Tag: Internet

  • Obama demands power to shut down Internet and access private data during "emergencies"

    If anyone out there still thinks that Obama is any improvement over Bush on Constitutional rights, they must be delusional if they persist in that belief after reading this: Mother Jones: The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) gives the president the ability to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in…

  • Support Tor: fight Internet censorship

    Unless you are utterly ignorant of the outside world, you have heard that the government of China actively monitors and censors its citizen’s access to the Internet.  Its tight grip on Internet services is part of an overall policy of brutal suppression of free expression and human rights in China, including organ harvesting, mass murder,…

  • FCC rewards piracy in the name of "net neutrality"

    According to Ars Technica, yesterday the FCC ordered Comcast to stop slowing down the Internet traffic of users who use excessive file-sharing (P2P) software.  Instead, Comcast will slow down the Internet service of all users who use a lot of traffic, regardless of the content.  Other ISP’s will probably follow Comcast’s lead. Basically, this order…

  • How the World was Wired

    If you’ve heard about the recent submarine cable outages, you might enjoy reading this fascinating 1996 article by science fiction genius Neal Stephenson on the first world-spanning fiber-optic network.  It includes some background on the brilliant and daring 19th century inventors and entrepreneurs who created the first world-spanning communications networks.  I’ve been reading it for…