Surveillance means safety. This is the argument wherever and whenever governments seek new powers to monitor their citizens. Proposed legislation in the UK to enable police and intelligence services to access emails, Skype calls and Facebook messages is another such example. It is also another case of the unnecessary and dangerous expansion of state power, in collaboration with companies, into our online – and offline – lives.

SOPA replacement uses child porn as excuse to spy on 99.7 percent of Americans SOPA author Lamar Smith pushing bill to make web sites track every user's every move

The SOPA and PIPA bills that went down in flames earlier this year for their unbearable intrusiveness, used content piracy as an excuse to give the government powerful tools with which to censor Internet content.

The government wants to use Google to block "Conspiracy Theory" web sites, and we can all be sure if this happens Free Talk Live will shortly be named a "Conspiracy Theory" web site.

When sites like Wikipedia and Reddit banded together for a major blackout January 18th, the impact was felt all the way to Washington D.C. The blackout had lawmakers running from the controversial anti-piracy legislation, SOPA and PIPA, which critics said threatened freedom of speech online.

Unfortunately for free-speech advocates, these pieces of legislation are not the only laws which threaten an open internet.

Few people have heard of ACTA

MPAA is unhappy with the planned blackout of major sites in protest of SOPA. Wait, isn't that what they are trying to do? So...they are upset because THEY are not doing the blacking out??

The biggest worry is likely to be this: That this program sets out to accomplish the same aims as the National ID scheme. Difference is, rather than trying to get the states to do the heavy lifting, Washington is going to try and compel private companies to do it.
So a campaign has already started to convince Americans to trust the government on this. (insert canned laughter here)

Full disclosure, it was me, and I was fired THROUGH Facebook

Think Google and Facebook know a lot about you now? The IRS? Wait until they start exchanging tax returns, search engine history, medical, photos, etc.

Website hosting company GoDaddy has officially voiced its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Bill in 2012, which is designed to thwart movie and music piracy on the Internet by empowering copyright holders to effectively shut down websites or online services found with infringing material. If passed, the U.S. government could blacklist any website it deems in violation of copyright, which could range from a few posts in a Web forum to a few links sent in an e-mail.

New allegations coming out that the supporters of SOPA in fact are culpible of promoting the copyright infringment of their own materials over several years.