Aquí está la información que hemos comentado en el foro y que los escépticos, que son legión, se niegan a aceptar. Lamentablemente, la acepten o no, estamos aquí.
Y esto podría evitarse sólo si corremos la voz y hacemos algo por organizarnos en contra de la que nos viene encima.
El Final de Internet
¿Pagarías Un Peso por Leer tu Sitio Web?
Para leer la noticia y los comentarios de Paul Joseph Watson al respecto de los rumores que aseguran que esta noticia es una patraña
P. Watson repasa una por una todas las noticias aparecidas en los últimos años sobre la agenda preparada para Internet. Te darás cuenta de que esta posibilidad es más que real y que puede que nos espere a la vuelta de la esquina.Para los lectores que no lean inglés traduzco la parte gruesa del artículo.
Dice el artículo de Watson:
La gente se pregunta sobre la precisión de esta noticia porque no está avalada por ninguna otra fuente, sólo por la “promesa” de que pronto será publicada por el Time Magazine y hasta que no aparezca tal confirmación esta información ha sido desechada por algunos por considerarla una “patraña”.
Lo que sí está bien documentado (y lo hemos publicado) es el hecho de que los paquetes de la red sin cable TELUS permiten sólo acceso restringido de pago a una selección de sitios de noticias corporativos. Este es el modelo de Internet en el que el post basaría la noticia.
La gente ha percibido que los autores del video parecen más preocupados por que la gente se suscriba a su cuenta de YouTube que de luchar por la neutralidad de la red poniendo a una chica atractiva que muestra su escote sin pudor.
La gran mayoría de sus otros vídeos YouTube alojados consisten en una bizarra muestra de avant-garde lo que ha levantado sospechas de que la historia fuera simplemente fabricada para llamar la atención sobre el grupo.
Independientemente de si el informe que mencionan existe o es una mera fabricación, existe una agenda muy real para restringir, regular y sofocar el uso libre de Internet y lo hemos venido documentando a lo largo de estos años.
Los primeros pasos en esta dirección han sido cobrar por cada correo enviado, medida que ya se producido. Bajo el pretexto de eliminar spam, Bill Gates y otros grandes de la industria han propuesto a los usuarios de Internet comprar crédito sobre el número de correos que sean capaces de enviar, lo cual es el final para las newsletters políticas y las listas de correo.
El New York Times confirmó que,
“America Online y Yahoo, dos de los proveedores más importantes del mundo en cuentas de correo, van a comenzar a usar un sistema que da tratamiento preferencial a los mensajes de empresas que paguen de de céntimo a un penique por cada uno entregado. Estos remitentes deben prometer que contactarán sólo a las personas que están de acuerdo con recibir sus mensajes, o corren el riesgo de que su correo se bloquee por completo”.
La primera ola o paso en esa dirección dirigirá sus esfuerzos a poner un precio a la gente para usar el Internet convencional y forzar a la gente a usar Internet 2, un centro regulado por el estado, donde se requerirá permiso de una agencia gubernamental o del gobierno para crear un sitio Web.
El Internet original se convertirá en una base de datos bajo vigilancia y en una herramienta de marketing.
La revista Nation reportó en el 2006 que,
“Verizon, Comcast, Bell South y otros gigantes de la comunicación están desarrollando estrategias para hacer seguimiento y almacenamiento de información de cada movimiento que hacemos en el ciberespacio en un sistema de recolección de datos gigantesco y un sistema de marketing. El alcance de todo esto rivalizaría con la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional.
Según los informes o white papers que circulan ahora en las industrias del cable, teléfono y telecomunicaciones, los grandes anunciantes, grupos de interés especial, corporaciones, etc. tendrían tratamiento preferencial. El contenido de estos proveedores tendría prioridad en nuestros ordenadores y pantallas de televisión mientras que la información considerada indeseable, tal como comunicaciones P2P quedaría relegada a un carril lento o simplemente se restringiría”
Durante los últimos años, un coro de propaganda con intención de demonizar Internet para someterlo a estrictos controles se ha orquestado desde muchos órganos de poder:
1.
La revista Time reportó el pasado año que los investigadores financiados por el gobierno federal #
quieren cerrar Internet y comenzar de nuevo, citando el hecho de que por el momento existen bucles en el sistema que no pueden ser rastreados todo el tiempo. El eco de esos proyectos va dirigido a restringir la neutralidad de Internet e incluso diseñar una nueva forma de Internet 2.
#
Se han producido peticiones públicas, por parte tanto de republicanos como demócratas, para poder entrar en las cuentas privadas de correo de los ciudadanos de USA.La estrategia desclasificada recientemente por la Casa Blanca para “ganar la Guerra contra el terror” apunta a las teorías conspirativas en Internet como una base para el reclutamiento de terroristas y amenaza con “debilitar” su influencia.
El Pentágono recientemente anunció su esfuerzo de infiltrarse en Internet y hacer propaganda de “guerra contra el terror”.
En un discurso del pasado octubre, el Director de Seguridad Nacional, Michael Chertoff, identificó a la red como “campo de entrenamiento del terror” por medio del cual,
“la gente desafectuosa que vive en Estados Unidos están desarrollando ideologías radicales y habilidades potencialmente violentas”.
