Jon Christian Ryter's Conservative World

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Not only is Obama attempting to steal the Internet
from the American people, the UN is poised to
steal control of cyberspace from its caretakers.
As Barack Obama's Federal Communications Committee Chairman Julius Genachowski takes the unprecedented and completely unconstitutional step to expand the federal government's control over free speech by seizing regulatory control of cyberspace, the UN is now deciding if its claimstake rights trump the the rights of the nation which holds the key to the onramps of the information superhighway. On Dec. 21, the five FCC commissioners voted 5 to 3, along political ideological lines, to expand the reach of the gnarly fist of totalitarianism via what the Obama Administration calls "net neutrality" and what the social progressive purveyors of the electronic media call the "Fairness Doctrine." The only problem is, as confirmed by the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on April 6, 2010, the FCC and the Obama Administration lacks both the constitutional and congressional authority to do so.

Adding to what is now growing into an international war to control cyberspace, the United Nations has joined the debate with its own plans to regulate the Internet—which it views as a transnational entity that exceeds the authority of any single, or group, of nation states. Naming itself as the caretaker of cyberspace is something the Utopians, who need to control not only public speech but private thoughts to succeed in their plan to dominate all of the nation states of world, have been trying to accomplish for years.

When the UN meeting on the Internet Government Forum took place at the UN Building in New York on Wed., Dec. 15 they were sure they were on the cusp of success. Particularly since the mainstream media in the United States did not see the story as "newsworthy," and the New York Times—which, tongue in cheek, still insists it prints "...all the news that's fit to print," didn't see anything fit to print, and ignored the story. The story was first reported by iTnews in Australia. Australia is the only "free" nation in the world that has thus far experienced web censorship during an experiment by the Aussie government on Sept. 2, 2009 to see how effectively they could shut down the Internet by blocking the International broadband feed and interrupting all telephonic and satellite broadband (high speed) connections throughout the entire country through the State-owned Telstra International Internet Network. Since almost every Internet ISP in Australia is tied to Telstra, about 90% of the home and business broadband and cell phone Internet users in the land down-under was affected.

It had a devastatingly crippling affect in the cities, but in most of the rural parts of Australia where dial-up is still the prevalent form of Internet access, they barely knew their urban neighbors were without Internet access until the experiment was over and the the Sydney Morning Herald reported it as a "cyber-glitch" on Sept. 3. (I reported the story in BEHIND THE HEADLINES on Sept. 5, 2009. The story was carried on News With Views on Sept. 7,. 2009 under the title "Internet Censorship Going Global."

On March 18, 2009 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange published a list of 2,300 websites that were on the Australian Communications and Media Authority [ACMA} (the Australian equivalent to our Federal Communications Commission) hit list. The WikiLeaks leak was substantially correct even though the Australian government and the ACMA denied the published report by claiming that since the ACMA list contained on 1,370 suspect websites, what WikiLeaks published was obviously not their list. In point of fact, as it turned out shortly thereafter, there were some 9,000 websites targeted for removal or censorship by the Australian Parliament.

It is interesting that Assange, the world's most notorious cyber-whistleblower, has not only been able to get his hands on heavily classified documents from just about everywhere in the world, but even when he was finally apprehended and arrested in England for alleged sex crimes in Sweden where his servers are housed, he was granted bail while England and Sweden talked about extradition over tea, and while the United States (which already his grounds to charge him with sedition in the United States) continues to ponder whether or not they have enough evidence to charge him with violating the 1917 Sedition Act or, at least, with charging him with possession of top secret US documents. The question is: why has someone not charged him with the theft and the publishing of classified documents—not only in the United States, but elsewhere as well? Because in the vernacular of former Obama Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel, the globalists behind the scheme to control access to the onramps of the information superhighway can't let a good crisis go to waste. If Assange was imprisoned and slapped with a lifetime prohibition to cyberspace, there would be no immediate Internet crisis that required immediate regulation to protect citizen comsumers.

Two of the websites on the ACMA hit list were made public by a Aussie public official. Neither were not pornographic or pyramid sales scheme websites—the yardstick by which websites were theoretically judged. Both were political-content websites that do not, and never did, post sexual content of any type. Nor were they selling anything other than the typical political paraphernalia. Nor did either display or advocate violence of any type against anyone. They merely expounded Christian political beliefs—like thousands of patriotic, Christian websites in the United States. One was a pro-life, anti-abortion website. The only contained political content advocating for a less corrupt government and advocating for the right of political dissent. Most of the content on the second site dealt with efforts by the Australian government to restrict free speech through State filtration devises that censor content. While the ACMA admitted censoring both websites, they said they did so only "...because the websites originated from other countries."

