Why the Net is Poised to Become a Global Weapon of Mass Deception

[Guest guest]

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/05/con06169.html

 

May 1, 2006

 

The Great American Firewall: Why the Net is Poised to Become a Global

Weapon of Mass Deception

 

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

by Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D.

 

 

Hindsight is often touted as better than foresight, yet such a truism

should not blind us to an imminent threat before it happens. Like

someone who takes up with an abusive mate and rationalizes the threat

to life and limb until the battering leaves undeniable, indelible

scars, there are good reasons right now to expect the worst when it

comes to the survival of the free Internet. Now unfolding is a

legal-political-corporate plot for turning a vibrant, democratic

Internet into a global web of corporate and government deceit. The

tell-tale signs exist but as in domestic abuse, the perpetrators

(federal government and a small group of interconnected, powerful

telecom and mainstream media monopolies) have done their utmost to

keep it hidden behind closed doors.

 

Under the veil of a virtual mainstream media blackout, on June 27,

2005, the United States Supreme Court granted giant cable companies

like Comcast and Verizon the legal right to dominate and control the

Internet. It ruled that broadband Internet was an information service

like cable TV rather than an interactive telecommunication service

like the telephone (National Cable & Telecommunications Association

vs. Brand X Internet Services). This gave these behemoths the green

light to exclude Independent Service Providers (ISPs) from using their

pipes, thereby laying the foundation for a corporate dominated and

controlled Internet. Succinctly, in controlling the conduit of

communication across the Internet, these companies now had acquired

the legal right to control the content (Web of Deceit: How Internet

Freedom Got the Federal Ax, And Why Corporate News Censored the

Story). Moreover, in writing this decision, the Court also left the

door open for telephone companies like ATT to control telephone modem

connectivity to the Internet. As a result, just three weeks after the

decision was handed down, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

seized the opportunity to grant this right, effectively ushering in

the beginning of the end of free-access Internet.

 

The Supreme Court ultimately rested its decision on its own Chevron

ruling which held that courts should defer to government agencies,

such as the FCC on matters of statutory interpretation so long as the

statute in question was ambiguous and the agency's interpretation was

reasonable. Despite the fact that there was unambiguous, prior

precedent for considering the Internet to be a telecommunication

service rather than an information service (AT & T Corporation vs.

Portland); and despite the fact that treating an interactive service

such as the Internet like a one-way, cable TV station defied

rationality, it still deferred to the FCC, which sought to interpret

the Internet as an information service.

 

Brand X has now set the legal stage for a further maneuver in the

dismal saga of the declining free Internet. Now in Congress, under

extreme pressure by telecom lobbies, is a pending house bill

introduced by Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) entitled the

" Communications Opportunity Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006. "

This Act includes a " Title II- Enforcement of Broadband Policy

Statement " that states the FCC " shall have exclusive authority to

adjudicate any complaint alleging a violation of the broadband policy

statement or the principles incorporated therein. " With the passage of

this provision the FCC would no longer have to rely on Chevron to

attain deference. Instead, it would be given a blank check to enforce

its own mandates. This would mean that courts would have scant

authority to challenge and overturn its decisions.

 

Unfortunately, the FCC harbors a political bias that makes granting it

this authority dangerous. Under the direction of former FCC Chair

Michael Powell, and now under its current chair, Kevin Martin, the FCC

has moved toward increased deregulation of telecom and media

companies, and there is now little reason to expect that this trend

will reverse. The consequence is the thickening of the plot to

increase corporate control of the Internet.

 

Presently, behemoth telecom corporations like Comcast, Verizon, and

AT & T are poised to set up toll booths on the Internet. According to

this plan, only content providers with deep pockets would be given

optimum Internet connectivity. This would leave the rest of the

Internet community running slowly or not at all. The net result would

be the demise of Internet neutrality. No longer would all of us have

an equal voice within the freest and most comprehensive democratic

forum ever devised by humankind. This would accordingly be yet a

further maneuver in the gradual dismantling of the free, democratic

Internet.

