"Under current legislation, if you are "suspected" of terrorist activity, you can be picked up and held indefinitely, without charges and without access to a lawyer. If your loved ones call to find out where you are or if you are okay, they will be told nothing. After all, to disclose your whereabouts would infringe on your right to privacy. Don't bother clutching your passport to your chest; this law applies to all U.S. citizens.

And, if currently proposed legislation – PATRIOT Act II – passes, you may no longer even be a citizen. Under PATRIOT II, if you attend a legal protest sponsored by an organization the government has listed as "terrorist," you may be deported and your citizenship revoked. This is true even if you are only suspected of terrorist activity and nothing has been proven. More specifically, according to FindLaw's Anita Ramasastry, a U.S. citizen may be expatriated "if, with the intent to relinquish his nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United Stated has designated as a 'terrorist organization.'"

"Your Rights: Use 'EM or Lose 'EM," Rachel Neumann, AlterNet, 5/30/03; See also: "Alaska draws applause for opposing Patriot Act."

"Our beloved land has been fogged with fear—fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich." - Garrison Keillor, In These Times 8/26/04
 

What's at Stake?

"The FCC will vote on June 2m 2003 to change several of its remaining media ownership rules (the rules : the changes). If the rules are relaxed, it will lead to a massive wave of media consolidation. (Click here for a detailed time line showing how the review of the media ownership rules has developed.)

Nationally, it will mean the largest firms will be able to swallow up any other media firms they set their eyes upon, and industry observers all expect a flurry of large deals. At the local level, we should expect a single firm, or perhaps two or three firms, to own the vast majority of the media — daily newspaper, TV stations, radio stations, cable TV system — in a single community. There is enormous profit to be made by having such monopolistic power, and firms are scrambling to get the rules changed so they can dominate markets and crush competition." mediareform.network


"...The Issue is Whether we Want to Live in a Free Society or Whether we Want to Live Under What Amounts to a form of Self-Imposed Totalitarianism, with the Bewildered Herd Marginalized, Directed Elsewhere, Terrified, Screaming Patriotic Slogans, Fearing for Their Lives, and Admiring with Awe the Leader who Saved them from Destruction, While the Educated Masses Goose-Step on Command and Repeat the Slogans They're Supposed to Repeat and the Society Deteriorates at Home. We End Up Serving as a Mercenary Enforcer State, Hoping That others are Going to Pay Us to Smash Up the World." - From: Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, by Noam Chomsky, Seven Stories Press, 10/2002
 

George Orwell. "1984,"
 "The Book:"

"War is important for consuming the products of human labour, if this work would be used to increase the standard of living, the control of the party over the people would decrease. War is the economy basis for a hierarchical society.

There is an emotional need to believe in the ultimate victory of Big Brother.

In becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The continuity of the war guarantees the permanence of the current order. In other words "War is Peace"

There have always been three main grades of society; the High, the Middle and the Low, and no change has brought human equality a millimetre nearer.

Collectivism doesn't lead to socialism. In the event the wealth now belongs to the new "high-class", the bureaucrats and administrators. Collectivism has ensured the permanence of economic inequality.

Wealth is not inherited from person to person, but it is kept within the ruling group.

The masses (proles) are given freedom of thought, because they don't think! A Party member is not allowed the slightest deviation of thought, and there is an elaborate mental training to ensure this, a training that can be summarised in the concept of doublethink."

See Also: Learning to love Big Brother
George W. Bush channels George Orwell
 

"As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from government intrusion. Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects."

Three judge Federal panel in Philadelphia while considering challenges to the Communications Decency Act (CDA)

"As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship."

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority on the CDA Ruling (6/26/97)

"But law has always been based on territory. Now, in cyberspace, we're seeing, in substantial part, the end of geography, and that creates problems."

Stephen Bates, an American lawyer who has make a special study of freedom of speech in cyberspace. (The Independent)

It appears that the profitability of content, advertising and bandwidth providers is tied to their collusion and the lessening of freedom on the Internet.  Greater commercial intrusiveness and consolidation increases the likelihood of political control and monitoring. Who watches the watchmen?  What is commercially "free" may bring about freedom's fall.

From an online article in the Washington Post, 12/31/98: Consumers trade Privacy for Lower Prices: "... Judith W. DeCew, a philosophy professor at Clark University and a privacy analyst, said, the more information databases have about an individual's reading habits, hotel stays and groceries, the more law enforcement authorities want access to the files." "...Susan Fournier, a marketing professor at Harvard University, said she worries about the influence and leverage corporations gain over consumers through the collection of personal information, often without an individual's permission. She said few people ever imagine that the information they share at one company – or with government officials – routinely makes its way to others. Also see, "Privacy Choices: Do You Trust DoubleClick?"

Imagine an Internet of wired fences, where freedom is only found in temporary enclaves, made "suspicious" to Big Government by encryption technology.  It is not that far away.

Lowell Greenberg