[OldEarlGray]

If some podunk dictator can control.censor his country's access, our "leaders" can manage it with us.

 

 

That is a valid concern.  

 

And the unfortunate reality is that the "podunk dictator" is actively facilitated in their censorship by companies like...

 

"[snip] U.S.-based Cisco Systems and Canadian-based Nortel Networks are working closely with the People's Armed Police developing oppressive and intrusive computer systems to monitor, track and prosecute illegal Internet web browsers.

Nortel has contracts with Datang Telecom, a Chinese firm that works closely with the Chinese Ministry of State Security. Nortel has provided its "Personal Internet" suite to the MSS, allowing authorities to monitor and track nearly half of China's individual Internet users.

Nortel is currently working with the communist authorities in Shanghai to build a "Shasta 5000" firewall...."

---The Great Firewall of China
---Charles R. Smith, Friday, May 17, 2002

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/5/17/25858.shtml

 

 

What will be really interesting to watch is the hysteria soon to be generated when folks figure out what the TPM chip on their motherboard is doing... after Windows 8 turns it on.

 

Can you be trusted to be part of the Trusted Platform?  Who gets to decide?  I hope it's some governing body that's required to read, and constrain the scope of its purview within, the original specification for the system:

 

"TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS, [American] governments are instituted among men"

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=TO+SECURE+THESE+RIGHTS%2C+governments+are+instituted+among+men

 

 

 

 

[trebb]

Good response - I think the self-styled techno-geek that didn’t think our gubmint could shut us off the internet has no sense of the corporations and government agencies that actually control/maintain the infrastructure.