VIDEO- Lantos SLAMS Search providers-compares compliance to Nazi germany

[liveoaktx]

Watch the Google lawyer-he's an ass

[AX10]

1. KICK and recomended!

[liveoaktx]

2. I think this is a serious deal and Google, et al ought to be ashamed

It appears from listening to this (I missed the very beginning) that some employees or others associated with these providers, in China, were jailed or harrassed for their involvement with Yahoo/Google. And we know that Microsoft deleted some groups from MSN because the Chinese govt complained.

IT IS ABSURD for a company from THIS country, where we at least theoretically champion free speech, to be deliberately censoring content in cahoots with a country that does human rights violations. SHAME on them all. Shame.

[Wilms]

3. K&R n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. NYT article on censorship in Google China operation (LINK):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x399928
thread title (2-13-06 GD): NYT: "So Long, Dalai Lama" - Google demonstrates NEW WORLD CENSORSHIP
Comment/excerpt: Internet censorship has generally been visible in China. As Lie Xiaobo, a leader dissident writer is quoted in this important NYT story, "It was one thing when you hit on links that did not work. You could see what was blocked. The new Google hides the hand of the censor."

[Nothing Without Hope]

5. K & R - those smooth-faced young lawyers against the old congressman

reminding them of IBM "complying" with Hitler's government - quite a scene. And they sure worked hard to avoid straight answers.

[Nothing Without Hope]

6. Corporate US media interests are lobbying NOW to "own" the internet

and most of them are owned by pro-Bush interests.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2465369
thread title (2-16-06 GD-P): phone, cable lobbyists engaged in political campaign to weaken internet
Comment/excerpt: The Nation article by Jeff Chester, “The End of the Internet?” Excerpt: “To make this pay-to-play vision a reality, phone and cable lobbyists are now engaged in a political campaign to further weaken the nation's communications policy laws. They want the federal government to permit them to operate Internet and other digital communications services as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. Indeed, both the Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are considering proposals that will have far-reaching impact on the Internet's future. Ten years after passage of the ill-advised Telecommunications Act of 1996, telephone and cable companies are using the same political snake oil to convince compromised or clueless lawmakers to subvert the Internet into a turbo-charged digital retail machine.”
Of course, if they own and control it, then not only do we pay more, the content is no longer open but subject to censorship like Google’s operation in China. And of course most corporate media ownership is in the hands of Bush supporters.

If they succeed, there's nothing to stand in the way of a Chinese-style censorship of the free internet - the only lifeline to the truth we have.

And let's not forget the recently revealed (in the British press) Pentagon plan to "fight the internet." We ALL SHOULD READ THE BBC ARTICLE ON IT:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4655196.stm

Excerpt - and this is the sober, cautious BBC:
"The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet."

A pdf file on the page with the BBC article gives the Pentagon anti-internet plan. It's partly Psyops for other countries AND THE US, but it's also development of tools for all-out take-down of the internet.

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. One more thing - a new Google service COPIES YOUR HARD DRIVE:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2098053
thread title (2-9-06 LBN): Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation
Comment/excerpt: “San Francisco - Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. … The privacy problem arises because the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, gives only limited privacy protection to emails and other files that are stored with online service providers.”

The vulnerability to government spying is obvious.