[mdlug-discuss] Anti Censorship

[Peter Bart]

On Mon, 2011-02-07 at 14:51 -0500, Ingles, Raymond wrote: 
> > From: Garry Stahl
> 
> > In consideration of the events in Egypt, and the fact that Congress
> has
> > put an Internet "kill switch" back on the table; we the Geek community
> > have to ask ourselves what proactive measures are we going to take to
> > prevent the censorship of information in the United States?
> 
> As Aaron points out, too much business depends on the Internet these
> days for the U.S. government to attempt a widespread shutdown. Try to
> think of an industry that wouldn't be substantially hampered if not
> fatally crippled by an Internet cutoff.
> 
> Partial shutdowns are possible, but difficult to make effective. Many
> people connect via multiple alternate routes. For example, the
> government would have to shut down *two* ISPs to seriously impact my
> ability to communicate (my cable provider and my cell service). Even
> then, I have a modem or two I could bust out, assuming I still had phone
> service.

Where would you connect to? I'm assuming to something like Fidonet? Just
curious. 

> The more salient threat is focused takedowns of particular sites. Like
> is happening with torrent sites now:
> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110202/23363812934/senator-wyden-asks
> -wtf-is-up-with-homeland-security-domain-seizures.shtml
> 
> Of course, not everyone agrees with this analysis:
> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/07/014258/Internet-Is-Easy-Prey-For-
> Governments
> 
> And then there are people working on more technical,
> infrastructure-level approaches:
> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/07/1436243/US-Has-Secret-Tools-To-F
> orce-Internet-On-Dictatorships
> 
>  Sincerely,
> 
>  Ray Ingles       

That's some very interesting and a little scary reading. 
-- 
Best Regards,

Peter The Plumber