Su solución son “centros de fusión de inteligencia” con personal de la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional que entrarán operativos para el próximo año.
El Gobierno de los Estados Unidos quiere forzar a los blogeros y a los activistas online a registrar y reportar su actividad regularmente al Congreso. Los cargos criminales por no cumplimiento de esta medida incluyen una temporada entre rejas (hasta un año).
Otra medida que viene desde Sydney va aun más allá en la destrucción de Internet y propone que se considere robo de copyright y piratería enlazar información con otros sitios Web.
La Unión Europea, dirigida por el ex-estalinista y potencial futuro primer ministro británico John Reid, también ha prometido acabar con los “terroristas” que usen Internet para difundir propaganda.
La ley de retención de información de la UE que se aprobó el año pasado con mucha controversia y cuya implementación estaba marcada para finales del 2007 obliga a los operadores de telefonía y a los proveedores de servicio de Internet a almacenar información sobre quién llama a quién y quién envía correos a quién por un período de al menos seis meses. Bajo esta ley, los investigadores en cualquier país de la UE y aun más raro en USA, pueden acceder a los datos sobre llamadas de teléfonos de los ciudadanos de la Unión Europea, sus mensajes SMS, correos y servicios de mensajería instantánea.
La Unión Europea recientemente propuso una ley para prevenir que los usuarios descarguen cualquier forma de vídeo sin licencia.
El Gobierno de USA también está financiando investigación sobre sitios Web de red social y cómo obtener y almacenar datos personales publicados en ellos, según la revista New Scientist,
“Al mismo tiempo, los legisladores están intentando forzar a los sitios de red social a controlar la cantidad y tipo de información que la gente, y particularmente los niños, pueden publicar en los sitios Web”.
El desarrollo de una nueva forma de Internet en base a nuevas regulaciones está también diseñada para crear un sistema online de “castas” en el cual los centros del viejo Internet quebrarían y morirían forzando a la gente a usar la nueva red censurada, tasable y regulada.
Hasta aquí la noticia...
Recordemos la reciente noticia publicada aquí que apuntaba a un 9/11 digital para poner en pie leyes para “luchar contra el terror” que ya estarían diseñadas para Internet. Algo podría ser la nota final.
De manera que no tenemos que esperar al futuro para ver adónde se dirigen las cosas porque todo esto está sucediendo ya delante de nuestras narices.
Corporate whores in Congress have officially inaugurated the process of turning the internet into another platform for ephemeral junk culture, an interactive version of television where there are 500 channels and nothing on.
“Internet carriers, including AT&T Inc., have been strident supporters of upending the Internet’s tradition of network neutrality and have lobbied Congress to make it happen. They argue that Web sites, particularly those featuring video and audio that require significant bandwidth, should be able to pay extra so that users don’t have to wait as long for downloads,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. “Internet carriers say they would use the money they earn to expand the Internet’s capacity.”
I suppose this would operate the same way multinational oil corporations use their massive profits to search for new oil reserves or expand refining capacity.
“By a 34-22 vote, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee rejected a Democratic-backed Net neutrality amendment that also enjoyed support from Internet and software companies including Microsoft, Amazon.com and Google,” writes Declan McCullagh for CNET News.
In the early 90s, I was drawn to the internet primarily because it was a decentralized communication medium born as a “neutral network,” that is to say no one interest or body controlled the entire network or even large chunks.
“When Tim Berners-Lee started to sell the idea of a ‘World Wide Web’, he did not need to seek the approval of network owners to allow the protocols that built the internet to run,” writes Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society.
“Likewise, when eBay launched its auction service, or Amazon its bookselling service, neither needed the permission of the telephone companies before those services could take off. Because the internet was ‘end-to-end’, innovators and users were free to offer new content, new applications or even new protocols for communication without any permission from the network.
So long as these new applications obeyed simple internet protocols (’TCP/IP’), the internet was open to their ideas. The network did not pick and choose the applications or content it would support; it was neutral, leaving that choice to the users.”
Congress, as a craven and slavish handmaid to corporate interests and domination, is in the process of squashing internet neutrality. It’s all about control and corporate centralization, not innovation and expanding capacity. It’s about making sure the internet serves the commercial and political purposes of large corporations. It’s also about locking the alternative media out of the only effective medium it has at its disposal. If you doubt this, see if you can find a truth movement channel on one of your 500 cable television channels.
Once upon a time, television was considered part of the public commons and its signal was transmitted over airwaves owned by the people. It was stolen and hopes dashed in short order by private and corporate interests many decades ago.
Even the charade of noblesse oblige—or corporate broadcasters pretending to be trustees obliged to protect what the people own, or think they own—is long gone and the Fairness Doctrine is dead as well, killed by “deregulation” (an excuse for theft by corporate leviathans) under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
In fact, the airwaves have become, like virtually everything else of value, a “raw commodity for financial speculation,” as David Bollier writes.
Public access television—an arrangement made between mega-corporations and the public when the medium was handed over by thieves and charlatans operating out of the whorehouse on the Potomac—is now an endangered species. Senate Bill 1349 and House Bill 3146 endeavored to eliminate local cable television franchises, long considered an “obstacle” by massive telecoms.
