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Al Franken: The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time:

“Imagine if Comcast customers couldn’t watch Netflix, but were limited only to Comcast’s Video On Demand service. Imagine if a cable news network could get its website to load faster on your computer than your favorite local political blog. Imagine if big corporations with their own agenda could decide who wins or loses online. The Internet as we know it would cease to exist.

That’s why net neutrality is the most important free speech issue of our time. And that’s why, this Tuesday, when the FCC meets to discuss this badly flawed proposal, I’ll be watching. If they approve it as is, I’ll be outraged. And you should be, too.”

 

A Bayesian Take on Julian Assange – NYTimes.com:

“The handling of the case has been highly irregular from the start, in ways that would seem to make clear that the motivation for bringing the charges is political.”

 

Breaking News on EFF Victory: Appeals Court Holds that Email Privacy Protected by Fourth Amendment | Electronic Frontier Foundation:

“Given the fundamental similarities between email and traditional forms of communication [like postal mail and telephone calls], it would defy common sense to afford emails lesser Fourth Amendment protection…. It follows that email requires strong protection under the Fourth Amendment; otherwise the Fourth Amendment would prove an ineffective guardian of private communication, an essential purpose it has long been recognized to serve…. [T]he police may not storm the post office and intercept a letter, and they are likewise forbidden from using the phone system to make a clandestine recording of a telephone call–unless they get a warrant, that is. It only stands to reason that, if government agents compel an ISP to surrender the contents of a subscriber’s emails, those agents have thereby conducted a Fourth Amendment search, which necessitates compliance with the warrant requirement….”

I still don’t think it is a bad idea to encrypt your emails…

“Questions to consider:

Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?

Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?

Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?

Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?

Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?

Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.”

(Via Huffington Post - Ron Paul Defends WikiLeaks On House Floor (VIDEO)🙂

The crux of the WikiLeaks debate – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

“but this segment, in my view, really highlights the core disputes — and many of the misconceptions and falsehoods — at the heart of this controversy, one that I think will be seen as easily one of the most important political developments of the last several years”

Take a look at this one…

I’ve been following the wikileaks story pretty closely, but I’m less interested in what they’re releasing and more interested in what wikileaks means for the future of free speech here and elsewhere.

I don’t think it is an understatement to say that wikileaks will shake the American foundation of “free speech” and “freedom of the press”.

When you have potential a presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, saying that Assange should be tried for treason and executed, you know we’ve got a problem. (Can’t be tried for treason, not an American citizen. But I guess you can’t give Huckabee too much credit for being an idiot, since a recent poll suggests 51% of Americans (and Glenn Beck) want leakers tried for treason, but I digress)

How many of those tea partiers are standing up for Assange? Not many.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t fight corruption by fighting to hide corruption. You can’t fight government intrusion by not allowing the light to shine on government oversteps.

You can’t be for the free markets if you aren’t for free information.

And I guess I now agree with Ron Paul on something…

Ron Paul stands up for Julian Assange – Andy Barr – POLITICO.com

“‘In a free society we’re supposed to know the truth,’ Paul said. ‘In a society where truth becomes treason, then we’re in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it.’”

-Ron Paul

The tech community, which should be for open and free access to information, has failed us, says Dave Winer.

Scripting News: A perfect Wikileaks storm for Berkman:

“We now understand that we can’t look to the tech industry or even the Library of Congress. The tech industry more or less failed the neutrality test, and the LOC has failed the unwritten code of librarians everywhere.”

-Dave Winer

And if you want to hear from the man himself, Julian Assange, I suggest the following interview. It is pretty comprehensive.

An Interview with Julian Assange – Forbes.com

In a rare, two-hour interview conducted in London on November 11, Assange said that he’s still sitting on a trove of secret documents, about half of which relate to the private sector. And WikiLeaks’ next target will be a major American bank. “It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume,” he said, adding: “For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails.”

also, on being a “computer hacker”

“There’s a deliberate attempt to redefine what we’re doing not as publishing, which is protected in many countries, or the journalist activities, which is protected in other ways, as something which doesn’t have a protection, like computer hacking, and to therefore split us off from the rest of the press and from these legal protections. It’s done quite deliberately by some of our opponents. It’s also done because of fear, from publishers likeThe New York Times that they’ll be regulated and investigated if they include our activities in publishing and journalism.”

-Julian Assange

 

If I could have all of my friends and family really understand one “technology” thing I am passionate about, it would probably be net neutrality. Net Neutrality is fundamental to the way the web has developed thus far, and I’m afraid that most people just don’t know or don’t care anymore to know when it is being threatened.

Internet access in America is actually quite poor compared to other developed countries. As mentioned in the following article, Finland has made 1mbps internet access a basic right of citizenship. We pay more money for slower access than most other developed countries. (Sounds like our health care system, eh?)

Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web, has written an article in Scientific American that I hope you’ll take a look at.

Like Democracy Itself, It Needs Defending: “Long Live the Web — An impassioned plea to actively support openness on the Web from Tim Berners-Lee.

‘The principle of universality allows the Web to work no matter what hardware, software, network connection or language you use and to handle information of all types and qualities. This principle guides Web technology design.

Technical standards that are open and royalty-free allow people to create applications without anyone’s permission or having to pay. Patents, and Web services that do not use the common URIs for addresses, limit innovation.

Threats to the Internet, such as companies or governments that interfere with or snoop on Internet traffic, compromise basic human network rights.

Web applications, linked data and other future Web technologies will flourish only if we protect the medium’s basic principles.’

(Via MetaFilter.)