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Alex Jones on the Coming Internet Censorship
Submitted by Michael Nystrom on Wed, 02/10/2010 - 16:02
A good friend sent this to me today. We'd like to hear any insights you have on this and how we can best combat it. If this continues, I think we can all say goodbye to independent sites like Alex's and the Daily Paul... |
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google ?
Keep supporting you favorite enemies you'll get what your paying for...
It isn't Iran sensoring their people, it is the net provider leaving their Country for higher ground.
GET SMART , who removed my sign off ? yesterday.
Might as Well Say Goodbye...
... to Jones and DailyPaul now, because nobody is going to do sh*t when they go away later.
Watch the film "THX1138" online for a glimpse into the future.
http://www.pyrabang.com/view.php?ref=THX1138&post_id=7484
Darknets
While I consider Alex Jones to be a nut, he makes some good points, but comes to an erroneous conclusion. There already exist many technologies to combat censorship on the Internet. While any one may have some individual vulnerability, the total number of such solutions would make it very difficult to block entirely, short of taking down the Internet itself. In that case, the economic ramifications would be so dire that only the most totalitarian governments could possibly get away with such draconian measures.
The DP community is very astute technologically, so darknets (anonymous Internet) are probably not an alien concept to many here. But for those not familiar, here is a pretty good article, although it restricts the discussion to P2P.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_P2P
For the real geeks, an extensive list of papers on anonymity can be found here:
http://freehaven.net/anonbib/topic.html
Three of the most popular anonymizing networks are:
Tor:
http://www.torproject.org/
Freenet:
http://freenetproject.org/
I2P:
http://www.i2p2.de/
While written from the perspective of I2P, here is a fairly objective comparison of the major anonymizing systems:
http://www.i2p2.de/how_networkcomparisons
There have been critics of these networks claiming they primarily are used for trafficking in child pornography and copyrighted material, but a true anonymous network obviously cannot restrict content or it would cease to be anonymous. So one must accept that the benefits outweigh the liabilities.
It should also be pointed out that these systems are not mutually exclusive. They can be used at the same time, and in some cases complement each other (I2P using Tor out-proxies for example).
The biggest limitation has been the complexity of setting up these systems, but that too is being addressed and they are getting easier and easier.
A relatively few people in government will never be able to out think the multitudes of individuals so long as they are sufficiently motivated to resist. What makes this rather unique is that resistance does not stop even at national borders.
One final note, Alex makes mention of Wikileaks. It should be noted that Wikileaks is available over the Tor network, even if unavailable through the public Internet. Additionally, Wikileaks most recent problems are more financial than technological.
There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.
— Ed Howdershelt
If it comes to that...
they will reap the whirlwind.
"Those who would make peaceful revolutions impossible, make violent revolutions inevitable." John F. Kennedy
Alex Jones is so great.
I can't wait to hear him interview Dr.s Ron & Rand Paul next week!
It's awesome how he has them on his show frequently. Intelligent conversation for sure.
Obama = O.ne B.ig A.ss M.istake A.merica
Giving Alex Jones credibility only detracts from yours
Look, the guy makes stuff up without proof. That goes without saying. Does he raise worthy issues sometimes? Maybe. I won't dispute that. But we have to come to grips with what Alex Jones is, and then realize the implications of that when wading into his strange world.
What Alex Jones is, is simple: a self-promoting, fast-and-loose-with-the-facts, oddball. I might be able to handle two out of the three of those traits. But when you combine all three, you wind up with someone who just fabricates crap and slings it as truth. The sad thing is that even "truth seekers" are hurt by Alex Jones. Honestly, I don't buy the whole story that we're sold by the establishment. But that story is more credible than the unsubstantiated lunacy that Jones promotes. So he makes the entire 9/11 Truth Movement - a broad movement that includes some crazy folks, but also some reasonable people raising real questions - look insane.
It's because of that that we need to cut ties with this guy and stop giving him credibility. All it does is hurt OUR credibility. By citing him on this, or any other issue, you open yourself up to the criticism of THOUSANDS of hours of insane rants on PURE GARBAGE that the average American knows in their gut to be pure horse crap.