In response to initial media report from iTnews.com on Dec. 17 that the UN was mulling its options in regulating the Internet, and a tsunami of faxes and emails flooded members of both Houses of Congress over the up-until-then covert attempts by the FCC to regulate the Internet, Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack [R-CA] offered House Resolution 1775 arguing that "...the Internet has progressed and thrived precisely because it has not been subjected to the suffocating effect of a government organization's heavy hand. The attempt of the United Nations to overtake something that is so central to our economy—like the Internet—is offensive and completely out of line. We have a hard time keeping the Federal Communications Commission's hands off the Internet. Imagine having to convince governments like Syria, Iran and Venezuela."

Sadly, Sonny Bono's widow is asking the Obama Administration to prevent the UN from trampling on US free speech rights as the FCC prepares to assert authority over Internet access without congressional approval to do so. The FCC's regulations with put barbed teeth in what the left calls "net neutrality."

Vint Cerf, who is widely regarded as the 'father of the Internet" posted a statement on Google's Public Policy Blog on Friday, Dec. 17 denouncing the UN scheme (while ignoring the FCC's planned regulation of the Internet which he views as a gnat on the butt of a dwarf) saying: "...last week the UN Committee on Science and Technology announced that only governments would be able to sit on a working group set up to examine improvements to the...[UN's]...Internet Governance Forum [IGF]—one of the Internet's most important discussion forums. This move has been condemned by eh Internet Government Caucus, the Internet Society, the International Chamber of Commerce and numerous other organizations—who have published a joint letter and launched an online petition to mobilize opposition. Today I have signed that petition on Google's behalf because we don't believe governments should be allowed to grant themselves a monopoly on Internet governance. The current bottoms-up, open approach works—protecting users from vested interests and enabling rapid innovation. Let's fight to keep it that way."

As the rest of the world ponders the fate of the Internet in the clutches of the totalitarians who control the UN's Internet Governance Forum which set the control mechanism in motion a few months ago when they met—again, somehow evading the media radar scope—in Vinius, Lithuania, the FCC, also evading the media radar screen, was putting the regulations together to control "net neutrality." In the United States, the policies being implemented by the FCC will institute a very dangerous and very unconstitutional policy that will violate free speech rights.

Congressman Mike Rogers [R-MI], a member of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee, said the FCC's power grab "...will give the federal government control over all aspects of the Internet." Congressman Fred Upton [R-MI] who will chair the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee when the GOP takes over in another week, sent a letter to the FCC demanding that it "...cease and desist" its efforts to regulate the Internet, since the FCC "...does not have the authority to..." do so." Upton told the FCC that the GOP "Will use rigorous oversight, hearings and legislation to fight the FCC's power grab."

In addition, a group of Republican Senators have also written to Genachowski telling him, as Upton did, that the FCC has no constitutional or congressional authority to implement rules to regulate the Internet by bypassing the legislative process. Both Democrats and Republicans are now calling for the FCC to cease and desist. Over the last few days, scores of insiders who silently watched the stealth regulation shape up are now speaking out against the FCC's covert regulation of the Internet and, even louder, at the prospects of the UN declaring itself to be the international traffic cop of the information superhighway.

Occupant Obama poised to steal the Internet
With a straight face that would suggest they had the authority to do so, the Federal Communications Commission is poised to steal the Internet after new rules are introduced on Dec. 20, by simply declaring it has the right to regulate it. Their logic? The left will assure you their reasoning has nothing to do with the fact that more people today get their news from unvetted alternate news sources on the Net than they do from the liberal mainstream media. The problem? Internet journalists tend to reports the news without coloring it with the communist red brush of political correctness.

With Sen. Jay Rockefeller's cyberspace strangulation bill, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, still hung up in Committee, and not likely to find its way out before Jan. 3, 2011, the far left sees little hope of it passing any time soon. Particularly since the Democrats no longer have a filibuster-proof Senate. Even badly outnumbered in the Senate, the GOP can once again exercise the right of the filibuster to block any piece of legislation they don't want to reach the floor. Implementing legislation that has neither cleared the obstacles in Committee nor a floor vote may be rare, but in their zeal to "protect the people," the social progressive zealots in the bureaucracy are not adverse to writing the rules and regulations of bills that were never enacted if they believe they are needed—even when they fall into a legislative black hole in committee.

One such "law" was the Health Claims Act, which was proposed as a rider to Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990. A health claim is a statement in a printed advertisement, or an oral statement made at the point of sale, that a food or substance can be used to prevent, treat or mitigate a medical condition. In 1990, the FDA published the regulations and guidelines to implement the Health Claims Act that was stripped from the Nutrition Labeling legislation before it was signed into law,. Shortly thereafter FDA agents visited 57-year old Sissy Harrington-McGill's pet store—without a search warrant as required by the 4th Amendment—and ransacked it, looking for vendor brochures Harrington-McGill gave to several of her customers advising them that regularly giving their pets vitamins would keep them healthy. Finding the damning evidence, they arrested her. When her day in court arrived, Harrington-McGill discovered the federal judge intended to dispose of the case immediately. When Harrington-McGill demanded her 7th Amendment right to a jury trial, the federal magistrate denied her request although the 7th Amendment gives the accused the right to a jury trial where the value of the controversy exceeds $20. (The FDA seized the entire inventory of Harrington-McGill's business. On top of that, the fine she faced under the never-enacted Health Claims Act was $10,000.). She was sentenced to 179 days in jail and fined $10 thousand, adding the color of legitimacy to the FDA's seizure and disposal of her property. One hundred-fourteen days later, the judge was forced to free her from jail for violating a law that did not exist. Even though her constitutional rights were violated by the FDA and their accomplice, the federal magistrate that railroaded her for violating a nonexistent law, the FDA succeeded in doing what they set out to do—intimidate small business owners for extolling the virtues of health supplements. Now, it appears the FCC has picked up the gauntlet and will attempt to implement Rockefeller's failed Cybersecurity Act of 2009 by decree.

