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Cybersecurity and "Internet Freedom" Act: Who Are They Kidding?

Anytime Congress puts the word "Freedom" in the title of a bill, it means that it's about to curtail the freedoms of whatever other words show up in the title. For instance, the "Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act", will limit freedoms in both Cybersecurity and the Internet. Easy, see?



Considering that most Congresspersons can't be trusted to check Snopes.com before e-mailing their bank account numbers to Nigerian princes, I can't see how they think they have enough tech savvy to regulate the Internet properly. And if there's anything Egypt has shown us, it's that we should be making it as hard as possible to let Governments pull the plug on the Internet.

"But Eric! The United States isn't Egypt!! You're crazy to compare the two!!"

Tell that to the 84,000 domains (mistakenly!!) seized and shut down by ICE without so much as a notification to the site operators last month.

Olympia Snowe (Republican-ME) couldn't get this pushed through in 2009 with Rockefeller (Moron-WV), so her companion in the Senate Susan Collins (also Republican-ME) from Maine is trying again in 2011? I have to ask: "What's up, Maine? What lobby do you have up there that's pushing this?"

My take on the 2009 bill can be found here, and not much has changed. Except the title, of course.



Comments

  1. Moron-WV, indeed. My daughter has the same photo on her laptop but the caption reads, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy..." Help us, Obi-Wan. You're our only hope.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting. Found you via Smitty.

    If you want to know how well a government "regulated" network would work, just look at Social Security.

    "Give them a kill switch? What're you, effin' crazy? They can barely understand the web!"

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mojo - Thanks for visiting, and for letting me know who I owe the milk and cookies to!

    ReplyDelete

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