Internet Control

[TWPonKubuntu]

We have a children's story; Chicken Little, in which the title character cries "The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling"... You can look it up online if you want the full context.

Yes, we are being told this by the media. We're also being told to ignore it, "nothing to see here, move along now".

Personally, I think the sky may be falling.

For many here, this is our business and our source of income. The power shift has occurred, so watch for what changes and plan how to deal with it.

[MoonRise]

People don't trust the US government. And it it not necessary or even helpful to have a single foreign government with veto power. Especially one where big corporations have a huge lobbying power. And might possibly get Trump as president. Who is seen as dangerous and extreme in the rest of the world.

The level of scaremongering going on is outstanding when seen from outside the US.

LOL ,,,,the rest of the world ,,,,,,,,, He (Trump)is seen as dangerous and extreme to a lot of us hear in the US as well ,,,,, I cant believe he has made it this far ,,,,,and when he first decided to run I truly thought it was some kind of joke or way for the republican party to ,,,craft numbers for the candidate they rely wanted to get nominated ,,,,,,,, yes scary very scary

VINNY

Actually those of any reason better not trust any. To single out one or the other is mute here. All that anyone sees from NSEW is theatrics in its entirety.

[GreyGeek]

Do you have any proof of this at all?

More than four years ago Putin warned of giving control of the Internet to the UN. Amazing that!
In May of 2012 "Democrat and Republican officials" warned of the same thing. A week later so did Obama. Two years later Obama flip-flops and announces a hand-over date to the UN for ICANN. He was no longer against it. The Democrat and Republican leaders? They've had two years from then to do something serious about it, and they didn't, which proves that they were no more serious about keeping ICANN under US control that he was. People were asleep or apathetic. A petition was more than 8,000 signatures short of meeting the minimum 50,000 to influence Obama.

Regardless of the flowery "Human Rights" window dressings in the UN's descriptions of their 2003 Geneva and 2012 Tunis conferences (search for the word "agenda" around pg 40 for 2003 and 85 for 2012) on UN control of the Internet, their last publicly available report on the 2012 meeting left China's interpretation of Internet rights up to individual member states:
"9 1.7 a)
These Regulations recognize the right of any Member State, (subject to national law and should it decide to do so), to require that administrations* operating agencies, which operate in its territory and provide an international telecommunication service to the public, be authorized (/recognized) by that Member State.
Reasons:
Member States have the sovereign right to impose obligations in accordance with national law, on all operating agencies, not just on recognized operating agencies"

The UN lumps the Internet in with Telecommunications Services, something the FCC has been trying to do for years, so that it will come under the same umbrella as radio and TV. WCIT-12, which took place at the same time as the Internet agenda, describes what the UN is doing in its Final Acts document.

However, even Putin was being disingenuous about not moving control of the Internet to the UN. It was reported in November of 2012 by the Australian News that
"The move has sparked a ferocious, under-the-radar diplomatic war between a powerful bloc of nations, led by China and Russia, who want to exert greater controls on the net and western democracies determined to preserve the free-wheeling, open architecture of the World Wide Web.

The battle for control has also seen a cartel of telco corporations join forces to support amended pricing regulations changes which critics warn will pave the way for significant increases in the cost of day-to-day internet use, including email and social media."

and,
"Ms Burrow, the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, warned urgent global action is now needed as the "internet as we know it" comes under very real threat.

"Unless we act now, our right to freely communicate and share information could change forever. A group of big telecommunications corporations have joined with countries including China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia that already impose heavy restriction on internet freedoms," she said.

"So far, the proposal has flown under the radar but its implications are extremely serious. Governments and big companies the world over may end up with the right not only to restrict the internet and monitor everything you do online but to charge users for services such as email and Skype.""

and,
"Paola Totaro and Claire Connelly write: A draft of the proposal, formulated in secret and only recently posted on the ITU website for public perusal, reveal that if accepted, the changes would allow government restriction or blocking of information disseminated via the internet and create a global regime of monitoring internet communications — including the demand that those who send and receive information identify themselves."