If you don’t believe there will be a repeat of this in regard to the internet, I have a bridge to sell you.
“Broadband providers now have the same authority as cable providers to act as gatekeepers: the network owner can choose which services and equipment consumers may use,” explains John Windhausen, Jr.
“Network operators can adopt conflicting and proprietary standards for the attachment of consumer equipment, can steer consumers to certain web sites over others, can block whatever Internet services or applications they like, and make their preferred applications perform better than others…. open broadband networks are vitally important to our society, our future economic growth, our high-tech manufacturing sector, and our First Amendment rights to information free of censorship or control. Even if an openness policy imposes some slight burden on network operators, these microeconomic concerns pale in comparison to the macroeconomic benefits to the society and economy at large of maintaining an open Internet.”
In the future, we may be relegated to the “slow lane” (no video or audio), or locked out entirely if a telecom disagrees with our content. Free expression of ideas, especially ideas contrary to those of the neolib global elite and transnational corporations, are now at risk more than ever.
It should be remembered that corporatism is essentially fascism, as the grand daddy of fascism, Benito Mussolini, long ago explained. Fascists not only favor and enforce censorship—ultimately they violently suppress all opposition.
In the not too distant future, as the internet becomes yet another tawdry and dumbed-down consumerist venue surrounded by lawyers and gun turrets, we may be reduced to handing out our content via DVD on street corners.
Of course, this will be defined as terrorism and we will be punished accordingly.
Several developments that are coming to the fore indicate a noticeable advance towards a government regulated, taxed and controlled system that spells doomsday for the Internet as we know it.
The first steps in a move to charge for every e mail sent have already been taken. Under the pretext of eliminating spam, Bill Gates and other industry chieftains have proposed Internet users buy credit stamps which denote how many e mails they will be able to send.
This of course is the death knell for political newsletters and mailing lists.
The New York Times reports that,
"America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely."
The end game is a system similar to China, whereby no websites even mildly critical of the government will be authorized.
The Pentagon admitted that they would engage in psychological warfare and cyber attacks on 'enemy' Internet websites in an attempt to shut them down. The fact that the NSA surveillance program spied on 5,000 Americans tells us that the enemy is the alternative media and that it will be targeted for elimination. Court cases are pending after the Bush administration demanded the Google search terms of American citizens.
The first wave will simply attempt to price people out of using the conventional Internet and force people over to Internet 2, a state regulated hub where permission will need to be obtained directly from an FCC or government bureau to set up a website.
The original Internet will then be turned into a mass surveillance database and marketing tool.
The Nation magazine reported last week,
"Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets - corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers - would get preferred treatment.
Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out."
We see a move to demonize the Internet and tar its reputation. AOL is running ads equating Internet users with terrorists. In the next few years we may see a staged Internet shutdown which is blamed on cyber terrorists.
For the aspiring dictator, the Internet is a dangerous tool that has been seized by the enemy. We have come a long way since 1969, when the ARPANET was created solely for US government use. The Internet is freedom's best friend and the bane of control freaks.
Its eradication is one of the short term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate the world under a global surveillance panopticon prison.
Unas preocupantes declaraciones públicas de un reputado profesor de Leyes de la Universidad de Standford, Lawrence Lessig, nos recuerdan que la “libertad” en Internet tiene los días contados.
El profesor, cuyas declaraciones pueden ser escuchadas en el fragmento disponible en GoogleVideo en el min. 4, dice que,
“va a haber un evento en Internet similar al 9/11 que será un catalizador de una reorganización radical de las leyes relativas a Internet”.
Lessig dijo además que sabe que ya existe una ley, equivalente a la Patriot Act (Acta Patriótica) para Internet y que el departamento de Justicia de Estados Unidos sólo está esperando a que este evento de “ciber-terrorismo” tenga lugar para implementar las medidas oportunas que permitirán aplicar dichas leyes restrictivas relativas a Internet.
Esta información Lessig la obtuvo en una cena con un ex-experto en contra-terrorismo llamado Richard Clarke.
De manera que esto que estamos haciendo ahora tú y yo, yo publicando y tú leyendo este blog, muy pronto podría estar prohibido. En ese momento, los medios que tenemos tanto tú como yo para informarnos y comunicarnos unos con otros, quedarán severamente reducidos; puede que no nos enteremos cuando nuestros gobiernos, como ya ha hecho el de Berlusconi, saque el ejército a la calle.
Tú y yo sabemos que la “inmigración ilegal” tiene poco que ver con esa decisión.
El ejército saldrá a la calle para reprimir a los ciudadanos y, sobretodo, para intimidarlos, en el momento en que todo el sistema se venga abajo ya de una forma evidente para todo el mundo. A través de esos medios de comunicación de masas no sabremos nunca nada de la realidad; no sabremos nada el día que suframos un desabastecimiento o el día en que declaren obligatorio el micro-chip subcutáneo…
El auto-atentado del 9/11 contra las torres gemelas fue el primero de una serie de auto-atentados que han tenido lugar en Europa. Luego le siguió Madrid el 11 de Marzo de 2004 y posteriormente Londres el 7 de Julio del 2005.
