[THS] Philip Giraldi: Obama's War on the Internet

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25975.htm

The Ministry of Truth
Obama's War on the Internet

By Philip Giraldi

July 20, 2010 "Campaign for Liberty " -- The Ministry of Truth was how George Orwell
described the mechanism used by government to control information in his seminal
novel 1984. A recent trip to Europe has convinced me that the governments of the
world have been rocked by the power of the internet and are seeking to gain control
of it so that they will have a virtual monopoly on information that the public is able to
access. In Italy, Germany, and Britain the anonymous internet that most Americans
are still familiar with is slowly being modified. If one goes into an internet café it is
now legally required in most countries in the European Union to present a
government issued form of identification. When I used an internet connection at a
Venice hotel, my passport was demanded as a precondition and the inner page,
containing all my personal information, was scanned and a copy made for the
Ministry of the Interior -- which controls the police force. The copy is retained and
linked to the transaction. For home computers, the IP address of the service used is
similarly recorded for identification purposes. All records of each and every internet
usage, to include credit information and keystrokes that register everything that is
written or sent, is accessible to the government authorities on demand, not through
the action of a court or an independent authority. That means that there is de facto
no right to privacy and a government bureaucrat decides what can and cannot be
"reviewed" by the authorities. Currently, the records are maintained for a period of
six months but there is a drive to make the retention period even longer.

The excuses being given for the increasing government intervention into the internet
are essentially two: first, that the anonymity of the internet has permitted criminal
behavior, fraud, pornography, and libel. Second is the security argument, that
managing the internet is an integral part of the "global war on terror" in that it is
used by terrorists to plan their attacks requiring governments to control those who
use it. The United States government takes the latter argument one step farther,
claiming that the internet itself is a vulnerable "natural asset" that could be seized or
damaged by terrorists and must be protected, making the case for a massive $100
billion program of cyberwarfare. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) argues that
"violent Islamist extremists" rely on the internet to communicate and recruit and he
has introduced a bill in the Senate that will empower the president to "kill" the
internet in case of a national emergency.

But all of the arguments for intervention are essentially themselves fraudulent and
are in reality being exploited by those who favor big government and state control.
The anonymity and low cost nature of the internet means that it can be used to
express views that are unpopular or unconventional, which is its strength. It is
sometimes used for criminal behavior because it is a mechanism, not because there is
something intrinsic in it that makes it a choice of wrongdoers. Before it existed, fraud
was carried out through the postal service and over the telephone. Pornography
circulated freely by other means. As for the security argument, the tiny number of
actual terrorists who use the internet do so because it is there and it is accessible. If
it did not exist, they would find other ways to communicate, just as they did in pre-
internet days. In fact, intelligence sources report that internet use by terrorists is rare
because of persistent government monitoring of the websites.

The real reason for controlling the internet is to restrict access to information,
something every government seeks to do. If the American Departments of Defense
and Homeland Security and Senator Lieberman have their way, new cybersecurity
laws will enable Obama's administration to take control of the internet in the event of
a national crisis. How that national crisis might be defined would be up to the White
House but there have been some precedents that suggest that the response would
hardly be respectful of the Bill of Rights. Many countries already monitor and censor
the internet on a regular basis, forbidding access to numerous sites that they
consider to be subversive or immoral. During recent unrest, the governments of both
Iran and China effectively shut down the internet by taking control of or blocking
servers. Combined with switching off of cell phone transmitters, the steps proved
effective in isolating dissidents. Could it happen here? Undoubtedly. Once the laws
are in place a terrorist incident or something that could be plausibly described in
those terms would be all that is needed to have government officials issue the order
to bring the internet to a halt.

But the ability to control the internet technically is only part of the story. Laws are
being passed that criminalize expressing one's views on the internet, including both
"hate crime" legislation and broadly drafted laws that make it a crime to support
what the government describes loosely as terrorism in any way shape or form.
Regular extra-legal government intrusion in the private lives of citizens is already a
reality, particularly in the so-called Western Democracies that have the necessary
technology and tech-savvy manpower to tap phones and invade computers. In
Europe, draconian anti-terrorism laws enable security agencies to monitor phone calls
and e-mails, in many cases without any judicial oversight. In Britain, the monitoring
includes access to detailed internet records that are available for inspection by no less
that 653 government agencies, most of which have nothing whatsoever to do with
security or intelligence, all without any judicial review. In the United States, the
Pentagon recently sought an internet and news "instant response capability" which it
dubbed the Office of Strategic Influence and it has also seeded a number of retired
military analysts into the major news networks to provide a pro-government slant on
the war news. The State Department is also in the game, tasking young officers to
engage presumed radicals in debate on their websites while the growing use of
national security letters means that private communications sent through the internet
can be accessed by Federal law enforcement agencies. The Patriot Act created
national security letter does not require judicial oversight. More than 35,000 were
issued by the FBI last year and the recipient of a letter commits a felony if he or she
reveals the receipt of the document. In a recent case involving an internet provider in
Philadelphia, a national security letter demanded all details of internet messages sent
on a certain date, to include account information on clients with social security
numbers and credit card references.

The danger is real. Most Americans who are critical of the actions of their own
government rely on the internet for information that is uncensored and often
provocative, including sites like Campaign for Liberty. As this article was being
written, a story broke reporting that Wordpress host Blogetery had been shut down
by United States authorities along with all 73,000 Blogetery-hosted blogs. The
company's ISP is claiming that it had to terminate Blogetery's account immediately
after being ordered to do so by law enforcement officials "due to material hosted on
the server." The extreme response implies a possible presumed terrorist connection,
but it is important to note that no one was charged with any actual offense, revealing
that the government can close down sites based only on suspicion. It is also likely
only a matter of time before Obama's internet warfare teams surface either at the
Defense Department or at State. Deliberately overloading and attacking the internet
to damage its credibility, witness the numerous sites that have been "hacked" and
have had to cease or restrict their activities. But the moves afoot to create a legal
framework to completely shut the internet down and thereby control the "message"
are far more dangerous. American citizens who are concerned about maintaining
their few remaining liberties should sound the alarm and tell the politicians that we
don't need more government abridgement of our First Amendment rights.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence
officer who served 19 years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was
Chief of Base in Barcelona from 1989 to 1992, was designated as senior Agency
officer for support at the Olympic Games, and served as official liaison to the Spanish
Security and Intelligence services. He has been designated by the General
Accountability Office as an expert on the impact of illegal immigration on terrorism.

Phil Giraldi is now the Francis Walsingham Fellow at The American Conservative
Defense Alliance and provides security consulting for a number of Fortune 500
corporate clients.

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