Internet Censorship is On it's Way. The i-Patriot Act

Amazing revelations have emerged concerning already existing government plans to overhaul the way the internet functions in order to apply much greater restrictions and control over the web.

via: Infowars

Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event” which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

Lessig also revealed that he had learned, during a dinner with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an “i-Patriot Act” if you will, and that the Justice Department is waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

During a group panel segment titled “2018: Life on the Net”, Lessig stated:

There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said “of course there is”

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Discuss

Ick.

*waiting for the conspiracy-theorist nutjobs to come out of the woodwork*

*Gasp* It's just as Kojima predicted! The La-Le-Lu-Li-Lo want to censor the net!

"*waiting for the conspiracy-theorist nutjobs to come out of the woodwork*"

Well, that sucks.

"*Gasp* It's just as Kojima predicted! The La-Le-Lu-Li-Lo want to censor the net!"

This sounds like total bullshit.

Re-vamped censorship on the internet? Madness.

The government will know when I'm watching pr0nz? Creepy :(

Read Digital Fortress by Dan Brown, tells you all about internet censorship.

Can't see it happening, the internet is too huge to start having control over it for starters. There are so many ways to get round any restrictions they might put in place for it to be successful.

not gonna happen.

"the Interwebznetz" isnt as simple as national TV or radio etc.

Yeah... good luck with that.

If they do, then we'll just leave the internet and make a new one.

sounds like something China would do

"*waiting for the conspiracy-theorist nutjobs to come out of the woodwork*"

"*waiting for the conspiracy-theorist nutjobs to come out of the woodwork*"

"MagusMaleficus said:

"*waiting for the conspiracy-theorist nutjobs to come out of the woodwork*"

I would rather listen to the nutjobs then the american government we know they are currupt and 9/11's answers by the governments complete and total inconsistancies just reinforce for me that either.
A.the government planned it.
B. knew about it and let it happen.
C.knew about it and helped it along."

They haven't succeeded in stopping you from pirating movies, music and videogames, have they? They sure as hell have tried.

Don't forget, the Internet is not a truck.

It's a series of inter-connected tubes.

Damn the Patriots!

Alot of the funding for lobbying for these types of bills come from the cable companies that supply you your internet.

Giant bomb Controlled under Guns of the Patriots

"MagusMaleficus said:

"*waiting for the conspiracy-theorist nutjobs to come out of the woodwork*"

I would rather listen to the nutjobs then the american government we know they are currupt and 9/11's answers by the governments complete and total inconsistancies just reinforce for me that either.
A.the government planned it.
B. knew about it and let it happen.
C.knew about it and helped it along."

"MagusMaleficus said:

"*waiting for the conspiracy-theorist nutjobs to come out of the woodwork*"

Says the guy with the Hannibal Lecter icon...."

The thing to remember though is if America does pass some internet patriot act then its only going to affect American users the biggest. Thank god i'm from the UK!

"The thing to remember though is if America does pass some internet patriot act then its only going to affect American users the biggest. Thank god i'm from the UK!"

"Can't see it happening, the internet is too huge to start having control over it for starters. There are so many ways to get round any restrictions they might put in place for it to be successful."

"The thing to remember though is if America does pass some internet patriot act then its only going to affect American users the biggest. Thank god i'm from the UK!"

olololol that's like trying to stop the world spinning

4chan will not allow this.

"not gonna happen.

"the Interwebznetz" isnt as simple as national TV or radio etc."

Well, here's a big steaming pot of "fuck you" to the US government when that happens.

People put aside your differences on whether it is or is not a conspiracy and try to understand that Internet companies have been trying to "control" the internet, unsuccessfully mind you, for years now. It's one of the reasons why I will never join Virgin Media Internet even though they use Fiber Optic, simply out of principle that they seek to control what you access. Virgin wants to give preferential treatment in terms of speed of access and filtering content to those sites and servers which basically pay it money. Big business looking out for big business.

And let's be honest, we've had years of being spied on and tracked secretly by the FBI. These are civilian operations also.
FBI Wiretap.
FBI Surveillance System Carnivore.
Spying on Hip-Hop artists.

And Gonzales wants to propose legislation on "attempted copyright" no doubt being pressured by those poor music companies going bankrupt. Luckily this hasn't been passed yet. Yes you read that right "attempted copyright".

You can be spied on, wiretapped, your email and internet history can be searched at random and there's fuck all you can do about it. So enough with the whole US government won't infringe on civil liberties, this is the land of the free blah blah.