Eso sin contar con todos los auto-atentados que se producen en otros lugares más alejados de Europa, pero no menos sangrientos. Todos estos actos de auténtico terrorismo han permitido crear leyes de control y privación de libertades de los ciudadanos. Han permitido dar un paso de gigantes en el camino a la implantación de la Dictadura Fascista Subliminal que sufre el planeta Tierra.
Ahora le toca el turno a un medio que, aunque controlado duramente por los monopolios de empresas como Google, YouTube, Yahoo o Microsoft, aun permite que los ciudadanos se informen de lo que sucede en sus propios países o en otro lugar del planeta, ya que esa información se les niega en los medios de comunicación de masas, en manos de intereses corporativistas que siguen políticas dictadas por los elementos del Nuevo Orden Mundial.
Todos estos ciudadanos aun dormidos que se escandalizan de las cosas que leen aquí y en otros blogs, que se preguntan si estamos locos o nos dicen que exageramos o mentimos sobre lo que está ocurriendo (lo que no dicen es con qué objeto haríamos algo así si no obtenemos ningún beneficio económico de esta actividad) ¿qué dirán cuando ya no puedan utilizar Internet para informarse?; ¿comenzarán a plantearse si aquellas teorías “conspiratorias” que leyeron tenían algo de verdad en ellas?.
Puede que sea así pero entonces ya no podrán venir aquí y a otros blogs y sitios similares a leer y a entender las cosas que están sucediendo.
¡Todavía puedes hacerlo, así que no pierdas un minuto y lee!.
Infórmate e informa a todos los que tengas a tu alrededor!
The Future of the Internet
Lawrence Lessig, Joichi Ito and Phil Rosedale
Alex Jones está alertando a través de vídeos en YouTube que probablemente pronto no podremos ver el nivel de censura al que YA estamos sometidos y que los que la ejercen NO NIEGAN.
Un montón de páginas de Internet que contienen información acerca del Nuevo Orden Mundial, como las relativas a los atentados de Londres, están siendo YA censuradas.
Y como dice aquí Jones, esto no es algo que está ocurriendo en la China comunista donde las empresas como Yahoo o Google colaboran con el gobierno chino para censurar la información a sus ciudadanos, como ellos han admitido, sino que está ocurriendo en Estados Unidos, en Australia, en Gran Bretaña y, como hemos visto con el caso de Red Voltaire, en todo el mundo.
Comparte esta información con todos tus conocidos para alertar de lo que YA está sucediendo.
They're Censoring Your Reality (Alex Jones)
Lawrence Lessig Predice Un i-9/11
Recent proposals in the U.S. Congress are taking a huge swipe at freedom in America once again by aiming to impose multiple different forms of crippling taxation and restriction on users of the internet.
State and local governments this week resumed a push to lobby Congress for far-reaching changes on two different fronts: gaining the ability to impose sales taxes on Net shopping, and being able to levy new monthly taxes on DSL and other Internet-service connections. One senator is even predicting taxes on e-mail, reports CNet.
Several bills were introduced last week that could see all manner of new forms of internet taxation become a reality before the end of the year.
Sen. Michael Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, introduced a bill (PDF link) for mandatory sales tax collection for Internet purchases, meaning that if you buy items through online sites like eBay or Amazon.com, you might have to start paying additional sales taxes on your purchases.
The Libertarian party has warned that the bill represents more big government intervention and that while Enzi insists the bill "would not increase taxes," the Sales Tax Fairness and Simplification Act would open the door for states to charge sales tax on Internet sales.
In contrast to his statement, the C-Net article states that Enzi warned that other taxes may zoom upward if his "mandatory sales tax collection" bill isn't passed.
In a second and separate proposal during a House of Representatives hearing last week, politicians weighed whether to let a temporary ban on internet access taxes lapse when it expires on November 1.
Such a move would leave open the possibility that simply using the internet would require a tax to be paid which critics suggest could sound a death knell for broadband, DSL and "always on" high speed internet.
Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia compared the move to taxing people for simply entering shopping malls or libraries. With the U.S. economy already under considerable strain, taking a huge swipe at e-commerce, one of its cornerstones, seems like the worst possible thing Congress could do.
Furthermore, allowing taxation on internet access represents a slippery slope towards opening up the possibilities of taxing all kinds of internet based services.
"They might say, 'We have no interest in having taxes on e-mail,' but if we allow the prohibition on Internet taxes to expire, then you open the door on cities and towns and states to tax e-mail or other aspects of Internet access," said Sen. John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican.
An email tax would certainly suit both the government and internet providers who would likely get a cut. Last year it was revealed that AOL is planning to charge mass-emailers a fee to avoid the ISP's spam filters and guarantee that their marketing emails arrive straight in AOL subscribers' inboxes. Yahoo! is also endorsing the scheme.
Under such a system email considered "uncertified" would risk running through AOL and Yahoo!'s discrimination process. And as this potential profit center for the two net giants takes off, there's no incentive for either company to deliver the "free email" - and every incentive for them to get the world conditioned to paying for guaranteed delivery.
A United Nations agency also proposed in 1999 the idea of a 1-cent-per-100-message tax, indicating that the idea has been floating around for almost a decade.
