> 2. Communication and publication can’t be censored. Wikileaks, the Arab Spring, and Snowden’s revelations all depend on governments being unable to prevent mass dissemination of information.
I'm a little scared that if things are allowed to continue, the NSA will get such deep level access to the web, that they will be able to censor information anywhere, in real time. They already say they want to be the "anti-virus of the Internet" or something along those lines. If they will ever be able to do what they claim now, then they'll probably be able to censor information, too.
I don't know if they actually have that capability or not, but at least that's what they say when they lobby the government for new laws and bigger budgets.
So think about what happened in DoD, where they said employees can't read TheGuardian because their computers don't have the clearance level required to learn about those things. Now extend that to the world (given that they have the capability).
How hard would it be for them to say "sorry, world Internet users - you don't have the required clearance level to view those leaked documents", and censor the information for everyone. What happened with the Snowden leaks now, simply won't be possible anymore in the future, if their power over the Internet becomes that great.
Indeed, real-time data mining is very interesting, however real-time data manipulation is far more sinister. Imagine for a moment if the middle eastern governments could "detect" when an Arab Spring is happening and they had systems that would autonomously respond by (for example) spreading propaganda and censoring popular pages.
The anti-virus comparison is a misnomer as it stands to reason that such systems would be more akin to intrusion detection systems (IDSs) or intrusion prevention systems (IPSs) that are actively monitoring and isolating certain system resources and services.
The UK Government has already considered shutting down Twitter when it needs to [1] and I Think it's common knowledge that certain cell towers are turned off when a local hot spot of political action pops up (Occupy).
If you remove a person's ability to access information, that's the same as censorship.
While scary, I think such a system is a long ways off. It's one thing to siphon raw bits flowing through an IXP for later analysis, and another entirely to censor specific pieces of content based on keywords(assuming of course you can't or don't want to simply censor entire domains). It would require a pretty cozy relationship between government and telecoms(already in place in some countries, of course) in the form of some staff to keep afoot of new content that may need to be censored. Automating that part implies that the government would have a list of sensitive, potentially damning subjects that are not publicly known in order to preemptively censor them.
Replacing that content with propaganda would be even more complex(and potentially vulnerable to discovery).
> I'm a little scared that if things are allowed to continue, the NSA will get such deep level access to the web, that they will be able to censor information anywhere, in real time.
Instead of actively censoring or manipulating information, I imagine they could certainly just make it go away.
Let's say you an I are emailing or texting back and forward about a particular leak or topic, surely the NSA could make some of those emails/texts never be delivered, thus severing our line of communication. If they were picky about this, I would just think you never replied, not that someone was manipulating our communication channel.
I'm a little scared that if things are allowed to continue, the NSA will get such deep level access to the web, that they will be able to censor information anywhere, in real time. They already say they want to be the "anti-virus of the Internet" or something along those lines. If they will ever be able to do what they claim now, then they'll probably be able to censor information, too.
I don't know if they actually have that capability or not, but at least that's what they say when they lobby the government for new laws and bigger budgets.
So think about what happened in DoD, where they said employees can't read TheGuardian because their computers don't have the clearance level required to learn about those things. Now extend that to the world (given that they have the capability).
How hard would it be for them to say "sorry, world Internet users - you don't have the required clearance level to view those leaked documents", and censor the information for everyone. What happened with the Snowden leaks now, simply won't be possible anymore in the future, if their power over the Internet becomes that great.