Net Neutrality, the FCC, WikiLeaks and the Future of Internet Freedom

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Regardless
of what you think about the Wikileaks release of state secrets,
there’s no debating the astonishing fact that the internet made
these leaks possible. Without the internet, no single organization
such as Wikileaks would have been able to so widely propagate secret
government information and make it public. In the old model of information
distribution – centralized mainstream media newspapers and
news broadcasts – such information would have been tightly
controlled thanks to government pressure.

But the internet
allows individual information publishers to bypass the censorship
of government. In the case of Wikileaks, it allowed an Australian
citizen to embarrass the U.S. government while sitting at a laptop
computer in the United Kingdom.

Governments
don’t like to be embarrassed. They don’t like their secrets aired
on the internet. Sure, it’s okay for governments to tap all of your
secrets by monitoring your phone calls, emails and web browsing
habits, but every government seeks to protect its own secrets at
practically any cost. That’s why the upshot of this Wikileaks release
may be that governments will now start to look for new ways to
censor and control the internet
in order to prevent such information
leaks from happening in the future.

What governments
around the world are suddenly beginning to realize is that a
free internet is ultimately incompatible with government secrets
,
and secrets are essential to any government that wants to remain
in power. That’s because, as even Noam Chomsky stated in this DemocracyNow
video interview,
most government secrets are based on information governments wouldn’t
want their people to discover – secrets that might threaten
the legitimacy of government if the people found out the truth.

How the FCC
plans to seize authority over the internet

As part of a long-term
plan to control content on the internet, the FCC is now attempting
to assert authority over the internet in the same way it has long
exercised content censorship authority over broadcast television and
radio.

The reason
you can’t say those seven dirty words on broadcast television, in
other words, is because the FCC controls broadcast television
content
and can simply revoke the broadcast licenses of any
television station that refuses to comply. This is the same tactic,
in the internet world, of yanking a web site’s domain name, which
the Department of Homeland Security has already begun doing over
the last several weeks
.

The FCC also
controls content on the radio and can yank the broadcast licenses
of any radio stations that refuse to comply with its content censorship.
This is why operators of “pirate radio stations” are dealt with
so harshly: For the government to allow any radio station to operate
outside its censorship and control is to invite dissent.

The internet,
of course, has been operating freely and without any real government
censorship for roughly two decades. In that time, it has grown to
be what is arguably the most influential medium in the world for
information distribution. Most importantly, the internet is the
medium of information freedom
that is not controlled by any
government.

The U.S. government
wants to change all that, and they’ve dispatched the FCC to reign
in the “freedoms” of the internet.

How to crush
internet Free Speech

The first step
to the FCC’s crushing of internet freedom is to assert authority
over the internet
by claiming to run the show. The FCC, of course,
has no legal authority over the internet. It was only granted authority
in 1934 over broadcast communications in the electromagnetic
spectrum – you know, radio waves and antennas, that kind of thing.

There is nothing
in the Communications Act of 1934 that grants the FCC any authority
over the internet because obviously the internet didn’t exist then,
and it would have been impossible for lawmakers in the 1930’s to
imagine the internet as it operates today.

So instead
of following the law, the FCC is trying to “fake” its way into
false authority over the internet
by claiming authority in the
current “net neutrality” debate. By asserting its authority with
net neutrality, the FCC will establish a beachhead of implied
authority from which it can begin to control and censor the
internet.

This is why
“net neutrality” is a threat to internet freedom. It’s not because
of anything to do with net neutrality itself, but rather with the
FCC’s big power grab in its assertion that it has authority over
websites just like it has authority over broadcast radio.

The FCC may
soon tell you what you can post on the internet

Where is this
all heading? Once the FCC establishes a foothold on the ‘net, it can
then assert that it has the power to tell you what to post on the
internet
. Here’s how it might unfold:

First, the
FCC will simply ban what it calls “information traitors,” which
will include people like Julian Assange (Wikileaks) who publish
state secrets. (Technically Julian Assange can’t be a traitor since
he’s not even American in the first place, but don’t expect the
FCC to care about this distinction.)

Once the public
is comfortable with that, the FCC will advance its agenda to include
“information terrorists” which will include anything posted about
Ron Paul, the federal reserve and the counterfeit money supply,
G. Edward Griffin, or anything from true U.S. patriots who defend
the Constitution. The anti-state website www.LewRockwell.com
(where some of my own articles have appeared from time to time)
would also be immediately banned because its information is so dangerous
to government control.

After that
censorship is in place, the FCC will likely begin to push the
corporate agenda
by banning websites that harm the profits of
large corporations. This will include, of course, websites like
NaturalNews.com which teach people about health freedom,
nutritional cures, natural remedies and alternatives to Big Pharma’s
high-profit pharmaceuticals.

