Cyber War, Civil Liberties and Internet Freedom in the US

“It is truly a shame that what is viewed abroad as heroic is considered as suspect at home.”

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Monica Davis
Before It’s News

Ah, the Internet. So much attention is being paid to the glory of this military invention. We base revolutions on access to the Internet. We base civil rights progress on the ability of the Internet to foster communication across vast distances, enabling freedom fighters to connect, interact and tear down the walls of oppression. While we view any threat to the Internet as a threat to global freedom of speech and liberty, some mistakenly ignore repression at home.

Florida’s governor just signed a law that basically says if the cops shoot and kill someone, the records of that incident are exempt from Open Records Laws. In other words, police killiings are none of the public’s business.

While we are on guard for a possible future shut down of the Internet, and as we become distracted by the machinations of various dictators and elites from around the world, the real, actual and ongoing threat our liberties get shoved to the backburner. The real threats to our human rights, and to our freedom of speech, freedom of movement, the real dangers to our freedom from unwarranted and warrant less intrusions, searches and illegal takings are shoved to the back burner, minimized by media hype and diversions.

Tin foil hat wearing ‘activists’ dream of all kinds of things the government and its often careless minions could do to turn the Constitution into a roll of wet toilet paper. The government “could” shut the Internet down; the government “could” herd the population to some No Man’s Land on prisoner transport trains. The government “could” wipe out 90 percent of the population on orders on some real or imagined elite.

Let’s stop focusing on the possibilities and look at the realities. Lets look at some of the ways out of control cops, officials and unindicted civil serpents walk all over our civil rights right now—and think it is their right to do so. Let’s look at the mindset that says any threat to the way police and government officials “do their jobs” is a threat to the very foundations of the government itself.

Yes, let’s look at that great distraction, and insidious way that our government officials and their minions are destroying our civil rights.

The fears generated by hacking, cracking and information warfare continue to suborne our rights. This paranoia is creating a repressive environment where fascist behavior comes out of the closet and rides its pale horse right across the very foundations of our civil liberties. In terms of “cyber war,” a great deal of the vulnerabilities of our global computer and information networks is due to the fact that many governments and companies do not repair computer program vulnerabilities—and, even worse, many computer program developers do not repair known vulnerabilities.

Yet, instead of beefing up security on its networks, some of the unindicted felons in and out of government want to shut the Constitution down. Basically, we pay for the consequences of their negligence with our freedoms.

This is comparable to leaving the door open to your business at all hours, not investing in security guards, locks and security systems—and then wanting the government to eliminate human rights and civil liberties of all citizens in order to “protect your business.”

This is often a case abusing our civil rights to protect the careless businesses which leave themselves open to industrial espionage and robbery. This is a case of eliminating the Bill of Rights in order to protect government civil servants who allegedly work for us.

Why should citizens be treated like thieves and criminals because governments, corporations and businesses want to shut the barn door after their carelessness allowed the horse to escape?

Responding to an increase in the number of attacks against computer systems in Great Britain George Osborne, a government official said:

Clearly up-to-date security software has an important part to play in all this, but I would recommend that the British government also takes a close look at its computers and applications to ensure that they are properly patched against vulnerabilities.

In his keynote address on cyber security. ‘George Osborne MP, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, has said that British government computers are on the receiving end of over 20,000 malicious email attacks every month.” MORE

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