Tiempos revueltos los que corren en Italia, tras el proyecto de ley del Gobierno para controlar los contenidos que se publican en los medios de comunicación. Durante los últimos días la propuesta de controlar a los bloggers ha causado ampollas dentro de la Red y de la opinión pública. La idea inicial del Gobierno italiano era que los bloggers tuvieran que registrarse como empresas editoriales y pagar impuestos, a su vez hubiesen sido sometidos a la figura de un periodista "acreditado".
Tras el revuelo que causaron las intenciones de este borrador - está pendiente de ser ratificado en el Parlamento - el Gobierno italiano parece recular en sus intenciones, según publica el diario La Repubblica.
El subsecretario a la presidencia, Ricardo Franco Levi, artífice del borrador, ya ha anunciado la inclusión de una cláusula que libraría a losbloggers de tener que registrase:
"Propongo tomar en consideración un párrafo adicional al artículo 7. Es una propuesta que se combinaría de forma conjunta con el resto de la ley", asegura Levi.
En el panorama estadounidense todavía colea la compra del 1,6% de Facebook por parte de Microsoft.
La empresa de Gates se hizo con una participación en esta red social por unos 168 millones de euros, una cifra que sorprende si tenemos en cuenta dos cifras:
Hace unos meses Facebook era valorada en 10.000 millones de dólares, tras esta operación la empresa ya vale, o al menos eso es lo que dice la estimación si tenemos en cuenta lo que se ha pagado por ella Microsoft: 15.000 millones.
También Google es protagonista en la blogosfera.
Tal y como recoge Enrique Dans, el buscador ha efectuado una pequeña puesta a punto, que no ha dejado indiferente a nadie. Se trata de un cambio de algoritmo en las PageRank para cazar a aquellas páginas que venden enlaces de texto. La compañía se ha puesto manos a la obra y sorpresa: hay páginas muy conocidas que han caído algunos puestos en el ranking.
En Gran Bretaña siguen a lo suyo, inmersos en el debate de la piratería ilegal. Tras unas semanas en las que el Gobierno ya ha advertido de una posible intervención para regular las redes de intercambio P2P, ahora mueven ficha las compañías discográficas.
Según informa theregister.co.uk, la industria presiona en Gran Bretaña a los proveedores de Internet para acabar con este tipo de prácticas.
De hecho las conversaciones mantenidas entre la industria discográfica y proveedores van encaminadas a un cese de la actividad, pero se antoja difícil porque las asociaciones de la Red ya han advertido que prefieren incluso asumir una multa antes que abandonar.
(NEW YORK)—Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over.
The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a "clean slate" approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines on Sept. 2, 1969.
The Internet,
"works well in many situations but was designed for completely different assumptions," said Dipankar Raychaudhuri, a Rutgers University professor overseeing three clean-slate projects. "It's sort of a miracle that it continues to work well today."
No longer constrained by slow connections and computer processors and high costs for storage, researchers say the time has come to rethink the Internet's underlying architecture, a move that could mean replacing networking equipment and rewriting software on computers to better channel future traffic over the existing pipes.
Even Vinton Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers as co-developer of the key communications techniques, said the exercise was "generally healthy" because the current technology "does not satisfy all needs."
One challenge in any reconstruction, though, will be balancing the interests of various constituencies. The first time around, researchers were able to toil away in their labs quietly. Industry is playing a bigger role this time, and law enforcement is bound to make its needs for wiretapping known.
There's no evidence they are meddling yet, but once any research looks promising,
"a number of people (will) want to be in the drawing room," said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor affiliated with Oxford and Harvard universities. "They'll be wearing coats and ties and spilling out of the venue."
The National Science Foundation wants to build an experimental research network known as the Global Environment for Network Innovations, or GENI, and is funding several projects at universities and elsewhere through Future Internet Network Design, or FIND. Rutgers, Stanford, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among the universities pursuing individual projects. Other government agencies, including the Defense Department, have also been exploring the concept.
The European Union has also backed research on such initiatives, through a program known as Future Internet Research and Experimentation, or FIRE. Government officials and researchers met last month in Zurich to discuss early findings and goals.
A new network could run parallel with the current Internet and eventually replace it, or perhaps aspects of the research could go into a major overhaul of the existing architecture. These clean-slate efforts are still in their early stages, though, and aren't expected to bear fruit for another 10 or 15 years — assuming Congress comes through with funding.
Guru Parulkar, who will become executive director of Stanford's initiative after heading NSF's clean-slate programs, estimated that GENI alone could cost $350 million, while government, university and industry spending on the individual projects could collectively reach $300 million. Spending so far has been in the tens of millions of dollars.
And it could take billions of dollars to replace all the software and hardware deep in the legacy systems.
Clean-slate advocates say the cozy world of researchers in the 1970s and 1980s doesn't necessarily mesh with the realities and needs of the commercial Internet.
"The network is now mission critical for too many people, when in the (early days) it was just experimental," Zittrain said.
The Internet's early architects built the system on the principle of trust. Researchers largely knew one another, so they kept the shared network open and flexible — qualities that proved key to its rapid growth.
But spammers and hackers arrived as the network expanded and could roam freely because the Internet doesn't have built-in mechanisms for knowing with certainty who sent what.
The network's designers also assumed that computers are in fixed locations and always connected. That's no longer the case with the proliferation of laptops, personal digital assistants and other mobile devices, all hopping from one wireless access point to another, losing their signals here and there.