The Obama Administration blames the Tea Party Revolution on the American conservatives' unfettered access to the Internet. That appears to be the real reason the Administration authorized The Federal Communications Commission [FCC] to regulate the Internet. The excuse given by the FCC—one of the reasons in FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's draft document of his proposed regulations for regulating the Internet, complete with over 550 footnotes—and an official FCC stamp that says "Nonpublic. For internal use only" to assure that no one outside the FCC sees it until the rules are approved on Dec. 21. This will be Barack Obama's "Christmas Surprise" for the American people.

The reason regulations are needed? Genachowski is prepared to answer this one with "a straight face," as well. It reminds me of Franklin D. Roosevelt when he proposed the Communications Act of 1933. FDR was concerned, he said, because newspapers lie about their circulation.

On Wed., Dec. 1, Genachowski announced to the media that he had circulated his draft rules memo. He said it will "...preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet," adding that the federal government will increase the freedom of online services because, he noted, heavy use in some areas of the Internet slow the "web experience" for everyone sharing the same information superhighway lines. The example he cited was people watching movies that consume too much bandwidth. (In point of fact, the only computers affected by the "web experience" of someone watching a Netflix movie are the other computers hooked up to the same Internet feed—in that home or business. What Genachowski and Obama are doing is "playing Roosevelt."

In 1933, Roosevelt used whatever excuse his Brain Trust could muster to seize control of the fourth estate. Once the newspaper industry was under his thumb, Roosevelt knew he could control them by forcing every newspaper in America to apply for, and be granted a license, to operate.

Licensing the fourth estate would give the White House the power of life and death over every newspaper in America. When any newspaper crossed the proverbial line and spoke out against his policies, he could pull their license and shut them down. Or, just the fear of having their license suspended, or not renewed, would force them to toe the line he had already drawn in the sand. In the end, Roosevelt's coup d' etat of the newspaper industry was defeated by Sen. Thomas Schall [R-MN] who argued (in a very public newspaper op ed war with FDR) that because newspapers are protected by the 1st Amendment, Roosevelt could not regulate them. In the end, when the gutted Communications Act of 1933 was signed into law, FDR was allowed to regulate radio and, a few years later, television—since they were not construed by Pennsylvania Avenue lawyers to be "the press." And while he won the battle, Schall lost war. A constant thorn in FDR's side, Schall, who was legally blind, was struck by a hit-and-run driver while walking across a busy street in Cottage City, Maryland on Dec. 19, 1935. He died three days later on Dec. 22.

The same legislation that differentiated between newspaper and radio by erasing 1st Amendment protection for the newly developed electronic media that did not exist in 1787 also created the FCC and put it "in charge" keeping the fourth estate in check.

Although the federal judiciary has extended 1st Amendment protection to the Internet (May 27.2006), Barack Hussein Obama believes he has the executive authority, without legislation enacted by Congress, to arbitrarily regulate who uses cyberspace and what access they may enjoy based entirely on the content of the material they wish to publish there.

In American Civil Liberties Union v Reno, a panel of federal judges ruled that that the Internet is a "...publishing medium [in which]...personal home pages are the equivalent of individualized newsletters about that person or organization." (929 F. Supp at 837). The judges concluded that the Internet deserves at least as much protection under the 1st Amendment as printed matter receives. The appellate court judges emphasized that any analysis of the 1st Amendment protections afforded to a particular medium of mass communications must focus on the underlying technology that brings the information to the user. Thus, they concluded, the Supreme Court's two primary theories for government regulation of any form of broadcast communications content—NBC v United States (319 US 190[1943]) and FCC v Pacific Foundation (438 US 726 [1978]) do not justify government regulation of the Internet.

Which, of course, is why Jay Rockefeller's Cybersecurity Act of 2009 is still suspended in limbo. And, that also explains why Obama will use the FCC plans to implement control of cyberspace by fiat. Obama insists he has that right, and that he can regulate the Internet through the FCC—which regulates the other electronic mediums: radio and television. What Obama really means is that as long as the American people have unfettered access to the Internet, he will be a one-term visitor at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

via jonchristianryter.com

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