Death Of The Internet: Unprecedented Censorship Bill Passes in UK

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“Wash-up” process used to rush through draconian legislation as a pitiful handful of MPs attend debate
A draconian Internet censorship bill that has been long looming on the
horizon finally passed the house of commons in the UK yesterday,
legislating for government powers to restrict and filter any website
that is deemed to be undesirable for public consumption.
The “Digital Economy Bill” was rushed through parliament in a late night
session last night after a third reading.
In the wake of the announcement of a general election on May 6, the
government has taken advantage of what is known as the “wash-up
process”, allowing the legislative process to be speeded up between an
election being called and Parliament being dissolved.
Only a pitiful handful of MPs (pictured below) were present to debate
the bill, which was fully supported by the “opposition” Conservative
party, and passed by 189 votes to 47 keeping the majority of its
original clauses intact.
The bill will now go back to the House of Lords, where it originated,
for a final formal approval.
The government removed a proposal in clause 18 of the bill, which openly
stated that it could block any website, however it was replaced with an
amendment to clause 8 of the bill which essentially legislates for the
same powers.
The new clause allows the unelected secretary of state for business,
currently Lord Mandelson, to order the blocking of “a location on the
internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to
be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes
copyright”.
Opposing MPs argued that the clause was too broad and open ended,
arguing that the phrase “likely to be used” could be used to block
websites without them ever having been used for “activity that infringes
copyright”. Other MPs argued that under the bill, whistleblower
websites, such as Wikileaks, could be targeted.
The legislation will also allow the Home Secretary to place “a technical
obligation on internet service providers” to block whichever sites it
wishes.
Under clause 11 of the proposed legislation “technical obligation” is
defined as follows:
A “technical obligation”, in relation to an internet service provider,
is an obligation for the provider to take a technical measure against
particular subscribers to its service.
A “technical measure” is a measure that — (a) limits the speed or other
capacity of the service provided to a subscriber; (b) prevents a
subscriber from using the service to gain access to particular material,
or limits such use; (c) suspends the service provided to a subscriber;
or (d) limits the service provided to a subscriber in another way.
In other words, the government will have the power to force ISPs to
downgrade and even block your internet access to certain websites or
altogether if it wishes.

The legislation is part of an amplified effort by the government to seize more power over the internet and those who use it.
For months now unelected “Secretary of State” Lord Mandelson has
overseen government efforts to challenge the independence of the of UK’s
internet infrastructure.
The Digital Economy Bill will also see users’ broadband access cut off
indefinitely, in addition to a fine of up to £50,000 without evidence or
trial, if they download copyrighted music and films. The plan has been
identified as “potentially illegal” by experts.
The legislation would impose a duty on ISPs to effectively spy on all
their customers by keeping records of the websites they have visited and
the material they have downloaded. ISPs who refuse to cooperate could
be fined £250,000.
As Journalist and copyright law expert Cory Doctrow has noted, the bill
also gives the Secretary of State the power to make up as many new
penalties and enforcement systems as he likes, without Parliamentary
oversight or debate.
This could include the authority to appoint private militias, who will
have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the
network, demand the removal of files in addition to the blocking of
websites.
Mandelson and his successors will have the power to invent any penalty,
including jail time, for any digital transgression he deems Britons to
be guilty of.
Despite being named the Digital Economy Bill, the legislation contains
nothing that will actually stimulate the economy and is largely based on
shifting control over the internet into government hands, allowing
unaccountable bureaucrats to arbitrarily hide information from the
public should they wish to do so.
Mandelson began the onslaught on the free internet in the UK after
spending a luxury two week holiday at Nat Rothschild’s Corfu mansion
with multi-millionaire record company executive David Geffen.
Over 20,000 members of the public have written to their MPs in the last
week to lobby against the bill being rushed through, however, their
concerns have fallen on deaf ears and the government has been allowed to
deal a devastating blow to the last real vestige of free speech in this
country.
The Wider Agenda Of Internet Control
The Digital Economy Bill is intrinsically linked to long term plans by
the UK government to carry out an unprecedented extension of state
powers by claiming the authority to monitor all emails, phone calls and
internet activity nationwide.
IN 2008, the government announced its intention to create a massive
central database, gathering details on every text sent, e-mail sent,
phone call made and website visited by everyone in the UK.
The programme, known as the “Interception Modernisation Programme”,
would allow spy chiefs at GCHQ, the government’s secret eavesdropping
agency, the centre for Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) activities (pictured
above), to effectively place a “live tap” on every electronic
communication in Britain in the name of preventing terrorism.
Following outcry over the announcement, the government suggested that it
was scaling down the plans, with then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith
stating that there were “absolutely no plans for a single central store”
of communications data.
However, as the “climbdown” was celebrated by civil liberties advocates
and the plan was “replaced” by new laws requiring ISPs to store details
of emails and internet telephony for just 12 months, fresh details
emerged indicating the government was implementing a big brother spy
system that far outstrips the original public announcement.
The London Times published leaked details of a secret mass internet
surveillance project known as “Mastering the Internet” (MTI).
Costing hundreds of millions in public funds, the system is already
being implemented by GCHQ with the aid of American defence giant
Lockheed Martin and British IT firm Detica, which has close ties to the
intelligence agencies.
A group of over 300 internet service providers and telecommunications
firms has attempted to fight back over the radical plans, describing the
proposals as an unwarranted invasion of people’s privacy.
Currently, any interception of a communication in Britain must be
authorised by a warrant signed by the home secretary or a minister of
equivalent rank. Only individuals who are the subject of police or
security service investigations may be subject to surveillance.
If the GCHQ’s MTI project is completed, black-box probes would be placed
at critical traffic junctions with internet service providers and
telephone companies, allowing eavesdroppers to instantly monitor the
communications of every person in the country without the need for a
warrant.
Even if you believe GCHQ’s denial that it has any plans to create a huge
monitoring system, the current law under the RIPA (the Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act) allows hundreds of government agencies access
to the records of every internet provider in the country.
In publicly announced proposals to extend these powers, firms will be
asked to collect and store even more vast amounts of data, including
from social networking sites such as Facebook.
If the plans go ahead, every internet user will be given a unique ID
code and all their data will be stored in one place. Government agencies
such as the police and security services will have access to the data
should they request it with respect to criminal or terrorist
investigations.
This is clearly the next step in an incremental program to implement an
already exposed full scale big brother spy system designed to completely
obliterate privacy, a fundamental right under Article 8 of the European
Convention on Human Rights.