Engineers tacked on improvements to support mobility and improved security, but researchers say all that adds complexity, reduces performance and, in the case of security, amounts at most to bandages in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse.
Workarounds for mobile devices "can work quite well if a small fraction of the traffic is of that type," but could overwhelm computer processors and create security holes when 90 percent or more of the traffic is mobile, said Nick McKeown, co-director of Stanford's clean-slate program.
The Internet will continue to face new challenges as applications require guaranteed transmissions — not the "best effort" approach that works better for e-mail and other tasks with less time sensitivity.
Think of a doctor using teleconferencing to perform a surgery remotely, or a customer of an Internet-based phone service needing to make an emergency call. In such cases, even small delays in relaying data can be deadly.
And one day, sensors of all sorts will likely be Internet capable. Rather than create workarounds each time, clean-slate researchers want to redesign the system to easily accommodate any future technologies, said Larry Peterson, chairman of computer science at Princeton and head of the planning group for the NSF's GENI.
Even if the original designers had the benefit of hindsight, they might not have been able to incorporate these features from the get-go.
Computers, for instance, were much slower then, possibly too weak for the computations needed for robust authentication.
"We made decisions based on a very different technical landscape," said Bruce Davie, a fellow with network-equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc., which stands to gain from selling new products and incorporating research findings into its existing line.
"Now, we have the ability to do all sorts of things at very high speeds," he said. "Why don't we start thinking about how we take advantage of those things and not be constrained by the current legacy we have?"
Of course, a key question is how to make any transition — and researchers are largely punting for now.
"Let's try to define where we think we should end up, what we think the Internet should look like in 15 years' time, and only then would we decide the path," McKeown said. "We acknowledge it's going to be really hard but I think it will be a mistake to be deterred by that."
Kleinrock, the Internet pioneer at UCLA, questioned the need for a transition at all, but said such efforts are useful for their out-of-the-box thinking.
"A thing called GENI will almost surely not become the Internet, but pieces of it might fold into the Internet as it advances," he said.
Think evolution, not revolution. Princeton already runs a smaller experimental network called PlanetLab, while Carnegie Mellon has a clean-slate project called 100 x 100.
These days, Carnegie Mellon professor Hui Zhang said he no longer feels like "the outcast of the community" as a champion of clean-slate designs. Construction on GENI could start by 2010 and take about five years to complete. Once operational, it should have a decade-long lifespan.
FIND, meanwhile, funded about two dozen projects last year and is evaluating a second round of grants for research that could ultimately be tested on GENI. These go beyond projects like Internet2 and National LambdaRail, both of which focus on next-generation needs for speed.
Any redesign may incorporate mechanisms, known as virtualization, for multiple networks to operate over the same pipes, making further transitions much easier.
Also possible are new structures for data packets and a replacement of Cerf's TCP/IP communications protocols.
"Almost every assumption going into the current design of the Internet is open to reconsideration and challenge," said Parulkar, the NSF official heading to Stanford. "Researchers may come up with wild ideas and very innovative ideas that may not have a lot to do with the current Internet."
ISP’s have resolved to restrict the Internet to a TV-like subscription model where users will be forced to pay to visit selected corporate websites by 2012, while others will be blocked, according to a leaked report.
Despite some people dismissing the story as a hoax, the wider plan to kill the traditional Internet and replace it with a regulated and controlled Internet 2 is manifestly provable.
"Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP’s all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit.
These ‘other’ sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet," warns a report that has spread like wildfire across the web over the last few days.
The article, which is accompanied by a YouTube clip, states that Time Magazine writer "Dylan Pattyn" has confirmed the information and is about to release a story - and that the move to effectively shut down the web could come as soon as 2010.
Watch the clip...
I POWER - Net Neutrality Pt.3
People have raised questions about the report’s accuracy because the claims are not backed by another source, only the "promise" that a Time Magazine report is set to confirm the rumor.
Until such a report emerges many have reserved judgment or outright dismissed the story as a hoax.
What is documented, as the story underscores, is the fact thatTELUS’ wireless web package allows only restricted pay-per-view access to a selection of corporate and news websites. This is the model that the post-2012 Internet would be based on.
People have noted that the authors of the video seem to be more concerned about getting people to subscribe to their You Tube account than fighting for net neutrality by prominently featuring an attractive woman who isn’t shy about showing her cleavage. The vast majority of the other You Tube videos hosted on the same account consist of bizarre avant-garde satire skits on behalf of the same people featured in the Internet freedom clip. This has prompted many to suspect that the Internet story is merely a stunt to draw attention to the group.
Whether the report is accurate or merely a crude hoax, there is a very real agenda to restrict, regulate and suffocate the free use of the Internet and we have been documenting its progression for years.
The first steps in a move to charge for every e mail sent have already been taken. Under the pretext of eliminatingspam, Bill Gates and other industry chieftains have proposed Internet users buy credit stamps which denote how many e-mails they will be able to send. This of course is the death knell for political newsletters and mailing lists.
The New York Times reported that,
"America Online and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely."
The first wave will simply attempt to price people out of using the conventional Internet and force people over to Internet 2, a state regulated hub where permission will need to be obtained directly from an FCC or government bureau to set up a website.
