Donald Trump wants to ‘close up’ the Internet
Donald Trump has called for a shutdown of the Internet in certain areas to stop the spread of terror.
In a speech at the U.S.S. Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina,
on Monday, Trump referenced the use by ISIS of social media as a
recruitment tool. He recommended a discussion with Bill Gates to shut
off parts of the Internet.“We’re
losing a lot of people because of the Internet,” Trump said. “We have to
go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand
what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas,
closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of
speech, freedom of speech.‘ These are foolish people. We have a lot of
foolish people.”Some totalitarian governments do it
The notion that the Internet could be shut off is not completely off
base. North Korea does it. Some countries have been known to shut off
Internet service to their citizens in times of crisis. Egypt restricted
the Internet during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.Other
countries block certain Internet services and sites. China is the most
famous example, forbidding most social networking sites as well as
websites that deal with subjects the government doesn’t want its
citizens to know about.Most Western countries, including the
United States, regulate the Internet very loosely. There are few
restrictions about what American citizens can do and say on the
Internet. Child pornography is one example of forbidden Internet
activity in the United States – Google is barred from linking to it,
and websites cannot display images of it.Why the United States can’t do it
But a full-on “closing up” of the Internet “in certain areas” would be
an impossible task. There are so many players with so much redundancy
built into the system, that the Internet is not just something that can
be turned off with a wave of a magic wand.Virtually every part in the United States has multiple Internet service provider options.
Comcast, (CMCSA) Time Warner Cable (TWC) and the other major broadband companies don’t overlap much. But Verizon (VZ, Tech30), AT&T (T, Tech30), Sprint (S) and T-Mobile (TMUS)
all provide the same service to roughly the same areas. Satellite
companies also provide Internet to most parts of the country.Removing Internet service in certain areas of the U.S. would require
those companies to turn off their cell towers and fiber networks, and to
restrict satellite access to people living in those regions.America can’t shut off the Internet overseas either
Shutting down Internet service in foreign countries could be even more difficult.
Despite a common belief to the contrary, the United States does not
control the global Internet. Servers on foreign soil serve up the Web
and other Internet services to people living abroad.So foreign
Internet infrastructure would need to be disrupted or shut down to turn
off service in certain areas – already a tricky task made even harder
if the countries and companies controlling those servers and cell towers
abroad don’t cooperate.Whatever, Donald Trump wouldn’t want the Internet shut off anyway. Then he couldn’t tweet.
While Trump clearly doesn’t know the first thing about how the
internet works (outside of his Twitter account), don’t let “it couldn’t happen in America” blind us to some
very real ways in which the internet can be made less free, less
accessible, and less useful for things other than government propaganda
and surveillance. And don’t doubt that President Trump (and his party)
would be happy to implement them.the time honored tool of every dictator, censorship is one of the first things out of trump’s mouth. this is real censorship, as opposed to when someone tells you you’re wrong on twitter.
it should come as no surprise whatsoever that 45′s pick for FCC commissioner, ajit pai, is SUPER excited to strip net neutrality from american citizens. if you didn’t know, net neutrality is the principle that currently allows you to access whatever internet site you want, at the same speed as all the other sites, without your ISP spying on you TOO much. the US regulations that protect you in this way are an annoying speed bump for ISPs in their quest to wring you like a wet dishrag until all your money falls out, and of course Team Spraytan works for them, not you.
and hey, if they do want to enact the fuckin lunatic censorship proposed in the article above, getting rid of these protections will be their first stop. what’s the most likely target of this anti-internet offensive? obviously, it’ll be american activists, scientists, and anybody who’s ever used the phrase “tiny hands” – or, as all those folks will be called in newspeak, terrorists.
just one more thing you should keep on your list of Horrible Things To Yell At Representatives About.