Sorry, but that's just the way it is. He's damaged goods, and by laying down with him you come up with fleas.
Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views...Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. - SCotUS, 1995
Damaged goods have fleas?.
Damaged goods have fleas? Or did you mistakingly mangle two seperate metaphors together?
o_O
.
"Wobbles but doesn't fall down" - weebles
What are you doing here?
I thought we made a deal.
i'll take my chances...
at least i know who is at my back with him!
its 'cos I owe ya, my young friend...
Rockin' the FREE world in Tennessee since 1957!
WCU4Paul
are you Omniscient?
"You are a den of vipers and thieves."
I mean to rout you out!
-Just because you are among us, does not make you with us
-The door is wide open, anything can slither in
You'd better let Ron and Rand Paul know about this
They're both going on that ole whacko's show next week.
Explore Orthodox Christianity
Yeah, better let Ron know,
Yeah, better let Ron know, he's been going on there for years.
Debbie
I kept waiting for your point.
What has all that to do with the topic raised in this thread?
_____________________________
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." -- Joseph Goebbels
Time for action
Am I stating the obvious when I say; we need to fight this bill with everything we have.
Already being censored
As has been reported on the DP, many sites, like YouTube are ALREADY doing massive censorship of videos, like vintage Ron Paul clips.
So whether or not they pass this, censorship is already in place, though, thankfully, sites like DP and prisonplanet and others are still "alive."
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford
That's free speech.
Not censorship.
YouTube has a right to allow or disallow any speech they want using their computer equipment. Don't forget their right of free speech.
Property Rights
You are right but it's actually a property rights issue, not a freedom of speech issue. Freedom of speech is sort of an illusion.
"In Short, a person does not have a "right to freedom of speech"; what he does have is the right to hire a hall and address the people who enter the premises. He does not have a "right to freedom of the press"; what he does have is the right to write or publish a pamphlet, and to sell that pamphlet to those who are willing to buy it (or to give it away to those who are willing to accept it.)Thus, what he has in each of these cases is property rights, including the right of free contract and transfer which form a part of such rights of ownership. There is no extra "right of free speech" or free press beyond the property rights that a person may have in any given case."
Murray Rothbard “The Ethics of Liberty” ch. 15th pg. 113-114
So no one should force a website to display certain content if they are not contractually obligated to do so. What the government is doing is infringing on the property rights of those within the internet market, etc.
"A true competitor wants their opponent at their best." Lao Tzu
http://www.facebook.com/JonathanGibbonsWVP
http://webventuresplus.com
bump for .....
later
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win!"
GANDHI
Here is how they get their foot in the door
House Passes Cyber Security Bill
Update | 12:46 p.m. The House today overwhelmingly passed a bill aimed at building up the United States’ cybersecurity army and expertise, amid growing alarm over the country’s vulnerability online.
The bill, which passed 422-5, requires the Obama administration to conduct an agency-by-agency assessment of cybersecurity workforce skills and establishes a scholarship program for undergraduate and graduate students who agree to work as cybersecurity specialists for the government after graduation.
As officials puzzle over how to defend the nation from enemies that are often impossible to pinpoint, the lawmakers behind the bill said education and recruitment are crucial.
“Investing in cybersecurity is the Manhattan Project of our generation,” Representative Michael Arcuri, Democrat of New York, a sponsor of the bill said on the House floor Wednesday. “But this time around we are facing far greater threat. Nearly every high school hacker has the potential to hamper our unfettered access to the Internet. Just imagine what a rogue state could do.”
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/house-passes-c...
- - - - -
See how they use fear to get the bill passed?
Look at the power the Feds have. If a website is so dangerous - remember, the pen is mightier than the sword - and if people need a license to own a gun, then of course you'll need a license to run a website. See the logic?
Of course Dr. Paul voted against this bill.
