Pay attention the protester at 0:45 and his wholly secular message, contrary to CNN’s Muslim Brotherhood spin.

Great photo collections here and here. Also, this video of protesters crossing a bridge and cops giving way before them demonstrates the scope of these protests.

There’s a good protest timeline on Al Jazeera, which is usually better than CNN.

What do the protesters want? Don’t ask Biden.

The White House may stand behind the protesters in Tunisia, but demonstrators in Egypt haven’t gotten the presidential blessing. Appearing on PBS NewHour last night, gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden remarked that he doesn’t consider Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak a dictator—despite his 29-year rule—and isn’t sure what exactly protesters want.

(source)

I wonder how much of the US’s luke warm view of the protests has to do with the Israel Lobby. I can imagine them wanting a tyrant whom the US more or less controls over a popular movement.

Obviously, government repression doesn’t like internet freedom of information. By the way:

Internet ‘kill switch’ bill will return
A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a “national cyberemergency,” and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year. . . . Portions of the Lieberman-Collins bill, which was not uniformly well-received when it became public in June 2010, became even more restrictive when a Senate committee approved a modified version on December 15. The full Senate did not act on the measure. (Read more from news.cnet.com)

Riot control agents used against the Egyptian protests seem to be Made in the USA. Are you proud, chest-thumbing neo-cons? Wait, don’t answer that.

See Also:
The US government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to equip the Egyptian security forces with high-tech military hardware.

But unless things get really, really bad there, it’s unlikely that any big-ticket American military hardware will be used directly against the Egyptian demonstrators. A selection of Defense Department contracts dating to the mid-1990s reveals weapons sales to Egypt that include a Black Hawk helicopters (Sikorsky), a dizzying variety of missiles (Raytheon), Abrams tanks (General Dynamics), Humvees (AM General Corp.) and all manner of ammunition. . . .

Now, if through some incredible circumstance Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak decides to flee the country, à la Ben Ali, there’s a good chance his first-class flight would come courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Pentagon contracts show that the US government has spent at least $111,160,328 to purchase and maintain Mubarak’s fleet of nine Gulfstream business jets. (For those keeping score, Gulfstream is a subsidiary of General Dynamics.) (Read more from warisbusiness.com)

Intellectual Property helps makes this behavior possible. In an IP-free world, people could more easily abandon a company that cooperates with abusive governments (like ours), but in our world, where ideas are considered property, and imitation can be halted by means of government violence, it is much less likely companies will have a reason to resist such invasive actions.

he US government has subpoenaed Twitter in a bid to support an ongoing criminal investigation into whether Wikileaks and people involved or connected to Wikileaks, including an Icelandic member of parliament, broke the law.

According to Wikileaks lawyer Mark Stephens live on the BBC News a short time ago, it is believed Facebook and Google (see here) have also been contacted regarding Wikileaks members and potential whistleblowers.

Update (12:20am GMT): Mark Stephens on the BBC News also makes clear that the court order will also cover the “600,000 odd followers that Wikileaks has on Twitter“. (Read more from zdnet.com)

Efforts to track down the “Anonymous” group involved in the Operation Payback DDoS attacks have included an FBI raid against a Texas-based server-hosting company according to recent reports.

Other raids have been reported in Germany and British Columbia relating to the attacks, but they don’t appear to have led to any new arrests. So far the arrest of a 16 year old Dutchman for his involvement in the attacks was the only one which has come.

But the documents suggest that the FBI is really keen on tracking down those involved, and has been targeting the IP addresses used in the organization of the attacks. Officials have declined comment on what information was garnered from the seizure of servers involved.

Though “Anonymous” predates the recent high-profile attacks, the organization’s use of a “voluntary botnet” to attack the websites of organizations which have moved against WikiLeaks has garnered them enormous media attention, as well as attention from law enforcement. The group briefly downed the websites of Visa and MasterCard early in December. (Read more from news.antiwar.com)

The Federal Communications Commission is set to begin a move to regulate the Internet.

According to CNSNews.com, by a “3-2 party-line vote on Thursday at the FCC,” the agency “began the formal process of reclassifying the Internet as a telecommunications service instead of an information service — it’s current classification.”

Currently, as an information service, the FCC can exercise only “ancillary” authority, which does not allow it to regulate the Internet directly. If the Internet is reclassified, the agency would gain greater regulatory control.
(Read more from thenewamerican.com)

The introduction of a new Senate bill, S.3480, dubbed the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010,” is sparking concerns about a massive power grab over the Internet under the guise of “national security.”

The bill, proposed by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I – CT) claims the entire Internet, the whole global computer network and everything on it, as a “national asset” of the United States, and seeks to give President Obama the power to seize control over broad swaths of it with no oversight during a “National Cyber Emergency,” which would itself be something the president would be able to declare at any time. (Read more from news.antiwar.com)

Why is it that whenever a bill seems diabolically Orwellian, Joe Lieberman is either sponsor or co-sponsor?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking ways to “reinvent” journalism, and that’s a cause for concern. According to a May 24 draft proposal, the agency thinks government should be at the center of a media overhaul. The bureaucracy sees it as a problem that the Internet has introduced a wealth of information options to consumers, forcing media companies to adapt and experiment to meet changing market needs. FTC’s policy staff fears this new reality.