Death Of The Internet In Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.
Similar efforts to place restrictions on the internet are unfolding in Australia where the government is implementing a mandatory and
wide-ranging internet filter modeled on that of the Communist Chinese
government.
Australian communication minister Stephen Conroy said the government
would be the final arbiter on what sites would be blacklisted under
“refused classification.”
The official justification for the filter is to block child pornography,
however, as the watchdog group Electronic Frontiers Australia has
pointed out, the law will also allow the government to block any website
it desires while the pornographers can relatively easily skirt around
the filters.
Earlier this year, the Wikileaks website published a leaked secret list
of sites slated to be blocked by Australia’s state-sponsored parental
filter.
The list revealed that blacklisted sites included “online poker sites,
YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries,
euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites,
fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a
Queensland dentist.”
The filter will even block web-based games deemed unsuitable for anyone
over the age of fifteen, according to the Australian government.
In neighbouring New Zealand, the government has quietly implemented an
internet filter and is urging the leading ISPs in the country to adopt
the measure, in a move that would give the authorities the power to
restrict whichever websites they see fit.
The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) reportedly turned
on the internet filter on February 1st without making any announcement,
prompting critics to charge that the measure had been activated in
stealth.
It was no coincidence that around the same time the government’s
Internet filter went live, Infowars began receiving notification from
readers in New Zealand that their access to Alex Jones’ flagship
websites Infowars.com and Prisonplanet.com had been suddenly blocked.
The broad attack on the free internet is not only restricted to the UK,
New Zealand and Australia.
The European Union, Finland, Denmark, Germany and other countries in
Europe have all proposed blocking or limiting access to the internet and
using filters like those used in Iran, Syria, China, and other
repressive regimes.
In 2008 in the U.S., The Motion Picture Association of America asked
president Obama to introduce laws that would allow the federal
government to effectively spy on the entire Internet, establishing a
system where being accused of copyright infringement would result in
loss of your Internet connection.
In 2009 the Cybersecurity Act was introduced, proposing to allow the
federal government to tap into any digital aspect of every citizen’s
information without a warrant. Banking, business and medical records
would be wide open to inspection, as well as personal instant message
and e mail communications.
The legislation, introduced by Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and
Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) in April, gives the president the ability to
“declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet
traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of
national security.” The bill does not define a critical information
network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to
the president, according to a Mother Jones report.
During a hearing on the bill, Senator John Rockefeller betrayed the true
intent behind the legislation when he stated, “Would it have been
better if we’d have never invented the Internet,” while fearmongering
about cyber attacks on the U.S. government and how the country could be
shut down.
Watch the clip below.

The Obama White House has also sought a private contractor to “crawl and archive” data such as comments, tag lines, e-mail, audio and video from any place online where the White House “maintains a presence” – for
a period of up to eight years.
Obama has also proposed scaling back a long-standing ban on tracking how
people use government Internet sites with “cookies” and other
technologies.
Recent disclosures under the Freedom Of Information Act also reveal that
the federal government has several contracts with social media outlets
such as Youtube (Google), Facebook, Myspace and Flickr (Yahoo) that
waive rules on monitoring users and permit companies to track visitors
to government web sites for advertising purposes.
The U.S. military also has some $30 Billion invested in it’s own
mastering the internet projects.
We have extensively covered efforts to scrap the internet as we know it
and move toward a greatly restricted “internet 2″ system. All of the
above represents stepping stones toward the realisation of that agenda.

Death Of The Internet: Censorship Bill Passes in UK

“Wash-up” process used to rush through draconian legislation
http://bnp.org.uk/groups/stop-internet-censorship

Mandelson began the onslaught on the free internet in the UK after spending a luxury two week holiday at Nat Rothschild’s mansion with record boss David Geffen,

Over 20,000 members of the public have written to their MPs i however, their concerns have fallen on deaf ears and the government has been allowed to deal a devastating blow to the last real vestige of free
speech in this country.