 

Indisputably, the Internet is currently on a path of becoming an

extension of the corporate media, owned and operated by a few giant

corporations that control the information Americans receive. This

erosive trend threatens to infect the Internet just as it has radio,

broadcast, and cable TV. The transition, however, has not been

politically benign. Rather, big money has teamed with neoconservative

politics to usher in an age in which quid pro quo between mainstream

media corporations and government largely define what Americans see

and hear.

 

Nor is this trend as regards the Internet without chilling precedent

in other nations marred with dictatorship, notably China. There, a

" Great Firewall " has been erected by the Chinese government around its

Internet. Accordingly, sights considered " subversive " -- which is

anything of which it disapproves -- are slowed down and/or phased out.

The recent cooperation of Google with the Chinese government in

creating Google.cn, a government-censored version of itself, is an

instructive example of how corporate power can yield to the authority

holding the purse strings.

 

If there is no disruption of current trends, the Internet will

predictably fall in line with a rigid program of censorship that will

fundamentally devour the free spirit with which the Internet was

conceived. This has been a net born of a free, interactive, democratic

mission, not a profit-maximizing vehicle of corporations. It is not

surprising therefore that under the auspices of the latter, in concert

with a government with an insatiable appetite for power, which has the

ability to regulate these corporations out of existence, the Internet

would undergo an identity crisis. It is a blatant fallacy to suppose

that profit maximization equates to democracy. To the contrary, in the

present corporate context it equates to the marginalizing of any

perspectives that are not cost effective.

 

In 1997, a neoconservative think tank emerged called The Project for

the New American Century (PNAC). Its main mission has been to promote

corporate globalization and the increase in U.S. military dominance

throughout the world. This includes defeating all regimes opposed to

U.S. corporate interests. In its blueprint of what would be required

for the transition, it stressed the necessity of government control of

the Internet. In one of its documents entitled " Rebuilding America's

Defenses " (2000), the PNAC stated,

 

as with space, access to and use of cyberspace and the Internet

are emerging elements in global commerce, politics and power. Any

nation wishing to assert itself globally must take account of this

other new " global commons. "

 

Speaking of " cyber-war " it stated:

 

Although…the role of the Defense Department in establishing

" control, " or even what " security " on the Internet means, requires a

consideration of a host of legal, moral and political issues, there

nonetheless will remain an imperative to be able to deny America and

its allies' enemies the ability to disrupt or paralyze either the

military's or the commercial sector's computer networks. Conversely,

an offensive capability could offer America's military and political

leaders an invaluable tool in disabling an adversary in a decisive manner.

 

It is mind boggling to think what the terms " control " and " security "

might portend for a militaristic government bent on defeating its

" enemy. " If this seems a stretch from the current political climate,

then it is worth noting that those who have formally endorsed the

mission of the PNAC include familiar figures in the Bush

Administration -- Vice President Dick Cheney; former Chief Advisor to

the Vice President I. Lewis " Scooter " Libby, Jr.; Secretary of Defense

Donald Rumsfeld; and former Deputy Secretary of Defense and current

President of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz, to name just some.

 

From this point in time, in light of the aforementioned legal,

political, and corporate realities, it is not difficult to envision

the broad stages in transforming the Net into a vehicle of world

domination:

 

Corporatize --> Sanitize --> Propagandize --> Militarize (Turn the Net

into a Weapon of Mass Deception) --> Globalize (Enclose the world

inside one Great American Firewall).

 

The further down this slippery slope we travel, the less chance there

will be of turning back!

 

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

 

Elliot D. Cohen is a media ethicist and author of many books and

articles on the media and other areas of applied ethics. His most

recent book on the dangers of corporate media is News Incorporated:

Corporate Media Ownership and Its Threat to Democracy (Prometheus

Books, March 2005).

 

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