The Great American Firewall

Why the Net is Poised to Become a Global Weapon of Mass Deception

From BUZZFLASH May 1
by Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D.

Hindsight is often touted as better than foresight, yet such a truism should not blind us to an imminent threat before it happens. Like someone who takes up with an abusive mate and rationalizes the threat to life and limb until the battering leaves undeniable, indelible scars, there are good reasons right now to expect the worst when it comes to the survival of the free Internet. Now unfolding is a legal-political-corporate plot for turning a vibrant, democratic Internet into a global web of corporate and government deceit. The tell-tale signs exist but as in domestic abuse, the perpetrators (federal government and a small group of interconnected, powerful telecom and mainstream media monopolies) have done their utmost to keep it hidden behind closed doors.

Under the veil of a virtual mainstream media blackout, on June 27, 2005, the United States Supreme Court granted giant cable companies like Comcast and Verizon the legal right to dominate and control the Internet. It ruled that broadband Internet was an information service like cable TV rather than an interactive telecommunication service like the telephone (National Cable & Telecommunications Association vs. Brand X Internet Services). This gave these behemoths the green light to exclude Independent Service Providers (ISPs) from using their pipes, thereby laying the foundation for a corporate dominated and controlled Internet. Succinctly, in controlling the conduit of communication across the Internet, these companies now had acquired the legal right to control the content (Web of Deceit: How Internet Freedom Got the Federal Ax, And Why Corporate News Censored the Story). Moreover, in writing this decision, the Court also left the door open for telephone companies like ATT to control telephone modem connectivity to the Internet. As a result, just three weeks after the decision was handed down, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seized the opportunity to grant this right, effectively ushering in the beginning of the end of free-access Internet.

The Supreme Court ultimately rested its decision on its own Chevron ruling which held that courts should defer to government agencies, such as the FCC on matters of statutory interpretation so long as the statute in question was ambiguous and the agency’s interpretation was reasonable. Despite the fact that there was unambiguous, prior precedent for considering the Internet to be a telecommunication service rather than an information service (AT&T Corporation vs. Portland); and despite the fact that treating an interactive service such as the Internet like a one-way, cable TV station defied rationality, it still deferred to the FCC, which sought to interpret the Internet as an information service.

Brand X has now set the legal stage for a further maneuver in the dismal saga of the declining free Internet. Now in Congress, under extreme pressure by telecom lobbies, is a pending house bill introduced by Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) entitled the “Communications Opportunity Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006.” This Act includes a “Title II- Enforcement of Broadband Policy Statement” that states the FCC “shall have exclusive authority to adjudicate any complaint alleging a violation of the broadband policy statement or the principles incorporated therein.” With the passage of this provision the FCC would no longer have to rely on Chevron to attain deference. Instead, it would be given a blank check to enforce its own mandates. This would mean that courts would have scant authority to challenge and overturn its decisions.

Unfortunately, the FCC harbors a political bias that makes granting it this authority dangerous. Under the direction of former FCC Chair Michael Powell, and now under its current chair, Kevin Martin, the FCC has moved toward increased deregulation of telecom and media companies, and there is now little reason to expect that this trend will reverse. The consequence is the thickening of the plot to increase corporate control of the Internet.

Presently, behemoth telecom corporations like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are poised to set up toll booths on the Internet. According to this plan, only content providers with deep pockets would be given optimum Internet connectivity. This would leave the rest of the Internet community running slowly or not at all. The net result would be the demise of Internet neutrality. No longer would all of us have an equal voice within the freest and most comprehensive democratic forum ever devised by humankind. This would accordingly be yet a further maneuver in the gradual dismantling of the free, democratic Internet.

Indisputably, the Internet is currently on a path of becoming an extension of the corporate media, owned and operated by a few giant corporations that control the information Americans receive. This erosive trend threatens to infect the Internet just as it has radio, broadcast, and cable TV. The transition, however, has not been politically benign. Rather, big money has teamed with neoconservative politics to usher in an age in which quid pro quo between mainstream media corporations and government largely define what Americans see and hear.

Nor is this trend as regards the Internet without chilling precedent in other nations marred with dictatorship, notably China. There, a “Great Firewall” has been erected by the Chinese government around its Internet. Accordingly, sights considered “subversive” -- which is anything of which it disapproves -- are slowed down and/or phased out. The recent cooperation of Google with the Chinese government in creating Google.cn, a government-censored version of itself, is an instructive example of how corporate power can yield to the authority holding the purse strings.