“There are reasons for concern that experimentation may not produce a robust and sustainable business model for commercial journalism,” the report states. With no faith that the market will work things out for the better, government thinks it must come to the rescue. (Read more from washingtontimes.com)

“Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It’s a historic statement – and nobody has yet grasped its significance.

Not so very long ago, Google disclaimed responsibility for its search results by explaining that these were chosen by a computer algorithm. The disclaimer lives on at Google News, where we are assured that:

The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.

” (Read more from andreworlowski.com)

See Also:
Google ready to pursue its agenda in Washington Its employees supported Obama, and four Googlers served on his transition team. Now the Internet giant hopes to win support for network neutrality and expanding high-speed Internet access. (Read more from latimes.com)

Angus Kidman13 December 2008, 6:38 PM Protest marches were held around Australia today against the Australian government’s internet censorship plans. (from apcmag.com)

-Verizon shuts down access to Usenet
   “Verizon has announced that they will be stopping access to tens of thousands of Usenet discussion areas including the very popular alt.* groups that have been around since the late 1980s.
   Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe said only a select few newsgroups/discussion groups would be offered to customers going into the future. It appears the decision is in response to political ‘strong-arming’ from New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo who wants strong restrictions on all newsgroups.
   Cuomo added that his office had found child porn on at least 88 newsgroups, although that percentage is tiny compared to the over 90,000 newsgroups that exist.”

-Free Nationwide Wi-Fi Network To Censor Political Websites
   “Two competing parties, M2Z Networks and the FCC, are jockeying for the rights to roll out the network, but both have already stated their intent to install filters that block out pornography and anything else deemed ‘harmful’.
   According to a Daily Tech report, ‘Both proposals stipulate that any free wireless offerings have mandatory content filters, preventing users from viewing any material that ‘would be harmful to teens and adolescents,’ including pornography and anything ‘contemporary community standards� deem as obscene. Free-speech advocates call this condition unconstitutional.’”

I predicted this in my Five Predictions for 2008.

When do the Christian Coalition and MoveOn agree? When it comes to restoring Net Neutrality.

This post was motivated by another fantastic Bill Moyers show. Here’s what I learned:

- Cable and Phone companies control our access to the internet. It’s a duopoly.

- In 2002, the FCC ruled that net neutrality laws don’t apply to cable-based service.

- In Aug 2005, the FCC replaced net neutrality RULES with PRINCIPLES. Telephone company executives gained the right to charge for access based on content.

- In June 2007, the House refused to reinstate Net Neutrality.

- Cable/Phone companies want customers to pay for faster access. This sucks, because small users can be forced into slower connections. Legally, they can already decide which websites get fast access. They can censor, as Western Union did when they had a telegraph monopoly, or as the railroad barons did in the shipping industry.

- In 2006-2007, phone companies received tax breaks and price deregulations in exchange for building us a fiber optic network (over 100x faster than copper wire). They took the money and never built it.

- The phone companies didn’t get off their ass until Lafayette Louisiana sold bonds and began building their own network – for price and pride. Cable and Phone companies lobbied like crazy and mired them in lawsuits.

- Cable/Phone companies spend $40 million / year lobbying state capitols, and over $75 million / year on Washington. Some states have passed laws FORBIDDING municipalities from building their own fiber optic networks. Cable/Phone preserve their duopoly with great anti-regulation slogans. (See disinformation technique #4)

- Clinton’s Telecommunications act of 1996 is what allowed massive media conglomeration.

- The National Association of Broadcaster is a corporate lackey that convinced Congress to cut back on supporting local, low-power radio, and lobbied the FCC to get rid of it entirely.

author Eric Klinenberg: “I think what Congress and the FCC understand all too well at this point is that the more open and public and democratic a hearing this issue gets, the less support there is for media consolidation. And so the danger is that Congress and the FCC will rush legislation through before anyone has a chance to really participate. I look for the FCC to be rushing to get legislation passed without a democratic process. I’m very concerned about that. It happened in 2003. There’s every sign that it’s about to happen again. . . . In 2003, the FCC said it would do these kinds of hearings. They started. They then aborted the hearings once it became clear that the message, no more consolidation, was not what the then chairman Michael Powell wanted to hear. And then the commission ignored the public input altogether when it came time to crafting legislation. They got reprimanded by the courts. The order got remanded. It’s now back in play. And the question now is whether these kinds of hearings are democracy for show or whether they’re democracy for real. . . . sadly it looks like the FCC has been working in the interest of the small number of companies its charged with regulating.”

(See Show/Read Transcript)

How Comcast, who has an internet monopoly in parts of the country, and Symantec CENSORED www.afterdowningstreet.org .