Rather than create an entirely new means of identifying users, the existing IPv6 network has enough numbers to give every man, woman and child on the planet thousands of IPv6 addresses. All that has to be done is to assign an IPv6 main address and a subnet of several thousand more addresses and burn them into the computer equipment and household appliances, phones, TV's, refrigerators, and the ever present Big Brother surveillance cameras that a dictatorship would require in the house.

How else would the UN countries pay to give free Internet service to the "poor", "marginalized", "disadvantaged", etc.? (Sound like familiar SJW and PC jargon? It is.) Remember how Obama promised and delivered on free cellphones to the poor? Its a program now called "LifeLine". Phone bill usage fees to pay for USF (Universal Service Fund, called USAF - Universal Service and Access Fund in the UN) have been driven up to current billing charges to 17.4%. Within four years recipients costs will drop from $9.25 to $0 for voice & text, and $9.25 for broadband. The phone being given out is the Tracfone, owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Sims. The corruption reports and abuse aren't making the LifeLine program any sweeter smelling. When the Internet charges begin being applied it may require the you apply for assistance in accessing the Internet.

As far as USF is concerned the big problem is financing optical cables to everyone. Regardless of all the wallpaper dressing it boils down to three things: taxing the rich, taxing the corporations, or taxing the services (charges per email, per GB of download, per VOIP call, etc...). With encryption those doing the monitoring will have a hard time determining what is passing back and forth. They'll either outlaw encryption or meter your traffic in both directions and tax you based on the sum of your traffic. I download at least two or three Linux ISO's per month and watch a LOT of YouTube videos, besides playing Minecraft with my grandsons. I pay $39.99 for 25Mb/sec of bandwidth. IF I have to start paying, IN ADDTION, a fee for bandwidth used, which the ISP's would LOVE to collect (for an additional "small" fee) I would probably eliminate my cable connection and rely only on my iPhone, which is $109/mo.

"Do I have any proof of all of this?"

Open your eyes, man, and look around!

EVEN IN AMERICA, Facebook is deleting politically incorrect posts, pages, and many times a user's account because what the user posted was not compatible with Zukerberg's politics. Twitter's CEO is doing exactly the same thing. Even Milo, the "Dangerous Faggot" had his twitter account deleted for making a critical review of a PC movie.

YouTube is demonetizing videos that do not adhere to Google CEO's political views (They are all promoting Clinton.). One I watch regularly is "Computing Forever's Dave Cullen . He used to be an IT tech and started a channel reviewing computer hardware but after a while switched to giving commentary from his viewpoint. Now his sole income is from ad revenues on his channel. I don't agree with everything he says or believes but he is articulate and he deserves to be heard.

Classic Liberal: I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Liberal today: I disagree with what you say and I will get you censored and fired from your job.

Using a hash tag #ALLSPEECHMATTERS Dave Cullen posted defiant video with the hope that Blockstack will by pass all censorship. I believe he is wrong for one simple reason: EVERY censorship bypass technique I've looked at during the last few months has a common weakness. It requires the use of the same network and ISPs that drive the current Internet. In America the CIA and NSA already own the Internet structure, whether you use Tor or not. The ISP's ALWAYS cooperate with our government demands to turn over info on individuals. The number of refusals is remarkable only for their infrequency. The USA is part of the FiveEyes. The other four "eyes" are just as onerous, and so are the members of the EU. Before China demanded the source code to Windows (which BIll Gates called a "national treasure" during a Congressional hearing) he promptly gave that "treasure" to them in exchange for doing business in China. Meanwhile, to show his good faith, when ever the Chinese gave Microsoft a document from a Windows application, they would use the internal GUID to determine the name and address of the person who published that document. Blockstack won't make a difference.

