The Long Goodbye of Internet Freedom Heralded by CISA
January 8, 2016
The article on MotherBoard titled Internet Freedom Is Actively Dissolving in America paints a bleak picture of our access to the “open internet.” In spite of the net neutrality win this year, broadband adoption is decreasing, and the number of poor Americans forced to choose between broadband and smartphone internet is on the rise. In addition to these unfortunate trends,
“Congress and President Obama made the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act a law by including it in a massive budget bill (as an extra gift, Congress stripped away some of the few privacy provisions in what many civil liberties groups are calling a “surveillance bill”)… Finally, the FBI and NSA have taken strong stands against encryption, one of the few ways that activists, journalists, regular citizens, and yes, criminals and terrorists can communicate with each other without the government spying.”
What this means for search and for our access to the Internet in general, is yet to be seen. The effects of security laws and encryption opposition will obviously be far-reaching, but at what point do we stop getting the information that we need to be informed citizens?
And when you search, if it is not findable, does the information exist?
Chelsea Kerwin, January 8, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph