Houston Area Liberty Campaign

[From PrisonPlanet.com, by Paul Joseph Watson, story here.]

President Obama will be handed the power to shut down the Internet for at least four months without Congressional oversight if the Senate votes for the infamous Internet ‘kill switch’ bill, which was approved by a key Senate committee yesterday and now moves to the floor.

The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which is being pushed hard by Senator Joe Lieberman, would hand absolute power to the federal government to close down networks, and block incoming Internet traffic from certain countries under a declared national emergency.

Despite the Center for Democracy and Technology and 23 other privacy and technology organizations sending letters to Lieberman and other backers of the bill expressing concerns that the legislation could be used to stifle free speech, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed in the bill in advance of a vote on the Senate floor.

In response to widespread criticism of the bill, language was added that would force the government to seek congressional approval to extend emergency measures beyond 120 days. Still, this would hand Obama the authority to shut down the Internet on a whim without Congressional oversight or approval for a period of no less than four months.

The Senators pushing the bill rejected the claim that the bill was a ‘kill switch’ for the Internet, not by denying that Obama would be given the authority to shut down the Internet as part of this legislation, but by arguing that he already had the power to do so.
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Read remainder of story here.

[Story by HALC.us staff.]

A federal appeals court issued an opinion on Tuesday, April 6 that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Justice Department (DOJ) do not have authority to manage network practices of internet service providers (ISPs).  (The case granted a Petition for Review for Petitioner, Comcast, and vacated the prior Order.  The DC Circuit found that the FCC did not have the authority that it claimed to be using to regulate ISPs. This decision calls into question the FCC’s authority to regulate any ISP or do anything to protect consumers on the Internet.

This case was brought forth on the concept of net neutrality, a concept in which companies perating telecommunications networks shouldn’t be able to play favorites with content being transmitted over their networks.  For example, one movie company shouldn’t be able make a deal with Verizon to get preferential treatment and have its movies download quicker than another movie company. If/when that does happen, then those companies are influencing your decisions by allowing one service to operate better than a similar service in which the carrier does not have a financial interest.

Net neutrality is a holdover from the Communications Act of 1934, which prohibited telephone companies from playing favorites. However, in 2005 the FCC changed its rules so that some services, such as Internet services, would be exempt from those consumer protections.

In 2006, the “net neutrality” was included by the FCC in the agreement that allowed AT&T to buy BellSouth.  In part, the agreement stated:

“AT&T/BellSouth also commits that it will maintain a neutral network and neutral routing in its wireline broadband Internet access service. This commitment shall be satisfied by AT&T/BellSouth’s agreement not to provide or to sell to Internet content, application, or service providers, including those affiliated with AT&T/BellSouth, any service that privileges, degrades or prioritizes any packet transmitted over AT&T/BellSouth’s wireline broadband Internet access service based on its source, ownership or destination.”

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If you haven’t heard of net neutrality yet, it’s time to get familiar with it. According to Wikipedia, Net Neutrality is defined as, “a principle proposed for residential broadband networks and potentially for all networks. A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.”

In other words, a free and open internet for everyone. We WANT net neutrality. We DONT want net neutrality regulation.

There are forces at play that wish to control and regulate the content on the internet. This would limit the free environment that allows for breathtaking innovation and competition that we’ve seen on the web. Just recently, Democratic Congressman Markey introduced HR 3458, “The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009″.

This bill has been introduced with the goal being to, “establish a national broadband policy, safeguard consumer rights, spur investment and innovation, and for related purposes.” (emphasis added)

The logic goes like this, “To keep the internet free and innovative, we need to place controls on it.” Riiight…

Hear what our friend, Shelly Roche has to say about it.

Markey’s campaign contributions on OpenSecrets

From Campaign For Liberty

From Tech Liberation: It’s no coincidence that the Internet, a sanctuary of governmental restraint, has spawned such unparalleled innovation. In the relentlessly fast-moving digital age, regulatory intervention is a recipe for entrenching the status-quo.

From Digital Society: The US leads the world in innovation on the Internet and all of its related technologies and continues to do so under the current regulatory regime. Yet in the absence of market failure or any materialization of dire predictions from Net Neutrality regulation advocates 3 years ago, why is now a good time to pass radical new changes to the regulatory landscape to enforce an experimental version of the Internet that has never been tried? Why destroy existing business models that have flourished on the Internet today in favor of hypothetical businesses that may never materialize?

NOW (National Organization for Women) supports HR 3458:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/25/national-organizatio-1.html