Facebook, Twitter and Google were not happy just censoring their own social platforms, and don't give me that old saw that the 1st Amendment doesn't apply to corporations. If not, then why was a baker in Oregon fined $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple? Doesn't the baker have a 1st Amendment right?
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.'
The baker was forced to pay a fine for exercising his 1st Amendment right to observe his own religious conscience, and further was muzzled by being forbidden to express his opinion about the matter. There are five rights in that Amendment, IF two of them can be tossed for political correctness then none of them are safe. Those are not the only natural rights being trampled on by today's SJW's. Kiss the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 8th and a couple other goodbye. They are, for all practical perposes, unenforcable. Obama has trashed the separation between the branches (Executive, Legislative, Judical) by usurping the responsibilities of Congress, and Congress has helped him because most of its members care only for themselves and their perks and power. Anyway, Facebook, Google and Twitter have joined forces with the MNM to censor the parts of the Internet they have no control over, yet. The videos people take of events that they see and upload to YouTube and other sites. Their combined site is where they "collaberate" their reporting of the news so that they can do what they already do, speak with one voice and try to overwhelm other viewpoints. (I've forgotten the url, I get it later)

Not everybody agrees that the loss of the Internet will be deterimental. Arcs Technica believes that:
"Calling it an "Internet giveaway," many Republican lawmakers tried to block the changeover, a transition that is strongly supported by the President Barack Obama administration and by Internet giants like Facebook and Google.
...
Regardless of who’s right or wrong in the ICANN changeover debate, one thing nobody can deny is that the United States will continue exercising a powerful hold over a great swath of the Internet—even under the transition. That’s because the companies that oversee the world’s most popular top-level domains (.com, .org, and .net) are based in the United States. These organizations must follow US law and abide by US court orders, and they have to remove websites from the global Internet when ordered to do so.
To date, these court orders are how the US government has seized thousands of websites it has declared to be breaking laws about intellectual property, drugs, gambling, and you name it. Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload file-sharing site fell because of this in 2012. The Bodog online sports wagering site was shuttered by the US that same year even though that .com domain was purchased with a Canadian register."

But Ars Technica seems blissfully unaware of the censoring now being done by Facebook and Google. Their memory is much worse than mine, because they have forgotten Janet Leher and her muzzling of almost four hundred 501c applicants prior to the 2012 election cycle because their organization names appeared to be conservative, which is also why 9 left wing groups got tagged. So what? Is having a conservative name make an organization illegal? It took up to three years for some to get approval, making it too late to take tax deductible donations.

And, Obama still had to follow the law. DId he?

Time tests all things.

[TWPonKubuntu]

GreyGeek, if this thread were a technical question, I would mark it as "SOLVED". You hit it square on.

[whatthefunk]

GreyGeek
The US did not hand control of ICANN over to the UN. This is totally, completely wrong. The US basically released ICANN from its control and did it specifically to stop the UN and other countries from trying to get the US to transfer power to the UN.

As for censorship on Facebook etc. vs the baker who didnt want to make a cake for a gay couple, I dont really think they are the same. Facebook censors what basically amounts to user provided content. Every site I can think of, including this one, does this. If I posted a bunch of racist, sexist hate-filled remarks here, I bet I would get banned pretty quick. I think that sometimes they go a little over board with this, but they do it to prevent their product from being destroyed and I feel it is within their rights. Even traditional media forms do this. If I send a letter to the editor filled with bigotry and hate, do you think a newspaper will publish it? Are they required to publish it?

The baker, on the other hand, refused service to someone because of their sexual orientation. If I can refuse service to someone based on sexual orientation, can I also refuse service to a black person? A Mexican? A woman? If my personal belief system dictates that women should not be served unless they wear a head scarf, is that ok?

[TWPonKubuntu]

Whatthafunk, that is what we are going to find out, if indeed the UN will acquire directory power over the actions of ICANN.

My opinion is that this was done deliberately to allow the UN to assume control.

Time will tell and I'm trying to discover what effect this will have on my business.

