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By Gore Vidal
$18.00
By Elliot D. Cohen
$39.10
$13
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According to the BBC, sites like the Iraq League site and Internet tools like Google Earth have become important means of survival in Iraq—helping Iraqis avoid death squads, plan escape routes and guard against attacks.
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Internet social network MySpace has developed a sophisticated national database of sex offenders it uses to police memberships and protect users, many of them minors. On Monday, the company announced it would share the information with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in an effort to aid law enforcement.
(h/t: Sex Drive Daily)
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At a media reform conference in Memphis, the PBS newsman applauded the coalition-building skills of the architects of the Net Neutrality movement. “Who would have imagined that sitting together in the same democratic broadband pew would be the Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Common Cause and MoveOn.org?”
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The Washington Post’s “White House Briefing” columnist argues that mainstream journalists and media organizations will continue their decline into irrelevance if they don’t summon the courage to call BS.
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A CNBC host asked Bush whether he used the most popular search engine on Earth. His response betrayed an unfamiliarity with the Internet not seen in a politician since Sen. Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens spoke out on the subject.
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By Marie Cocco — The GOP’s coverup of Mark Foley’s Internet escapades is actually the party’s least shocking shirking of responsibility.
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cybergeography.org
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The Commerce Department has agreed to lessen its oversight of the Internet, a move celebrated by critics who’ve been campaigning in recent years to internationalize control of the network.
Posted on Oct 1, 2006
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Web surfers in Zimbabwe got a rude surprise today when an international satellite firm basically shut down the country’s Internet access after the government failed to pay a $700,000 bill. More. (Via boingboing.net)
Posted on Sep 20, 2006
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From Comedy Central
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During last night’s (Aug. 21) show, Stephen Colbert aired fan-created video mash-ups of an earlier episode—and then urged his viewers to make more. More than anyone else on TV, Colbert is harnessing the energies and enthusiasms of his viewers to produce a better product. Huff Po’s Rachel Sklar has more.
Posted on Aug 22, 2006
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The Alaska senator whom Jon Stewart (and much of the world) has mocked mercilessly for his infamous “series of tubes” diatribe on Internet fundamentals, says he’d consider appearing on “The Daily Show” to defend himself. Stewart has yet to extend the offer….
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An administration official has indicated the United States may loosen its control over the Internet. The statement comes as something of a surprise after last year?s announcement by the Bush administration that the U.S. has no intention of relinquishing authority over its own invention.
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The “Daily Show” host tells the Arizona senator, “President Bush has been very clear that through his leadership, he made the world safer…. My question to you is this: How much safer can we afford to have him make us?” When McCain wouldn’t answer straight, Stewart chided him, saying, “Don’t dodge the question.”
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Official diplomatic relations between the two countries may be at a nadir, but young citizens on both sides are finding common ground on Internet chat boards. Says a blogger: “We have tons of things in common. We come from two of the most liberal, educated countries in the Middle East….”
Also: Read the back story on that infamous picture of Israeli girls writing on rocket shells.
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A group of technology companies and civil liberties organizations has appealed a court ruling that would require Internet service providers to allow the government backdoor access to their systems.
Posted on Jul 21, 2006
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Sen. Ted Stevens’ near-incoherent speech before Congress last week about Internet fundamentals (“It’s a series of tubes”) quickly made him a national laughingstock. But his defenders say Stevens simply used imprecise language, and that he really knows his Net stuff. You decide:
Defenders speak out
Jon Stewart clip
Techno remix of Stevens’ speech
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“The Daily Shows” host tees off on Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens’ instantly infamous speech about Net Neutrality—which Stewart likened to “something you’d hear from a crazy old man in an airport bar at 3 a.m.”
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The practice of posting the home address of someone targeted for supposed offenses (like being a member of the ACLU), until now practiced mainly by hate groups, has been embraced by “mainstream” pundits like Michelle Malkin and David Horowitz.
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From CNN
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As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is in charge of bills that control the future of the Internet (like Net Neutrality). So you’ll understand why we at Truthdig start crying when we read about the 85-year-old’s feeble grasp of this world-changing technology. A few Stevens quotes:
“An internet was sent by my staff at 10 o?clock…”
“What happens to your own personal internet…?”
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From EA
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Supposed Internet experts, working off $7 million in public money, reported to the Pentagon and to Congress that terrorists are retooling American video games for use as recruitment tools. Problem is, it wasn’t the terrorists who did the retooling; it was American fans—something a 10-year-old could have discovered by using Google…(more)
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The Senate is due to vote Wednesday on the Net Neutrality bill.
Click here and CALL. YOUR. SENATOR.
Otherwise, when AT&T is deciding which content streams fastest to your computer, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.
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From Salon.com
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Two former AT&T workers have told Salon that the telecom company has maintained a secret, highly secured room in a St. Louis network operations center where, the two workers were told, employees have been “monitoring network traffic.” Salon’s security experts say the operation has all the hallmarks of an NSA operation.
Summary
Full story (Reg. or ad-watching req’d.)
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This is according to Scott Redd, director of the National Counterterrorism Center. These groups of Islamic radicals are made up of disaffected men in their teens and 20s who draw moral inspiration from Al Qaeda and use the Internet to organize and plan potential attacks.
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The panel recommended a version of the Net neutrality bill that would bar telecom companies from charging premium fees for Web companies that sell video and other content.
This is far from a full victory, but it’s a step in that direction.