Very Concerning
My entire income is based on the internet. I run websites and provide web management. If they start charging me licensing fees, etc., like Michael said, I'll be completely screwed. If for example, I have to pay $300 for every website, I’ll either have to jack up my price, which will result in the loss of my client, or go out of business. The unintended consequences of legislation of this magnitude are unfathomable. You may be able to find your way around these restrictions, but legit business owners who make a living on the internet will be in a world of trouble.
If this happens, I'm moving out of the U.S.A… no questions asked... I'm gone.
Legislation like this reminds me why I'm in this fight.
"A true competitor wants their opponent at their best." Lao Tzu
http://www.facebook.com/JonathanGibbonsWVP
http://webventuresplus.com
Hah. Good luck with government trying to censor the internet.
Chinese can get on any website they want, as much as the government tries to stop it. There are ways around the attempted blocks that everyone there knows.
The only way to censor the internet is to totally block it off ALL access, so that the regular citizens can't get on it at all. These would be places like Iran and North Korea.
Just curios
Did you watch the video? He gives lots of ways to censor the net, beginning with the "Cyber Security" legislation.
Right now there is no regulation of the internet. For example - I don't need a license to operate a website. To start the DP, all I did was register the domain name and contract with a hosting company. Total fee: $8.95 for the domain name, and $5.95 for hosting (back in the day, before traffic exploded). Total cost $15.00 to start the DP.
Contrast this with driving a car: Mandatory government rules mean I need a license ($100), insurance ($600) and car registration ($35 - $1,500) per year. These are just estimates, since I don't have a car.
Point being, if a license is required, they can revoke your license. If you're licensed, you have to abide by certain rules or they pull the license.
Of course they want to regulate the internet, and sites like this. The point of a site like this is that it is unmediated. I can talk to you directly. We can bypass the propaganda machine known as the MSM.
The reason that freedom is blooming is due in large part to the internet. The Establishment doesn't like this. They want to control what we think.
And yes, they have their ways. Case in point, Australia:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/mar/19/wikileaks-ba...
Yes I watched video.
I agree that governments try to censor the internet. It just that they're not able to. I agree that we should be vigilant and fight any attempt to regulate it, because regulations would make the internet more cumbersome to use in some cases. If the U.S. government requires you to get a license to operate a website, you just register the website in another locale. As far as there being universal word regulations, that's highly improbable due to the mere logistics of it. There's a lot of countries in the world. I'm just saying that government is pretty much powerless over the internet, because it's so decentralized. Assuming that Australian banned website list is legitimate, you think people in Australia can't access those alleged banned web sites? Come on. There all kinds of software and websites to use to get around that.
If all else fails, you can get on Freenet, or any other similar projects, which are literally impossible to censor.
You are...
You are absolutely wrong.
There are myriads of currently existing ways to shape and restrict traffic that are currently deployed and in place.
Yours, and everybody elses, access to the internet is firstly bounded by a private local or subordinate network controlled and owned by your ISP. Your local ISP, with the implementation of simple currently existing software can completely control, shape and restrict your access to the outside world using a wide range of criteria.
Another chokepoint in the system is the ISP's backbone gateway. Just as the ISP's can totally control which addresses you can connect to, and at what speed, the backbone owners can do the same gatekeeping at their gateways seperating their backbone networks from the ISP's internal networks.
It is nearly trivial for ISP's and backbone owners to define a list of individual ip addresses and address ranges that are allowed to send packets across their respective gateways.
If the government sends them a list they can implement it quickly... now... today... with currently implemented hardware and software. And they are working on more sophisticated and controllable hardware/software.
Just because they allow us the ability to use vpn's(Freenet is nothing more than a distributed vpn), cloaking services and distributed p2p tools today doesn't mean they can't shut it down instantly if they so choose.
Just because the content of a vpn stream may not be decipherable to a third party does NOT mean they don't know the stream exists and that it is undecipherable. They can still shut it down at whim because they know it is there. All they have to do is say, "Private VPN traffic is not allowed or requires a government registered key" and then make a few keystrokes and hit the enter key and that vpn stream is no more.
I guarantee you the government has policies, hardware and personnel in place right now to totally control the internet at the backbone gateways. And all ISP's must go through the gateways of the backbone providers.
.
