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Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse.

Cory Doctorow
Boingboing.net
Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:55 EST

The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it's perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).

The Traumatic Illusion of Free Speech

Stephen Dufrechou
News Junkie Post
Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:00 EST

We have a "right" to exercise free speech in the US, but that does not mean we fully exercise that right. In fact, we tend to do everything to ensure that free speech - with all its implications - does not really exist. But if we continue to tell ourselves that we do have free speech, then we'll only be operating in the spirit of that old joke, about a husband who gets caught cheating: Lying in bed beside his naked mistress, the husband tells his wife, "I'm not cheating! Don't believe your lying eyes!" In other words, we'll only be telling ourselves to label something other than what it actually is (or, in this case, what it is not).

Indeed, public discourse in America is not typified by free speech, despite our insistence that it is. And also, our discourses have increasingly become hallmarked by "invisible repression", which makes the US, in one sense, as oppressive as authoritarian societies. Coincidentally, the very nature of this repression - its "invisibleness", itself - does not stop us from being affected by it. Even though we do not perceive it, "invisible repression" still threatens us, controls us, and perpetuates our lack of free speech and action. And all of this occurs, largely, on a level of which we are unaware.

Invisible repression, to be understood, needs to be contrasted with its "visible" counterpart. And Cuba provides a recent example.

"Visible repression" is the blatant, state-sanctioned repression of dissent. We see it in authoritarian societies, when the government shuts down universities, or when it bans newspapers. When these measures fail to abolish opposition, we see it in police brutality against dissenters. This is kind of repression is a systemic element in authoritarian countries. And it is what occurred to Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, whose blog is famously known for its pacifist dissent against the Cuban government.

Matt Roberts
examiner.com
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:54 EST

OZARK, Ark. --- A police officer could face criminal charges after he Tasered a combative ten-year-old girl last week.

According to a police report, Officer Dustin Bradshaw was responding to the girl's home on November 11 because the girl refused to go to bed. Bradshaw reported the girl was acting violently, even hitting and kicking officers as they tried to move her.

Bradshaw stated in the report that he "decided there was not going to be a peaceful resolution to the issue," and told the girl she was under arrest. After receiving permission from the girl's mother to use their Taser, the girl continued to resist the officers, Bradshaw gave the girl a light shock to her back. She immediately stopped fighting, and was carried out to the officer's patrol car.

Eric Fortney
examiner.com
Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:21 EST

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sent correspondence last week to Hubbard High School requesting that school officials stop punishing a student for not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Seventeen year old Roxanne Westover, an atheist, believes the Pledge of Allegiance opposes her beliefs.

"I'm an atheist, and I believe the pledge isn't something toward our nation," she told the Youngstown Vindicator. "It's more like a religious oath, and I believe that if I stand I'm still participating in it."

Blindly fingerprinting children

Henry Porter
The Guardian
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:13 EST

Full marks to the students who complained to their headteacher about the intrusive taking of fingerprints in their school

The brilliant new documentary about privacy by David Bond, Erasing David, has a telling scene in Chipping Campden School, Gloucestershire, where the headteacher shows off a new fingerprinting system that allows pupils to register and take their meals by pressing a pad.

The headteacher, Annette France, demonstrates the £25,000 system in front of a classroom of kids, most of whom look pretty underwhelmed. Possibly France was put off by the camera and the kids smirking behind her back but I sensed a shiftiness in her attitude, as though she was beginning to realise that collecting biometrics from children and dismissing parents' concerns was actually rather weird behaviour.

In south Devon, the kids and parents are made from sterner stuff. Students at Kingsbridge community college have rebelled against this pernicious practice of taking fingerprints and have won the support of the Totnes MP Anthony Steen, who has written to schools secretary Ed Balls. At St King Edward Vl community college, also in Devon, parents have protested about a similar system.

Corporate Watch
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:34 EST

The culture of fear and distrust that has grown up around this century's terror culture and its associated wars has created vast new markets for anything that can be branded with the words security or defence. In April 2010, London's Kensington Olympia will play host to a Counter Terror Expo, put on by DSEi's infamous events' organiser, Clarion, and sponsored by French arms company, Thales. Officially supported by a plethora of military, police and private security associations, the expo will showcase over 250 security, surveillance and specialist logistics companies; state agencies including NATO and the MoD; and anyone else claiming to provide protection against terrorism for both the armed forces and civilian populations. Joining the fray are a number of corporations involved in creating identity verification technologies. The biometrics and database management companies whose invasive products, based on the recognition of physiological characteristics, are finding voice as futuristic 'solutions' in, what is deemed, an 'increasingly dangerous world'.

Say no to asbos for downloaders

Charlotte Gore
The Guardian
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:28 EST

The internet is such a huge part of life that Mandelson's plans to cut people off for copyright breach is a clear restriction of liberty

At 33 years old I'm more Generation X than Generation X-Box. I'm too old to be one of the new wave of "digital natives" who've never known life without the internet, but I'm just about young enough (and geeky enough) to consider myself an enthusiastic immigrant. I moved in about 13 years ago, and if I could swear an oath of allegiance to some Head Of The Internet State, I wouldn't hesitate.

Sadly there is no president of the internet, which is a shame because it means I'm stuck with my British passport instead. And relations between Britain and the internet have been strained of late.

Lord Mandelson is seeking to grant himself significant powers in the fight against copyright infringement - the ability to do just about anything so long as it's in the interest of protecting copyright, and without having to go through parliament.

SpyBlog
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:10 EST

Although we are slightly relieved that no Communications Data Bill has been sneaked into the Queen's Speech, as originally threatened by the disgraced former Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, this Labour Government simply cannot resist producing some more useless and repetitive legislation, as a public relations diversion to hide their failure to control aspects of modern technology.

Chris Williams
The Register
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:24 EST

Peering inside your packets

Ofcom has held talks over a monitoring system that would peer inside filesharing traffic to determine the level of copyright infringement, in preparation for new laws designed to protect the music, film and software industries.

The Digital Economy Bill, to be published by Lord Mandelson tomorrow, will require the communications regulator to measure how filesharers who exchange copyright material respond to a regime of warning letters.

If the overall level of infringement is not cut by 70 per cent in a year, further provisions will be triggered, compelling ISPs to impose speed restriction after warnings. Internet access will be suspended for the most persistent infringers.

Best of the Web: Internet Under Siege

Philip Giraldi
Antiwar.com
Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:07 EST

It is ironic that President Barack Obama would travel to China and speak against government control over the internet. If the American Department of Homeland Security has its way new cybersecurity laws will enable Obama's administration to take control of the internet in the event of a national crisis. How that national crisis might be defined would be up to the White House but there have been some precedents that suggest that the response would hardly be respectful of the Bill of Rights.

Many countries already monitor and censor the internet on a regular basis, forbidding access to numerous sites that they consider to be subversive. During recent unrest, the governments of both Iran and China effectively shut down the internet by taking control of or blocking servers. Combined with switching off of cell phone transmitters, the steps proved effective in isolating dissidents. Could it happen here? Undoubtedly. Once the laws are in place a terrorist incident or something that could be plausibly described in those terms would be all that is needed to have government officials issue the order to bring the internet to a halt.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" Adlai E. Stevenson

"There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle." Bill Moyers

"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823

"A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press, must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the right of the people to know.": Murray I. Gurfein

One of the shrewdest ways for human predators to conquer their stronger victims is to steadily convince them with propaganda that they're still free. N.A. Scott