The original Internet will then be turned into a mass surveillance database and marketing tool.
The Nation magazine reported in 2006 that,
"Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency.
According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets–corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers–would get preferred treatment.
Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out."
Over the past few years, a chorus of propaganda intended to demonize the Internet and further lead it down a path of strict control has spewed forth from numerous establishment organs:
1.
Time magazine reported last year that researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time. The projects echo moves we have previously reported #
on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.
#
In a display of bi-partisanship, there have recently been calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens by both Democrats and Republicans alike.
The White House’s own recentlyde-classified strategy for "winning the war on terror" targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to "diminish" their influence.
The Pentagon recently announced its effort toinfiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.
In a speech last October, Homeland Security directorMichael Chertoff identified the web as a "terror training camp," through which "disaffected people living in the United States" are developing "radical ideologies and potentially violent skills."His solution is "intelligence fusion centers," staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will go into operation next year.
The U.S. Government wants toforce bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year could be the punishment for non-compliance.
A landmark legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations seeks tocriminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web - and their argument is supported by the U.S. government.
A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simplylinking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.
The European Union, led by former Stalinist and potential future British Prime Minister John Reid, hasalso vowed to shut down "terrorists" who use the Internet to spread propaganda.
The EU data retention bill, passed last year after much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, andmost bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens’ data on phone calls, SMS messages, emails and instant messaging services.
The EU also recently proposed legislation that wouldprevent users from uploading any form of video without a license.
The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to theNew Scientist magazine.
"At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites."
The development of a new form of internet with new regulations is also designed to create an online caste system whereby the old internet hubs would be allowed to break down and die, forcing people to use the new taxable, censored and regulated world wide web.
Make no mistake, the internet, one of the greatest outposts of free speech ever created is under constant attack by powerful people who cannot operate within a society where information flows freely and unhindered. Both American and European moves mimic stories we hear every week out of state controlled Communist China, where the internet is strictly regulated and virtually exists as its own entity away from the rest of the web.
The Internet is freedom’s best friend and the bane of control freaks.
Its eradication is one of the short term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate their populations under tyranny by eliminating the right to protest and educate others by the forum of the free World Wide Web.
The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.
Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets--corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers--would get preferred treatment.
Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.
Under the plans they are considering, all of us--from content providers to individual users--would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing "platinum," "gold" and "silver" levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.
To make this pay-to-play vision a reality, phone and cable lobbyists are now engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's communications policy laws. They want the federal government to permit them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. Indeed, both the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are considering proposals that will have far-reaching impact on the Internet's future.
Ten years after passage of the ill-advised Telecommunications Act of 1996, telephone and cable companies are using the same political snake oil to convince compromised or clueless lawmakers to subvert the Internet into a turbo-charged digital retail machine.
The telephone industry has been somewhat more candid than the cable industry about its strategy for the Internet's future. Senior phone executives have publicly discussed plans to begin imposing a new scheme for the delivery of Internet content, especially from major Internet content companies.
As Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of AT&T, told Business Week in November,
"Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can't be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!"
The phone industry has marshaled its political allies to help win the freedom to impose this new broadband business model.
At a recent conference held by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank funded by Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and other media companies, there was much discussion of a plan for phone companies to impose fees on a sliding scale, charging content providers different levels of service.
"Price discrimination," noted PFF's resident media expert Adam Thierer, "drives the market-based capitalist economy."
Net Neutrality
To ward off the prospect of virtual toll booths on the information highway, some new media companies and public-interest groups are calling for new federal policies requiring "network neutrality" on the Internet.
Common Cause, Amazon, Google, Free Press, Media Access Project and Consumers Union, among others, have proposed that broadband providers would be prohibited from discriminating against all forms of digital content. For example, phone or cable companies would not be allowed to slow down competing or undesirable content.
Without proactive intervention, the values and issues that we care about--civil rights, economic justice, the environment and fair elections--will be further threatened by this push for corporate control. Imagine how the next presidential election would unfold if major political advertisers could make strategic payments to Comcast so that ads from Democratic and Republican candidates were more visible and user-friendly than ads of third-party candidates with less funds.
Consider what would happen if an online advertisement promoting nuclear power prominently popped up on a cable broadband page, while a competing message from an environmental group was relegated to the margins. It is possible that all forms of civic and noncommercial online programming would be pushed to the end of a commercial digital queue.
But such "neutrality" safeguards are inadequate to address more fundamental changes the Bells and cable monopolies are seeking in their quest to monetize the Internet. If we permit the Internet to become a medium designed primarily to serve the interests of marketing and personal consumption, rather than global civic-related communications, we will face the political consequences for decades to come. Unless we push back, the "brandwashing" of America will permeate not only our information infrastructure but global society and culture as well.
Why are the Bells and cable companies aggressively advancing such plans?
With the arrival of the long-awaited "convergence" of communications, our media system is undergoing a major transformation. Telephone and cable giants envision a potential lucrative "triple play," as they impose near-monopoly control over the residential broadband services that send video, voice and data communications flowing into our televisions, home computers, cell phones and iPods. All of these many billions of bits will be delivered over the telephone and cable lines.