"Wobbles but doesn't fall down" - weebles
I think you underestimate people
sure there's lots of ways that ISPs and others can block access. And there's a way around everything, on the internet. Which leads me to believe that the only real way the internet could be controlled, would be to essentially, not allow access to it. But if person A can connect to random person B in some fashion, it's game over.
I'm not underestimating anybody...
I have 18 years computer systems and software development experience including tenures with several Fortune 500 companies. I can design digital equipment at the board level and on up. I know how digital equipment communicates. I am familiar with all seven layers of the OSI network model on which nearly all modern computer networks and network software, especially the internet, are built.
Trust me, they can precisely control your access to internet. They just haven't chosen to do so.. yet.
Computer networks (the internet is a giant network) are not mysterious, unfathomable, black magic things that only mad scientists and geniuses can figure out. The OSI model and the various comm protocols can be mastered by 12 year olds in just a few weeks or months of study and millions of kids around the world have done so. Why? Because it's not that complicated.
Signing up for a proxy site or setting up a vpn doesn't make one a "mighty hacker" or a master of satanic powers strong enough to enslave mankind.
Proxies are third-party relays that only work because for the most part the internet is a "wild west" with few restrictions. When the powers-that-be decide that all ip's wishing to have significant upstream traffic must be register and state there intended purpose for existence then it is game over for proxies.
Vpn's (or virtual private networks), which are used to encode traffic so that third parties can't understand it, are trivial to detect and even more trivial to shut down.
I think you overestimate the power of the Mighty Hackers...
;)
.
"Wobbles but doesn't fall down" - weebles
yet somehow people can still
yet somehow people can still hack into google, somehow people find holes in everything. there's a hole in windows that was just discovered that was around for 17 years. The Chinese can get around their big firewall. Since we're posting our resumes, i'm senior software engineer with a few less years of experience than you have (5 real world years). So no need to tell me they're not mysterious or talk down to me.
And after reading all that, you never actually addressed, how anyone could could hope to contain information on a network that allows random connections on much of any level. And those mighty hackers, while some are little more than script kiddies, others still managed to hack into google not to long ago. so now imagine, if you not only have a few people trying to hack a network, but a whole ton of people doing it. Good luck stopping it.
And it's also somewhat ironic, that you would argue that the state could be so competent at such technical level, considering the site you're on. which, is kind of my problem with all the conspiracy vids i see on here.
My apologies....
I did not mean to talk down to you. I was just trying to make a point and wasn't directing anything personally to you.
You said:
"And after reading all that, you never actually addressed, how anyone could could hope to contain information on a network that allows random connections on much of any level."
Well, that is my point. The internet doesn't have to be a "network that allows random connections". Right now the internet is "open" -- people can generally go to whatever site they want without filtering or blocking implemented on the network. The exceptions are regional systems of filtering of blocking, such as China. And people in China can find holes in the regionally bounded censorship to get outside to the "free" whole (namely the US and Europe -- the "coolest" part of the internet).
But they can "close" the internet (the internet that matters, the US and Europe). By "close" I mean they can invert the current scheme of wide open random connections to where everything is blocked by default and access and permission to use vpn's has to granted/approved/registered on a case-by-case basis. At that point what good would proxies used in China be? Even if they could proxy out they wouldn't have permission to send or receive packets. Same with vpn's.
Sure, hackers would now-and-then break through the veil of censorship. But it would be rare, and the mass of people would still be locked out from information and communications.
:p
.
"Wobbles but doesn't fall down" - weebles
Yes.
The government could "never" restrict the internet the same way it could "never" inhibit the right to own a gun.
The internet is probably the single thing the collectivist movement most fears. The government will do everything it can to destroy its independence and its function as a vehicle for free and uninhibited speech. It is up to us to keep our "employees" in line. The battle will be fierce.
_____________________________
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." -- Joseph Goebbels
Good video.
If this does come to pass, all the ISPS' will loose money because, I for one, would discontinue my internet service immediately. I think most people would discontinue their service if all their favorite web sites were banned. So, I hope nothing comes of this.
JM