Dream of free and open Internet dying, lawyer says

[PoliticAverse]

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The dream of a free and open Internet is slowly being killed by overregulation, censorship and bad laws that don't stop the right people, a top computer crime defense lawyer says.

The annual Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas kicked off Wednesday with a keynote address from Jennifer Granick, director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Granick said that while the Internet needs to be reasonably safe in order to be functional, it's no longer the revolutionary place it was 20 years ago.

No one is murdering the dream of an open Internet, she said, but it's withering away because no one is prioritizing its protection. On top of that, new Internet users are coming from countries whose citizens aren't protected by a Bill of Rights or a First Amendment.

"Should we be worrying about another terrorist attack in New York, or about journalists and human rights advocates being able to do their jobs?" she asked.

Read the rest at: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_BLACK_HAT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-08-05-17-19-03

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, PoliticAverse.

[appalachiablue]

2. Very impt. issue. Too many don't want to take this seriously, a huge mistake.

K & R

[Duppers]

3. +100

[proverbialwisdom]

4. COMMON DREAMS: 'The Dream of Internet Freedom is Dying,' Warns Top Civil Liberties Attorney

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/08/06/dream-internet-freedom-dying-warns-top-civil-liberties-attorney

Published on Thursday, August 06, 2015

'The Dream of Internet Freedom is Dying,' Warns Top Civil Liberties Attorney
In keynote address to Black Hat security conference, Jennifer Granick tells experts: 'We need to get ready to smash the Internet apart to make something better.'

by Lauren McCauley, staff writer

"The dream of Internet freedom is... dying," said attorney and civil liberties expert Jennifer Granick during her keynote speech before a major computer security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

Granick, formally the civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and now the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, was addressing some of the world's foremost technology experts attending the annual Black Hat information security event this week.

"Centralization, regulation, and globalization," Granick said, have wrought havoc on a space once thought of as "a world that would leave behind the shackles of age, of race, of gender, of class, even of law."

The dream is dying, she said, because "we’ve prioritized things like security, online civility, user interface, and intellectual property interests above freedom and openness." And governments, for their part, have capitalized on the fear of "the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers" to push for even more regulation and control, she added.

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[Blue_Tires]

5. Did this "golden" internet age really exist 20 years ago?

Because I sure as hell don't remember it the way she does...

And that writer would do well do well to drop the Snowden bullshit and at least cite a country that bolsters Granick's point...