Corporate control of the internet is closer to being a done deal.
A federal appeals court Tuesday struck down a far-reaching government effort to protect competition on the Web, allowing Internet providers to sell faster download speeds to the highest corporate bidder — even if access to other Web sites slows to a crawl. Ultimately, the ruling may limit consumer choices on the Internet, critics warned. ...WaPo
What this amounts to is parceling internet access and speed along the lines of our society's current divisions. Ten percent get the best deal. Then the deal gets less good as we travel downward through the 90%. Less money = less access and lower speeds.
The decision is “alarming for all Internet users,” said Harvey Anderson, senior vice president of legal affairs for Mozilla, the nonprofit organization that created the Firefox Web browser. “Essential protections for user choice and online innovation are gone.”
Consumer advocates warned that if control of the Internet were to become concentrated in the hands of a few giant Internet providers, such as Time Warner Cable or Verizon, those firms could become gatekeepers of political speech and other content online. ...WaPo
___
Okay, what the hell... Just disconnect from the net when it gets too expensive and too slow. At least you won't have NSA monitoring you all day long.
Wrong!
The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.
While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.
The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. ...NYT