God Damn you Al Gore! Fucking up my series of tubez

The irony is, we may not have to wait so long. As early as next year, major blows to Net Neutrality will begin construction as major telecomms and ISPs plan to throttle us, turning the internet into a TV-like subscriptions service, while throttling our bandwidth for things like WoW or Xbox LIVE and P2P downloads (legal or illegal, they don't care).

Don't want this to happen? Read up- send a letter. The internet is more powerful than even the ISPs know. We can break them.

Uhh, you know they cant actually do that right? The internet isn't like some program they can just release a new version of and be like ALL RIGHT IT"S CENSORED NOW.

*huge, room-shaking sigh*

Ok, I'll make this quick.

1) That's not how the Internet works.
2) Yes, that's how the Internet CAN work, see: China
3) This isn't China.
4) This is the United States. We won't even let the UN run the DNSs because some tinpot dictator in that circus might make a play to "protect" Internet "users" in certain countries "from" "misinformation".
5) The courts are using the Patriot Act for batting practice. Yes, they gave Congress and the President five years with their toy, as they have in almost every war throughout our history. (You didn't think the Patriot Act was the first of its kind, did you?) But time's up.
6) Most of the current events you're probably bothered about - say, Gitmo, or wiretapping - have little to do with the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is mostly just a focus for opposition, probably because it sounds so retro-sinister and has a few doozies in it. If the SCOTUS struck down the entire Act from top to bottom tomorrow, little of substance would happen except more red tape for the government agencies in doing what they can do anyway.
7) The First Amendment is a reliable failsafe for something like an attempt to moderate the Internet. It has large loopholes - sometimes very large - but anything touching on censorship is usually an open and shut discussion as far as the courts go.

Now, Net Neutrality...that's an entirely different issue. It's critical that we win that fight. Fortunately I think we're in good shape for the near term. Obama of course owes his candidacy to people who favor net neutrality and McCain is a stubborn old cuss with a romantic streak when it comes to this sort of issue. Both will probably take great delight in slam dunking NN while slapping their groin in the face of a monopolized Internet.

"Uhh, you know they cant actually do that right? The internet isn't like some program they can just release a new version of and be like ALL RIGHT IT"S CENSORED NOW."

"EndlessMike said:

"Uhh, you know they cant actually do that right? The internet isn't like some program they can just release a new version of and be like ALL RIGHT IT"S CENSORED NOW."

Ever gone on the internet in China?!?

"

"DeathBySnuSnu said:

"EndlessMike said:

"Uhh, you know they cant actually do that right? The internet isn't like some program they can just release a new version of and be like ALL RIGHT IT"S CENSORED NOW."

Ever gone on the internet in China?!?

"

Obviously you haven't. Anyone can work around the restrictions China has."

*watches chaos from Canada*

"EndlessMike said:

"DeathBySnuSnu said:

"EndlessMike said:

"Uhh, you know they cant actually do that right? The internet isn't like some program they can just release a new version of and be like ALL RIGHT IT"S CENSORED NOW."

Ever gone on the internet in China?!?

"

Obviously you haven't. Anyone can work around the restrictions China has."

I agree--I was just making the point that countries have actually gone ahead and done something like this."

thatll never happen how they gonna enforce it? the net is to big and there are too many ways to get around it

Ah, I love it. They already made it, and are waiting for something to happen to allow them to implement it. If it doesn't happen, well, call me a conspirator, but...they'll do it themselves.

The United States is in such a shit hole right now it's mind-numbing, and I'm sorry if you feel differently, but if so, I don't know what's going through your head. My advice to everyone is to pick up a Rage Against The Machine album and heed its word.Shawn said:

"Riddler said:

"not gonna happen.

"the Interwebznetz" isnt as simple as national TV or radio etc."

Actually it very well could. Internet providers don't get profit from the sales made on the internet by it's customers, which is what they want to do. From a business standpoint that's very good, but otherwise it's just bad. But they aren't going to block any sites, internet providers will just let you have a faster connection to sites which pay them to let you access them to buy products, in which the provider will get a share.

For example: Ebay will pay AT&T so that it's user will have a fast connection to the site. So ideally if you buy products from ebay you'll sign up with AT&T. Any other site that isn't endorsed by your internet provider will run at an extremely low speed. They would block off all other sites but that would give America a communist image.

As for other countries, trust me, once other countries realize how much of this new profit is being generated by cashing in on the internet, they'll start doing it too. The bottom line is that if that bill passes, the internet providers gain money, the government gains money, we lose."