Free Talk Live

The move to shut down and regulate the Internet under a new government-controlled system has accelerated into high gear with the announcement that the government’s cybersecurity strategy revolves around issuing Internet users with ID “tokens” without which they will not be able to visit websites, the latest salvo against web freedom which, in combination with Senator Joe Lieberman’s ‘kill switch’ bill, will serve to eviscerate the free Internet as we know it.

The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.

For years, China’s net nannies turned the other cheek to a loophole in their vast online censorship apparatus. Anyone who wanted access to blocked overseas websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and more recently, the New York Times, need only download foreign software called a virtual private network (VPN) to circumvent the Great Firewall. But in recent weeks, even these tools have begun to falter, frustrating tech-savvy Chinese and foreign businesspeople who now struggle to access Internet sites as innocuous as gmail.com and imdb.com.

When it really matters to them, Congressmembers can come together -- with a panache and wry wit you didn't know they had. As banned books week gets underway, and President Obama admonishes oppressive regimes for their censorship of the Internet, a group of powerful Senators -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- have signed onto a bill that would vastly expand the government's power to censor the Internet.

Through domain seizures, ISP blockades, search engine censorship, and cutting funding of allegedly copyright infringing websites, the bill takes Internet censorship to the next level. The U.S. Government is determined to put an end to online piracy. In an attempt to give copyright holders and the authorities all the tools required to disable access to so-called rogue sites, lawmakers will soon introduce the PROTECT IP Act.

Owned & Operated is a mosaic of the world through the lens of the internet. Showing our lives as consumers, under the thumbs of privileged individuals and their methods of control. But the world is awakening, and the experience is something outside the normal rules of social interaction, causing excitement in those who are not served by the current system... and fear in those who are pampered by it.

Internet activist group Anonymous has brought down Australian government websites in protest against internet filtering and pornography censorship laws.

The researchers claim the system, called Telex, would thwart Internet censorship and make it virtually impossible for a censoring government to block individual sites by essentially turning the entire web into a proxy server.

I have a feeling that with recent events in places like Iran, and current events in Egypt, a decentralized Internet is going to be in huge demand. Especially if the government of bigger countries, like the U.S., get their ‘off-switch.’

There are 3 projects in the works to make this dream a reality -- one of which was directly inspired by events in Egypt, and seems to be a well-funded undertaking.