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Journal: The Cyber Czar (editorial)

The White House has announced its intent to execute a vauge new Public Internet policy in the name of "Homeland Security". This would entail the creation of a new "Internet Czar" and apparently (most disturbingly) the modification of charter of the NSA to allow even greater intrusions.

This comes on the heels of President Obama's nomination to the supreme court a person who has issued controversial anti free-speech rulings. In that case the court sympathized with the disappointment of the victim but sat upon its behind and refused to enforce the Constitution. (Presumably an instance of this judge's vaunted "empathy"). While on the Supreme Court, this person doubtless will be sympathetic with the plight of this scheme's victims but will likely, again, sit on her behind and refuse to apply the Constitution.

The whole point of The Public Internet is its (more or less) decentralized nature, "internetworking". Much anxiety, with varying degrees of rightness, has been punted regarding ICANN and the Department of Commerce's control over the DNS root zone. This may be the least of our problems.

The Federal Government has historically exercised virtually no control on the operation or content of The Internet and this is largely due to the nature of internetworking. Censorship is interpreted by internetworked systems as damage and packets are routed around it (to paraphrase activist John Gillmore). This does not seem likely to change, imminently, but efforts to do so will eventually be undertaken on the transit level, ISP's are already being drafted into the war on child pornography in the U.K. and other countries and ISP's have already had pernicious legislation such as the "Patriot Act" leveled against them.

What is at stake here is more of the "Patriot Act" variety rather than the "content-control" variety. The Patriot Act was concerned with (as well as the usual miscellaneous provisions) allowing the Federal Government to intrude into people's private information in contradiction of "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures[...]", this is a ramping up of that problem.

We are already aware from reliable reports that AT&T and the NSA have collaborated on a scheme to divert a large amount of Internet traffic through filtering systems which scan it for words that the NSA considers alarming. It is not currently clear if this scheme is still underway.

Regardless, it is highly important to be on guard for escalations of this, the Federal Government views free communication as a threat and is endeavoring to contain and control it, this has always been the case in the U.S. and other countries (consider the FCC). Interestingly, for the most part, the physical press has been unmolested but that scarcely mattered as the press was somewhat clubby and indolent, posing little threat. The Public Internet, and internetworking in general poses a tremendous problem for advocates of controlled speech. The Internet is here and it is very difficult to make it go away.

That won't stop politicians from trying, though.

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News & Notes is the official administrative journal and the factuality of this content is guaranteed. Its contents may occasionally set policy.