Free Republic

Kentucky Republican Rand Paul warned of a little-known federal law that allows the president of the United States to shut down the internet with a “kill switch.” Paul warned that the government’s ” emergency powers ” can remove freedoms in the name of safety and security, including an internet “kill switch” to turn off the Internet. “We’ve also looked at the emergency powers and emergency powers — you know the courts have said you don’t throw out the Constitution during emergencies — but a lot of our legislation acts as if you could throw things away,” Paul told Atlas on...

FOX News: The widespread cyber attack yesterday was "perpetrated by a government." Yeah. Our own.

What began as an attempt to restrain foreign piracy on the Internet has morphed into a domestic “kill switch” on First Amendment freedom in the fastest-growing corner of the marketplace of ideas. Proposed federal legislation purporting to protect online intellectual property would also impose sweeping new government mandates on internet service providers – a positively Orwellian power grab that would permit the U.S. Justice Department to shut down any internet site it doesn’t like (and cut off its sources of income) on nothing more than a whim.

Investigate Narus Freepress sends us the following message about Narus, the American firm whose product allowed Mubarak to shut down the internet in Egypt: In Egypt this week, the Mubarak regime shut down Internet and cell phone communications before launching a violent crackdown against political protesters (watch Free Press' Timothy Karr discuss the use of technology in Egypt in the video to the right). Now, Free Press has discovered that an American company — Boeing-owned Narus of Sunnyvale, CA — has sold Egypt "Deep Packet Inspection" (DPI) equipment that can be used to help the regime track, target and crush...

Half of Republicans are Tea Party supporters; 5% are "opponents" PRINCETON, NJ -- About 7 in 10 national adults, including 88% of Republicans, say it is important that Republican leaders in Congress take the Tea Party movement's positions and objectives into account as they address the nation's problems. Among Republicans, 53% rate this "very important."These results are from a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Jan. 14-16, prior to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.Although few Democrats (6%) are supporters of the Tea Party or even have a favorable view of it (11%), more than half say it is important...

L.A.-area elementary school blocks religious content, tells student to pick song that ‘does not say Jesus so many times’ Tuesday, February 01, 2011 LOS ANGELES — Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit Friday against Los Angeles Unified School District officials on behalf of a 5th-grade student who was prohibited from performing interpretive movement to a song at a school talent show scheduled for Feb. 4 because of the song’s religious lyrics. Students were permitted to choose the content of their performances--some approved performances include songs discussing teenage “love,” relationship problems, dancing, and violent imagery--yet Superior Street Elementary School officials...

Some have insisted the chance for the renewal of the Fairness Doctrine is a straw man argument perpetrated by conservatives to stir emotions so that they are able to exploit it politically and that this really isn’t a threat from legislators. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still those who want to see government intervene and regulate the airwaves in a way a Fairness Doctrine would. On MSNBC’s Monday airing of “The ED Show,” host Ed Schultz asked his guest, National Action Network President Al Sharpton, if there should be ways that the Federal Communications Commission could intervene in the...

The most common left-wing objection to the right is that it wants to control others' lives. But, both in America and elsewhere, the threat to personal liberty has emanated far more from the left. In the past generation, the left has controlled so much speech and behavior that these controls are now assumed to be a normal part of life. Through the use of public opprobrium, laws and lawsuits, Americans today are less free than at any time since the abolition of slavery (with the obvious exception of blacks under Jim Crow). Public opprobrium is known as political correctness, and...

Pending legislation that would grant the President of the United States the power to pull the plug on the country’s internet access in a declared “emergency” returned to the forefront this week on the same day Egyptians faced a nation-wide blackout designed to curtail widespread government protests. Egypt flipped it’s so-called “kill switch” — will the U.S.? The bipartisan bill is sponsored by Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The bill — called “The Protecting Cyberspace As A National Asset Act of 2010” S.3480 — was approved by a Senate panel...

...no popular movement goes without an Internet presence of some kind, whether it's organizing on Facebook or spreading the word through Twitter. And as we've seen in Egypt, that means that your Internet connection can be the first to go. Whether you're trying to check in with your family, contact your friends, or simply spread the word, here are a few ways to build some basic network connectivity when you can't rely on your cellular or landline Internet connections. Do-It-Yourself Internet With Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi... Advanced freedom fighters can set up a portal Web page on their network.. Remember when you...

Despite the government crackdown that included an unprecedented internet and telephone blackout, some Egyptians are finding ways to communicate. (snip) A well-known blogger in Cairo, who does not want to be named as he is also a journalist said: “We are currently using proxies to avoid the crackdown on internet. They have been targeting media and particularly foreign media since the morning and we saw even women and children beaten up.”

Egypt’s sealing off the country from the rest of the internet has provoked a series of low-tech initiatives aimed at allowing at least some sort of connection. Yesterday a small French ISP, NDF opened up a dial-up line to allow access to anyone with a modem. The international dial-up numbers only work for people with access to a telephone modem and an international calling service, which not all Egyptians have. However, an Egyptian couple have published a comprehensive guide on how to use the mobile phone network to connect to international dial up internet providers. “In a nutshell we need...

Egypt's shutdown of the Internet within its borders is an action unlike any other in the history of the World Wide Web and it might have only taken a few phone calls to do it. "It's something I've never seen; it's totally unprecedented," said James Cowie, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Renesys, an IT company in New Hampshire that helps Internet service providers monitor the security of Web networks and infrastructure. "Over a period a period of about 20 minutes, it's as if each of the primary service providers started pulling the routes that lead to them. It...

Watching the scenes out of Egypt unfold on my iPhone, I feel the need to update my Facebook profile to let my friends know how upset I am about the situation. Opening the emails that keep me up to date on the protests and the twitter feeds from around the world, it dawns on me just how dependent we all are on the internet for information. Of all the lessons to be learned from the current situation in Egypt perhaps the starkest is “There but for the grace of congress go I”. Egypt’s not so secret kill switch to effectively...

Mubarak demonstrates the Internet ‘kill switch’ President Hosni Mubarak hasn’t been able to stop the protesters who took to Egypt’s streets on Tuesday, so in the ensuing days, he’s attempted to stop them from communicating with each other and the outside world. Several American sites–Twitter, YouTube, Hotmail and Google–as well as the Chinese search engine Baidu were blocked by Mubarak and the Egyptian government on Wednesday, Jan. 26. By Thursday night, Mubarak had shut off Internet access to most of Egypt and disrupted cell phone service. According to tech security blogger James Cowie, the Egyptian government made an “unprecedented” decision...

...once again the topic of an executive branch-controlled "Internet kill switch" has reared its head in Washington, on the tech blogs and in the national media. The bill ... granted the President authority to shut down part of the Internet for an indefinite time. A later version of the bill reduced that time to 120 days, unless Congress approves an extension. A relatively new part of the bill that exempts the legislation from judicial review is once again firing up the bill's critics. According to CBS News, the revised version of the bill, introduced in December, includes new language saying...