[whatthefunk]

Whatthafunk, that is what we are going to find out, if indeed the UN will acquire directory power over the actions of ICANN.

My opinion is that this was done deliberately to allow the UN to assume control.

Time will tell and I'm trying to discover what effect this will have on my business.

If they wanted the UN to get control, why wouldnt they have just given it to the UN?

[TWPonKubuntu]

1) Plausible Deny-ability. So current and future US governments can say; "we didn't do it".

2) To avoid backlash when controls are tightened on Internet usage and access.

3) Money.

4) Power.

I think any of these "could" be the reason, or all of them, not limited to these alone.

[whatthefunk]

Or maybe they did it to actually avoid UN control of the internet?

[wizard10000]

I still want my rite to have my guns however.

Exactly. Same kind of FUD is going on over IANA as is going on over gun control. Although no one has offered to take guns away, the NRA and gun lobby are certainly making sure guns get sold before the gummint takes them away

OT, but my personal solution to gun control would be to arm everyone :P

Mine is liable to be the unpopular opinion but I've seen zero evidence that moving IANA to international control is going to have an adverse effect at all. IANA's parent organization (ICANN) has been under private-sector control for seven years and big business hasn't tried to regulate the internet

Do we really think nobody can run teh intrawebz but us?

[GreyGeek]

There were several bakeries in the area which would have gladly taken their business, and they knew it. The baker was targeted because he was a Christian. The rest of your comparisons are apples vs oranges because only religious faith has had a Constitutional protection.

Remember when the big argument over the separation of Church and State took place? There was never a question, or even a possibility, that Congress would or could pass a law creating a "state religion". The claim was that a school board, by allowing Christian students to read their Bibles on school property (including school buses), or having after school use of the classrooms for Christian groups (as is allowed for Muslims, Wiccans, Jews and other tribal religions) John Q Public would "confuse" the school board with Congress, and since Congress can't make laws respecting religion, school boards should not allow Christians to use school property. But, it seems, these prohibitions are only for Christians: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_2583118.html, especially if they have "good grades". Well, that makes all the difference in the world, doesn't it?

However, it is going beyond public schools now. Home bible studies are being banned in some cities using "zoning violations" as the excuse. Christians are being targeted and suppressed all across American public life. Their big crime? Opposing the murder of 40 million pre-born Americans on the alter of convenience.

We get what we ask for and man, are we asking for it.
Time will tell.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Or maybe they did it to actually avoid UN control of the internet?

That would ascribe more humanity and caring for people than I am willing to assume "they" (the PTB) have.

... Do we really think nobody can run teh intrawebz but us?

Umm,.. I have to question "their" motives in wanting to "run the 'net".

Technical competence is not in question here, even the "bad guys" can do that.

Do we want to someday wake up and find that our business(es) or our religion(s) have been blackballed and can no longer access the 'net?

TO ALL: Please accept my thanks for making this thread worth reading. We may agree to disagree, but we still have the ability to DO SO PUBLICLY... for now...

[Snowhog]

I applaud those who are participating in this conversation. The topic (and those tangent to it) can/is one that can be(come) highly charged with emotion, but civility has prevailed. Good job.

This thread is an example of the almost unheard of openess that we permit, but not so in nearly all other Linux Support Forums on the 'Net. It is what makes KFN unique and valuable to our members.

[MoonRise]

I applaud those who are participating in this conversation. The topic (and those tangent to it) can/is one that can be(come) highly charged with emotion, but civility has prevailed. Good job.

This thread is an example of the almost unheard of openness that we permit, but not so in nearly all other Linux Support Forums on the 'Net. It is what makes KFN unique and valuable to our members.

Was going to write something on those lines and you bet me to it!!

+1

[TWPonKubuntu]

...
This thread is an example of the almost unheard of openess that we permit, but not so in nearly all other Linux Support Forums on the 'Net. It is what makes KFN unique and valuable to our members.

Hear, Hear!