hidden amid hyped mainstream news media reports
of the latest "boutique" viruses and worms, reports
that have more to do with the sales of anti-virus software
and services than actual long-term disruption of banks, utilities,
or airlines.
Internet Censorship in the US: No Longer a Prediction
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems have honed their
skills at Internet censorship for years in places like China,
Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam,
and other countries. They have learned well. They will be
the last to admit they have imported their censorship skills
into the United States at the behest of the Bush regime. Last
year, the Bush-Cheney campaign blocked international access
to its web site -- www.georgewbush.com -- for unspecified
"security reasons."
Only those in the Federal bureaucracy and the companies involved
are in a position to know what deals have been made and how
extensive Internet censorship has become. They owe full disclosure
to their customers and their fellow citizens.
Wayne Madsen issues an open invitation to whistleblowers
and leakers to help his Wayne Madsen Report end business as
usual for crooks and liars in Washington, D.C.
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