Video programming is of foremost interest to both the phone and cable companies. The telephone industry, like its cable rival, is now in the TV and media business, offering customers television channels, on-demand videos and games.
Online advertising is increasingly integrating multimedia (such as animation and full-motion video) in its pitches. Since video-driven material requires a great deal of Internet bandwidth as it travels online, phone and cable companies want to make sure their television "applications" receive preferential treatment on the networks they operate.
And their overall influence over the stream of information coming into your home (or mobile device) gives them the leverage to determine how the broadband business evolves.
Mining Your Data
At the core of the new power held by phone and cable companies are tools delivering what is known as "deep packet inspection." With these tools, AT&T and others can readily know the packets of information you are receiving online - from e-mail, to websites, to sharing of music, video and software downloads.
These "deep packet inspection" technologies are partly designed to make sure that the Internet pipeline doesn't become so congested it chokes off the delivery of timely communications. Such products have already been sold to universities and large businesses that want to more economically manage their Internet services. They are also being used to limit some peer-to-peer downloading, especially for music.
But these tools are also being promoted as ways that companies, such as Comcast and Bell South, can simply grab greater control over the Internet. For example, in a series of recent white papers, Internet technology giant Cisco urges these companies to "meter individual subscriber usage by application," as individuals' online travels are "tracked" and "integrated with billing systems."
Such tracking and billing is made possible because they will know "the identity and profile of the individual subscriber," "what the subscriber is doing" and "where the subscriber resides."
Will Google, Amazon and the other companies successfully fight the plans of the Bells and cable companies? Ultimately, they are likely to cut a deal because they, too, are interested in monetizing our online activities. After all, as Cisco notes, content companies and network providers will need to "cooperate with each other to leverage their value proposition."
They will be drawn by the ability of cable and phone companies to track,
"content usage...by subscriber," and where their online services can be "protected from piracy, metered, and appropriately valued."
Our Digital Destiny
It was former FCC chairman Michael Powell, with the support of then-commissioner and current chair Kevin Martin, who permitted phone and cable giants to have greater control over broadband. Powell and his GOP majority eliminated longstanding regulatory safeguards requiring phone companies to operate as nondiscriminatory networks (technically known as "common carriers").
He refused to require that cable companies, when providing Internet access, also operate in a similar nondiscriminatory manner. As Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig has long noted, it is government regulation of the phone lines that helped make the Internet today's vibrant, diverse and democratic medium.
But now, the phone companies are lobbying Washington to kill off what's left of "common carrier" policy. They wish to operate their Internet services as fully "private" networks. Phone and cable companies claim that the government shouldn't play a role in broadband regulation: Instead of the free and open network that offers equal access to all, they want to reduce the Internet to a series of business decisions between consumers and providers.
Besides their business interests, telephone and cable companies also have a larger political agenda. Both industries oppose giving local communities the right to create their own local Internet wireless or wi-fi networks.
They also want to eliminate the last vestige of local oversight from electronic media - the ability of city or county government, for example, to require telecommunications companies to serve the public interest with, for example, public-access TV channels. The Bells also want to further reduce the ability of the FCC to oversee communications policy.
They hope that both the FCC and Congress - via a new Communications Act - will back these proposals.
The future of the online media in the United States will ultimately depend on whether the Bells and cable companies are allowed to determine the country's "digital destiny." So before there are any policy decisions, a national debate should begin about how the Internet should serve the public. We must insure that phone and cable companies operate their Internet services in the public interest - as stewards for a vital medium for free expression.
If Americans are to succeed in designing an equitable digital destiny for themselves, they must mount an intensive opposition similar to the successful challenges to the FCC's media ownership rules in 2003.
Without such a public outcry to rein in the GOP's corporate-driven agenda, it is likely that even many of the Democrats who rallied against further consolidation will be "tamed" by the well-funded lobbying campaigns of the powerful phone and cable industry.
A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks
The document says that information is "critical to military success".
on hostile computer networks.
Bloggers beware...
As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer. From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.
The wide-reaching document was signed off by Donald Rumsfeld
The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act. Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003.
The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.
The "roadmap" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.
Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational importance.
Propaganda
The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.
All these are engaged in information operations.
Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.
"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.
"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.
The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda.
"Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.
"In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States - even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.
Credibility problem
Public awareness of the US military's information operations is low, but it's growing - thanks to some operational clumsiness.
Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers. The stories - all supportive of US policy - were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications. And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.
But the true extent of the Pentagon's information operations, how they work, who they're aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.
The roadmap, however, gives a flavor of what the US military is up to - and the grand scale on which it's thinking. It reveals that Psyops personnel "support" the American government's international broadcasting. It singles out TV Marti - a station which broadcasts to Cuba - as receiving such support.
It recommends that a global website be established that supports America's strategic objectives. But no American diplomats here, thank you. The website would use content from "third parties with greater credibility to foreign audiences than US officials".
It also recommends that Psyops personnel should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet.
'Fight the net'
When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone. It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.
"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads.
The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap.
The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence.
"Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."
US digital ambition
And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".
US forces should be able to,
"disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".
Consider that for a moment.
The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet. Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandizing bureaucrats? Or are they real?
The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.
And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it.
