It was the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz who wrote that "war is the continuation of politics by other means." Two hundred years later, politicians around the world are reframing that. Internet control is the continuation of politics. The real enemy of the Open Internet is not the Chinese government or greedy anti-net-neutrality ISPs. It's government.
Consider for example the latest attempt by US Federal law enforcement and national security officials to get sweeping new regulations for the Internet which will allow them to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects, or at least whoever they define to be suspects. Legislation that the Obama administration plans to present to lawmakers next year will grant them wiretap orders to intercept encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct "peer to peer" messaging like Skype.
The real worry is that security services around the world face the same problem with terrorism and criminal activity so it's not difficult to see how this could be copied globally.
These views about controlling the Net are gathering momentum and are being pushed by various parties. In March, investigative journalist Ryan Singel wrote a piece in Wired identifying Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence who now works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. He quotes McConnell saying this: "We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options – and we must be able to do this in milliseconds. More specifically, we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment – who did it, from where, why and what was the result – more manageable. The technologies are already available from public and private sources and can be further developed if we have the will to build them into our systems and to work with our allies and trading partners so they will do the same.".
In other words, authorities should have the power to tap into emails or what search terms are being used.
And while America is pushing its controls, Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch tells us that Russia has been pushing a proposal in the United Nations agency for information technology. According to the Russian government, the greatest cyber-threat is not hacking or stealing but using the Internet to spread ideas that might undermine a country. Russia wants any such use of the Internet classified as "aggression," and hence illegal under the UN Charter.
Internet control issues are spreading well beyond China. We should be worried.
no comment untill now