If there is no disruption of current trends, the Internet will predictably fall in line with a rigid program of censorship that will fundamentally devour the free spirit with which the Internet was conceived. This has been a Net born of a free, interactive, democratic mission, not a profit-maximizing vehicle of corporations. It is not surprising therefore that under the auspices of the latter, in concert with a government with an insatiable appetite for power, which has the ability to regulate these corporations out of existence, the Internet would undergo an identity crisis. It is a blatant fallacy to suppose that profit maximization equates to democracy. To the contrary, in the present corporate context it equates to the marginalizing of any perspectives that are not cost effective.

In 1997, a neoconservative think tank emerged called The Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Its main mission has been to promote corporate globalization and the increase in U.S. military dominance throughout the world. This includes defeating all regimes opposed to U.S. corporate interests. In its blueprint of what would be required for the transition, it stressed the necessity of government control of the Internet. In one of its documents entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (2000), the PNAC stated,

as with space, access to and use of cyberspace and the Internet are emerging elements in global commerce, politics and power. Any nation wishing to assert itself globally must take account of this other new "global commons."

Speaking of “cyber-war” it stated:

Although…the role of the Defense Department in establishing "control," or even what "security" on the Internet means, requires a consideration of a host of legal, moral and political issues, there nonetheless will remain an imperative to be able to deny America and its allies' enemies the ability to disrupt or paralyze either the military's or the commercial sector's computer networks. Conversely, an offensive capability could offer America's military and political leaders an invaluable tool in disabling an adversary in a decisive manner.

It is mind boggling to think what the terms “control” and “security” might portend for a militaristic government bent on defeating its “enemy.” If this seems a stretch from the current political climate, then it is worth noting that those who have formally endorsed the mission of the PNAC include familiar figures in the Bush Administration -- Vice President Dick Cheney; former Chief Advisor to the Vice President I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Jr.; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; and former Deputy Secretary of Defense and current President of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz, to name just some.

From this point in time, in light of the aforementioned legal, political, and corporate realities, it is not difficult to envision the broad stages in transforming the Net into a vehicle of world domination:

Corporatize --> Sanitize --> Propagandize --> Militarize (Turn the Net into a Weapon of Mass Deception) --> Globalize (Enclose the world inside one Great American Firewall).

The further down this slippery slope we travel, the less chance there will be of turning back!


Elliot D. Cohen is a media ethicist and author of many books and articles on the media and other areas of applied ethics. His most recent book on the dangers of corporate media is News Incorporated: Corporate Media Ownership and Its Threat to Democracy (Prometheus Books, March 2005).

So, what are all these virtual petitions I've been signing these past couple of weeks to keep the 'Net neutral gonna do? It sounds as if the die has been cast. (I was not aware of the 2005 Supreme Court decision, BTW. I appreciate the info.)

I am aware that the FCC has become a lapdog for the media giants and has done a lot of deregulating for the past couple of presidential terms.

But, you make the situation sound pretty hopeless. Can't this all be turned around if Dems retake control of, at the least, Congress? Is the deregulation permanent? I know that there are a lot of people working on behalf of keeping 'Net neutrality. They are in the minority, to be sure, but couldn't a groundswell of grassroots support prevent the bill from passing. And even if it does, would it just be a stop-gap measure?

In other words, what can we do to stop these corporate behemoths in their tracks?

Thanks again for posting. And welcome to DU. I look forward to hearing more from you.

So as I understand it, then, corporate control will slow things down considerably or make people have to pay for speed, thus cutting out a lot of people at sites like DU.

Am I understanding this correctly?

And how soon will this start happening?




Cher

making content providers pay. It allows an ISP, like say Yahoo DSL, to go to a content provider like google and say, "traffic to your site takes up a lot of bandwidth, unless you fork over some cash we are going to throttle back how much bandwidth you can take up". If they don't pay up then of course their end users will suffer. Instead of actually going to the content provider maybe they will just set up programs where you can buy preferential treatment for your web site. The result of course is that the small time producer of content will not be able to afford it so they will end up getting the leftover scraps of bandwidth after the big providers are served.

The Iraq War was also part of a plan cast in advance and look how miserably it has failed. What you are doing--signing petitions, keeping informed, and making your voice heard in any way you can--is precisely what might stop this political-corporate onslaught. There is strength in numbers. Politicians survive on voters and corporate survival requires customers. Disgruntled customers/voters means lost revenue/elections.

when he waived patent rights on it, in favor of universal public access.

