Sunday, January 30, 2011

US Senators Lieberman & Collin's Treason Against Free Speech

from Sam Smith:

Lieberman & Collins wants government to be able to shut down Internet - just like Eygpt

Sean Bonner, Boing Boing - On Thursday Jan 27th at 22:34 UTC the Egyptian Government effectively removed Egypt from the internet. Nearly all inbound and outbound connections to the web were shut down. The internet intelligence authority Renesys explains it here and confirms that "virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide." This has never happened before in the entire history of the internet, with a nation of this size. A block of this scale is completely unheard of, and Senator Joe Lieberman [and Susan Collins] wants to be able to do the same thing in the US.

The bill, referred to as the 'Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act' removes all judicial oversight. This bill is still currently circulating and will be voted on later this year. Lieberman has said it should be a top priority.

This is something Americans should be paying very close attention to. Think about your daily life and how big a role the internet plays in it. Now think about what it would be like if one person had the authority to turn that off completely. If you can't imagine what that would be like you aren't alone. A week ago this was a hypothetical scenario. Now, you can just ask an Egyptian citizen what that feels like. Pay close attention to what happens with this bill.