The way this
will come about is that the FCC may require a license to publish
health
information
on the web
, in much the same way that states
currently license doctors
to practice medicine. This is how conventional medicine has operated
its monopoly for so long, by the way: By controlling the licensing
of doctors at the state level. Any doctor who dares prescribe nutritional
supplements or suggest that medication might be harmful to a patient
immediately gets stripped of his license to practice medicine (and
thereby put out of business). The FCC will likely do the same thing
across the internet. Sites that publish health information without
a license will be deemed “a threat to public health” and be seized
by the government.

The first
target? Anti-vaccine websites. Vaccines are so crucial to the continuation
of disease and medical enslavement in America that any site questioning
the current vaccine mythology will be deemed a threat to public
health – or perhaps even a “terrorism” organization.

Essentially,
once the FCC has gained power and authority over the internet, it
will use that power to push a Big Government / Big Business agenda
that censors the truth, keeps people trapped in a system of disinformation,
and silences anyone who challenges the status quo.

The FCC
is poised to become the FDA
of internet information
, banning alternative speech and enforcing
an information monopoly engineered by powerful corporations.

Think of the
FCC as the new the Ministry
of Truth
from George Orwell’s novel 1984.

This is not
about net neutrality, it’s about the FCC power grab

Remember, I am
not arguing here for or against the principle of net
neutrality itself, but rather warning about the FCC’s imposition of
false authority over the internet in the first place. The idea of
net neutrality has merits, but granting the FCC the power to control
the internet is a disastrously bad idea that will only end in censorship
and “information tyranny” – especially now that governments around
the world are witnessing the “dangers” of information freedom via
the Wikileaks fiasco.

If there’s
one thing governments hate, it’s real freedom. Sure, they all talk
about freedom and publicly claim their allegiance to it, but behind
the scenes what they really want is total information control.
That’s because freedom gives people the ability to say what they
want, to whomever they want, and even to oppose the doctrine of
the government.

Just look
at China and how it has censored the internet to the point where
you can’t even log in to Facebook from that country.

Governments
hate freedom because freedom threatens centralized power and control
over the People
. And because governments hate freedom, they
also hate the internet as long as it’s free.
This is why bloggers and internet journalists are right now imprisoned
all over the world for merely posting the truth.

As Noam Chomsky
said in his DemocracyNow interview (link above), what the recent
Wikileaks releases really show is that the U.S. government has “a
profound hatred for democracy.”

It also happens
to have a profound hatred for actual freedom, because people who
are free to think for themselves and write whatever they want are
always going to be a threat to a government that wants people to
conform, obey and acquiesce.

All government
agencies seek to expand their power

What do the FCC,
FDA, TSA, DEA, FTC and USDA all have in common?

They all
want more power.
They want more authority, bigger budgets and
more control over the world around them. They are like cancer tumors,
growing in size and toxicity while they consume more and more by
stealing resources from a healthy host. The bigger these cancer
tumors become, the more dangerous they become to the health of the
host body, and the more urgently they need to be held in check or
excised from the body entirely.

There is no
such thing as a government agency that wants to be smaller, with
shrinking budgets and fewer employees on the taxpayer payroll. Government
departments – just like people – incessantly seek more
power even at the expense of freedom among those they claim to serve.
And this move by the FCC to assume control over the internet is
one of the most dangerous power grabs yet witnessed in the short
history of the information age.

By the way,
one of the reasons we created and launched www.NaturalNews.TV
was because we wanted a video site that could not be turned off
by YouTube
. You’ve probably heard the horror stories of famous
content producers like Alex Jones having their YouTube accounts
suddenly terminated. NaturalNews.TV
is a safe haven for alternative health content that cannot
be turned off by a large corporation that doesn’t recognize the
value of health freedom.

Feel free
to participate by uploading videos or viewing the many thousands
of free videos available right now at www.NaturalNews.TV

By the way,
I recommend reading another outstanding article
on this topic
written by John Naughton at The Guardian
. Here’s a taste
of what he writes:

Consider,
for instance, how the views of the US administration have changed
in just a year. On 21 January, secretary of state Hillary Clinton
made a landmark speech about internet freedom, in Washington DC,
which many people welcomed and most interpreted as a rebuke to China
for its alleged cyberattack on Google. “Information has never been
so free,” declared Clinton. “Even in authoritarian countries, information
networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments
more accountable.”

She went on
to relate how, during his visit to China in November 2009, Barack
Obama had “defended the right of people to freely access information,
and said that the more freely information flows the stronger societies
become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens
to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and
encourages creativity.” Given what we now know, that Clinton speech
reads like a satirical masterpiece.

Reprinted
with permission from Natural
News
.

Mike Adams is a natural health author and award-winning
journalist. He has authored and published thousands of articles,
interviews, consumers’ guides, and books on topics like health and
the environment. He is the editor of Natural
News
.