I started a forum post about this, but I feel that this is so important that it needs to be shared here to spread the word!
Everyone and their grandmother heard about SOPA and PIPA and the huge amount of publicity that was generated recently to kill the bills. But did you know that there is already a global agreement on the books called ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)? No, this is not a US law – It’s worse: it is a multilateral treaty that has been negotiated over many years by the US, Canada, EU and others in almost absolute secrecy. One top EU official even resigned recently over how the negotiations were carried out.
What is ACTA exactly? Well, it’s like SOPA and PIPA, but will be enforced not just by the US, but also by a long list of signatory countries and, later on, by a worldwide copyright infringement agency to be built along the lines of the WTO. Most of the industrialised countries in the world have already signed up to or were even party to the talks, this includes Canada, Japan, the US, EU, Australia, Singapore and so on. There were widespread protests in Poland this week against the Polish president signing the law. People in Poland seem much better informed than lots of us, because I don’t know about you, but a week ago I had never heard of ACTA, yet it is even more dangerous than SOPA and PIPA. Read more about the proposed multilateral agreement below. Notice that New Zealand is also party to the agreement, which makes me wonder if that is how the US was able to shut down Megaupload.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement
In the same week that people have been protesting against ACTA, Twitter has declared that it will start “selectively censoring” tweets on a country-to-country basis, ostensibly to make their product available in countries where people rely on social networks to arrange themselves in resistance to totalitarian governments. The US government is already trying to pressure Twitter to close accounts held by terrorist organisations like al-Shabab in Somalia, what’s to say that this won’t lead down the slippery road to closing anything with any critical opinion of the US government at all in several years’ time?
This censorship of social networking will go even further: the FBI is designing a tool to generate security alerts through data mash collection on Facebook, yet one wonders to what purpose this will really be employed (I imagine to build a huge database of information on almost everyone on Facebook).
Are we witnessing the end of the free internet and the beginning of the 1984-control era? Have you heard of any other threats to the freedom of information on the internet? Please share your views in this open thread!
I already believe that law enforcement pays for “special access” to Facebook where they can see hidden accounts. I’m not against fighting crime, but as FOX news points out, there are so many laws in America that are so vaguely worded, the US “could” charge *anybody* if they wanted to. Take this fact + actual enforcement in America, and it is downright scary.
I think we have already seen the beginning of 1984 for a couple of years but we just weren’t really paying attention. It is motoring full speed ahead now and still, most people are not noticing. When I talk about such things as Big Brother and FATCA, people have the same general reaction: not interested, don’t understand, and think it isn’t their problem.
While I do not like the idea of government censorship, I think you could say that Facebook is a part of the 1984 engine and Google and others are all jumping in on the bandwagon. I don’t know what the answer is, but I seriously think there should be more regulations on how they are using our information. I protested about Facebook and closed my account because they were making claims to everything I posted on my account and people actually got angry with me, stating that FB was “free”. Are you kidding me?!? There is nothing free about it! I have to agree to barter all of my personal information, all my family and friend connections, my education, where I live and my historical “timeline” in exchange for a place to post pictures of my grandkids. What is free about that? I consider my historical data to have value and you can bet that it is priceless to countless agencies. Yes, they say you can opt out, but then they make a few changes to the system and change your privacy settings while they are at it. People have told me that I could just not give any personal information on social networking sites. So what would be the point? (BTW – have you ever tried to close a Facebook account? You are not allowed to do it yourself and it takes 2 weeks for them to do it)
I don’t think the use of social networking could affect me as much at my age as it might the next generation. But people are already using these networks to check on job applicants and yes, I do believe the US government could muscle their way into finding any “tax evaders” if they thought it was worth their time. The library of congress has already taken ownership of millions of Tweets. Was anybody allowed to opt out of having their tweets owned by the government? The time will come very soon when no person will have any private information and there will be no option.
And people just can’t seem to post enough personal information. It blows my mind.
New development: EU’s highest court to rule on the legality of ACTA.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17125469
The European Trade Committee has voted to reject ACTA, which almost certainly means that it will be completely defeated in a general vote of the European Parliament, and thus will be rendered invalid in the entire EU:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18533268