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Illustration: Blair Golson
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This is the big one, folks. Wired News unearths internal AT&T documents that show how the telecom company, at the behest of the government, built “secret rooms” in cities across America that enable the NSA “to look at every individual message on the Internet and analyze exactly what people are doing.”
Story and AT&T internal documents
Wired News explains why it published the story
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Companies like AT&T and BellSouth are backing an organization claiming to be saving the Internet by keeping it free of “burdensome and unnecessary regulation.” But that’s nonsense. They’re the ones that want to put toll lanes on the Internet. (These are the same companies that reportedly handed over America’s phone records to the NSA.)
Buzzflash sorts it out.
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Pornography titan Vivid Entertainment will sell adult films through the Internet that can be burned to DVDs and watched on TVs. “Leave it to the porn industry once again to take the lead on this stuff,” says a think-tank analyst.
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Courtesy Warner Independent Pictures
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By Steven Kotler — In this summer’s most talked-about movie, “A Scanner Darkly,” Keanu Reeves stars as an undercover narcotics agent losing his grip on reality in an America that has lost the war on drugs. True, the film is a warning call, but might it also inadvertently channel us toward the very dystopia it is warning against?
This article ran in May, but we’re trotting it out again because the movie just hit theaters this week.
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From COA News
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If you’re disturbed by the thought of Internet service providers deciding which websites you can have access to, watch this short, entertaining and disturbing movie that crystalizes the battle now being waged over this issue in Washington and the blogosphere.
Posted on May 10, 2006
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A coalition of conservatives and progressives has formed to defeat a law that would allow Internet provider companies to decide which sites load up the fastest—based on who pays them the most. Such a law would upend the even playing field that every site on the Web now enjoys. Check it out and contact your congressperson.
When a right-wing blog like Instapundit and a left-wing organization like MoveOn.org get together on something, it’s worth paying attention to.
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PayPal will now allow users to buy goods and exchange money using their cell phones.
Sweet! It’s been getting far too hard to blow money on impulse items in recent years.
Posted on Apr 17, 2006
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Remember John Edwards’ “Two Americas”? Well, a House subcommittee just moved us closer to a country of “Two Internets,” in which only the wealthy will enjoy the fastest connection speeds.
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The company’s free wireless service in San Francisco would allow Google to monitor all its users’ whereabouts—ostensibly to serve up location-specific advertising.
The feeling you just got? That would be the hairs on the back on your neck rising.
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Homeland Security Dept.‘s deputy press secretary allegedly tried to seduce a Florida sheriff’s detective who he thought was a 14-year-old girl.
Troubling for two reasons: (a) This shows the moral fiber of the people entrusted to spy on Americans; (b) this shows the incompetence and foolishness of the people entrusted to secure our borders—this kind of sting is the oldest trick in the book.
UPDATE: More details on the official’s alleged criminal actions.
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A sobering report commissioned by Rumsfeld details how U.S. military planners want to take control of the Earth’s electromagnetic spectrum, allowing America to dominate telcommunications for propaganda and psy-ops purposes.
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Until recently, a user who typed in “abortion” received a prompt asking, “Did you mean adoption?” The online retailer has since erased the prompt.
Posted on Mar 21, 2006
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A federal judge says he will require the search engine company to provide the government with some search-query data in connection with the Justice Dept.‘s attempts to revive an online child pornography law. It’s unclear what kind of and how much data the judge will order turned over.
That strange shifting underneath your feet? It’s the slippery slope we’re all sliding down, toward an Orwellian future.
Truthdig’s Google expert Mark Malseed has the skinny on the implications of this battle.
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From PoliticsTV
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A new TV-heavy Internet site dedicated to politics launches with AMERICAblog founder John Avarosis. Looks pretty spiffy.
Posted on Mar 10, 2006
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The U.S. government pushes back at the search giant, insisting that a request to examine millions of Internet users’ search queries would not violate privacy rights. This could lead to the most fevered technology trial since the Microsoft antitrust case. Check out an excellent Truthdig essay on the issue here.
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For years, we’ve been supplying the oracles of Google and Yahoo with the most intimate details our personal health, political leanings, and secret obsessions.
The government is already combing through Internet archives.
Mark Malseed, co-author of the international bestseller “The Google Story,” argues that it’s time we started asking better questions about our queries.
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Jeff Chester at The Nation has an eye-opening report on how big telcos are trying to transform the “free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.” | story
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The Gray Lady publishes a slew of important and underreported stories its Saturday edition:
Two federal courts strike down the Partial Birth Abortion Act because it doesn’t have an exception for the life of the mother.
Yahoo and AOL are going to introduce digital postage stamps that companies can buy to ensure delivery of their e-mail.
Most Internet users have no idea how easy it is for courts to get ahold of their personal information.
The personal savings rate of Americans falls below zero for the first time since the Great Depression.
Now James Frey’s editor says that he, too, was fooled by the fabricating fabulist.
Posted on Feb 4, 2006
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Turning conventional wisdom on its head (see The Earth, flat; Bush, compassionate), a new study shows that Internet tools like e-mail, webcams and instant messaging actually bring people closer together. | story
Posted on Jan 26, 2006
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The company’s motto is “Don’t be evil,” but analysts say Google’s cash-motivated actions translate into Chinese as “Don’t be poor.” | story
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Yahoo’s chief financial officer says she’d be happy just to “maintain our market share.” | story
Even though it’s been “Game Over” in the search wars for quite some time, it’s still shocking to hear the No. 2 company be so blatant about it.
Posted on Jan 24, 2006
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