There's too much stuff in the air for activists to even attempt to change this now. Where in the hell is Chairman Dean though, both on this and the network neutrality deal?! After all the net activists did for him in '04, he should be the patron saint of the blogosphere! He MUST know how important an open internet is to checking the power of the GOP spin machine and corporate media!

I know he couldn't do much where the Supreme Court is concerned, but he should be raising living hell over Congress' actions against net neutrality, especially with any Dem even thinking of voting for this thing. Maybe we should be writing him more, I don't know, but someone has to take up the slack in this issue!

Eliot is way over the top and the article is weakened due to his inability to take into consideration there is a healthy, vibrant internet outside of the US in Europe, parts of Africa and much of Asia - and how that create conditions that negate his doom scenarios. First off, where there's a will there's a way.

If I lived in the US I would simply use a European proxy server to gain access. There's a Firefox extension that now allows me to open a link using a proxy server in Asia or Europe. As the Chinese do to get around their 'Iron Firewall', The more walls they put up the more ways there are to get around them. If I have a site in the US which will suffer due to a tiered system, I will move it to a server in Europe out of regulatory control of the US. Then there's satellite to contend with. And Wifi - Google just sunk 20 million into FON which could quite possibly create free WIFI access Another European idea which is gaining ground on the continent. Or let's see them try and stop googlenet?

Google is hard at work on a nation-wide high-capacity data network, buying up unused fiber lines and cheap backbone access. What if Google wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user's precise location? The gatekeeper of the world's information could become one of the globe's biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically sweeping telecoms out the door in one fell swoop.

Creating a tiered system where you segment the market with a inhibitive pricing structure is not condusive to remaining competitive in an emerging global marketplace. Imagine if they charged extra for colour television in the US - and the masses could only afford Black and White. Yet the rest of the world was colour. It's not going to work.


If there is no disruption of current trends, the Internet will predictably fall in line with a rigid program of censorship that will fundamentally devour the free spirit with which the Internet was conceived. This has been a net born of a free, interactive, democratic mission, not a profit-maximizing vehicle of corporations.

This won't happen in Europe. I just don't see it.

This grand plan to create a digital serfdom will not work unless the rest of the world follows suit and tight agreements are made. Or these US companies take control of the pipelines around the world. Both scenarios are unlikely. Especially since the EU is taking a different tack. Or claim to be doing.

The widespread introduction of broadband at affordable prices is one of the chief objectives of the EU's e-Europe 2005 action plan. EU Broadband policy and EU broadband growth outpaces US


The main issues of the EU's e-Europe 2005 action plan on Broadband.


Preventing a new 'digital divide';
The role of government versus private sector in making the necessary investments;
Standardisation, e.g. of cable modems;
Deregulation, unbundling of the local loop;
Licensing issues in wireless broadband access;
Legacy infrastructure;
Market conditions.

_________________________

telephone companies like ATT to control telephone modem connectivity to the Internet.


Telephone modem connectivity? Moot point perhaps as cable, wireless and satellite competition will force them to be competitive. Does this include ASDL? Or just modem? It's not clear to me anyway.

This would leave the rest of the Internet community running slowly or not at all.


Absurd statement.

Unfortunately, the FCC harbors a political bias that makes granting it this authority dangerous.


The FCC is partisan right now - but that can and likely will change.

(Enclose the world inside one Great American Firewall).


Absurd statement.

The problem with Cohen's argument is - it's clear he's a neophyte when it comes down to understanding the basic architecture of the Internet... it's shallow to whose who really understand how it works from a technical perspective. He loves picking apart the court cases but has not done his research in other areas critical to his contentions.

America does not 'own' the Internet - ICANN is controlled by a non-partisan group in California and they have control over domain names and DNS assignment and that's it. The group was supposed to turn over that control to an international body last year but Cheney stomped on that idea of course.

The World Wide Web was invented by a Brit at CERN in Switzerland by the way.

I checked
slashdot.org> and boingboing to see whether his work has made the sites and he hasn't... this article would be savaged in the comments on either site I reckon.

As I thought about this issue throughout the day, I came to some similar conclusions. I really appreciate your post, as it is far more detailed than I'd be capable of thinking through with my current knowledge of Internet architecture. It also contains a lot of info I didn't know, particularly about Google's efforts.





Cher

They don't care about people like us, who will do what it takes to find where the truth exists. If they control the "mass" media, the maintain power and influence (ie propaganda)