Re: [atlarge-discuss] Bill aims to curb Net censorship

["Ron Sherwood" <sherwood@islands.vi>]

Good morning, Jan:

In the world of government double speak, (where going to war is called a
peace mission), to place an "anti-censorship" initiative in the hands of the
Department of Propaganda is an unusually overt action.

Where the statement reads that the mission is to prevent "censoring or
restricting Internet access of their citizens"  one should read "prevent
censoring or restricting access to U.S. propaganda delivered via the
Internet ".

Surely the government could have been less obvious in their intent..... By
making the project part of an MoU with ICANN, perhaps?  :)

By the way, will this "anti-censorship" initiative stop legislation
censoring the posting of "information potentially helpful to terrorists"
(bomb-making techniques, for example) on the Internet? Or, the legislation
that will require all librarians to facilitate government access to records
of what U.S. citizens read and what websites they access from library
computers?

Ron


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan Siren" <sirenj@earthlink.net>
To: <atlarge-discuss@lists.fitug.de>
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 9:48 AM
Subject: Re: [atlarge-discuss] Bill aims to curb Net censorship


> Jeff Williams wrote:
> >
> > All fellow members especially Michael, Abel, Hugh, Sotiris, and Ron,
> >
> >   Can the U.S. government actually stop Internet censorship in
> > other countries? Well, we're all about regime change, after all.
> > A measure approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on
> > Wednesday would create a federal office of Global Internet
> > Freedom and give it $16 million over the next two years. Its
> > mission? To come up with a technical way to stop countries such
> > as China and Myanmar (formerly Burma) from censoring or
> > restricting Internet access of their citizens.
> >
>
> Thanks, Jeff, for bringing this to my attention.  What you said is right
as
> far as it goes, but you should also have mentioned that the bill puts in
> charge of all this the same obscure government bureau that also manages
the
> Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. In my experience that's like
putting
> the fox in charge of the henhouse.  I would have given it to a different
> agency.
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: atlarge-discuss-unsubscribe@lists.fitug.de
> For additional commands, e-mail: atlarge-discuss-help@lists.fitug.de
>


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: atlarge-discuss-unsubscribe@lists.fitug.de
For additional commands, e-mail: atlarge-discuss-help@lists.fitug.de