Corrupt new threats to internet freedom go deeper than ending Net Neutrality
The Federal Communications Commission voted to end net-neutrality today. There is no shortage of outlets where you can learn exactly what this means if you don’t already know. What many people don’t know is that there are looming threats to internet freedom that go beyond Ajit Pai’s FCC coup and they’re growing.
Jen Briney is the host of the Congressional Dish podcast where she regularly reviews the legislative activity of the United States Congress. That means unlike many journalists, pundits or members of Congress themselves she reads the bills. Her program is an essential listen for anyone who wants to know how American democracy works (or how it fails, over and over again) and what our representatives are really up to in Washington.
In her recent episode on net-neutrality Jen commented on a distinct shift she’s noticed in how Congress is approaching the internet since the 2016 election. She’s responding to a clip of Clint Watts, Senior Fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University testifying before a Senate hearing.
The quote in italics is Mr. Watts. The eight paragraphs that follow are Jen’s own thoughts — also known as the best damn thing I’ve heard on the future of internet freedom in a long, long time.
“Even in the US political context if we don’t put some regulation around [political internet content], if bodies like this don’t decide how we want American politics to work everybody will be incentivized to use this same system against their political opponents. And if you don’t you will lose.’ — Clint Watts
There it is. The real fear that this Congress has. The ability of people to use the internet to spread information far and wide, that could hurt their campaigns.
Something has shifted in this Congress. I’ve been watching these people closely for 5 years. This is different. And the shift I’m witnessing is that information on the internet is now being seen by these current members of Congress as a threat. Because information was used, maybe by Russia but definitely by somebody to expose the Hillary Clinton campaign. A lot of that information, the DNC emails, the Podesta emails, they were true. That wasn’t “fake news”. But the exposure of that true information definitely hurt her campaign. The [Democratic] party had the control that they’ve always had on the corporate media. The corruption in the DNC wasn’t being reported on every single night like it should have been top of the hour on MSNBC or even Fox. But those emails from the DNC they spread far and wide on the internet and independent journalists read them and wrote stories connecting the dots. That information, that true information it hurt a campaign that was designed by the entire party and to a large extent the corporate media. Because we saw the email that proved Donna Brazile gave Hillary Clinton debate questions in advance when she was at CNN. The party and the corporate media they pulled all their time-tested tricks to ensure that Hillary Clinton would be the winner. And she lost.
It was only a year ago. We were all shell-shocked by that loss. And blame by the powerful is being placed on the internet.
These people currently in Congress are seeing — I think for the first time — how the internet is the pathway towards the end of their power in the same way that the internet gives many of us hope. It’s our most powerful weapon against their corruption. They are also now seeing that the internet is our most powerful weapon against their corruption. We were kind of operating under their radar until the 2016 election. They were only watching the television; because they’re old. I mean, there’s no other way to put it. My senator, Diane Feinstein is almost 80 and the youngest people in Congress are still baby-boomers who think things said on Sunday morning shows are super-important and who think The Big Bang Theory is funny.
The internet was for us kids until Hillary lost. That appears to be their ‘holy shit’ moment. And you’re hearing how they want to regulate this system, this information system that we call the internet. They want to censor the shit out of it.
And so you can do whatever you want. I’m not trying to convince you of anything here. But am I calling the FCC to try and stop the Dec 14th vote? No. They’re reclassifying the internet as an information service. It’s happening. The FCC doesn’t have constituents. They’re not like Congress. They don’t have any reason to care about your opinion. The only reason they have a comment period is because they have to by law. So you can go ahead and bitch to the Communications Police but I wouldn’t expect anything out of it because the decision to reclassify the internet as an information service was essentially done the second Ajit Pai was confirmed as FCC chairman.
And am I instead calling my representative and my two senators and asking them to write a law to govern the internet? Hell no. This is the last group of people I want writing internet law.
We need a new Congress — a younger Congress full of people who understand the internet and who want to protect it, not censor it — to write that law. And this is not that Congress. And so what am I going to do about this right now? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m just preparing myself to get price-gouged on my internet access even more than I already am [which btw is A LOT. Like $135/mo with Comcast or something obscene like that]. And I’m also hoping that someday soon the millennial generation — which will officially have more voters than the older generations for the first time starting next year in 2018 — I’m hoping that my generation shows up to vote soon so we can get a Congress for the first time in my lifetime that can be trusted to write the rules for the best tool we currently have to create a better world.”
The part that I quoted begins at the 1 hour, 35 minute mark of Congressional Dish Ep 163 but I urge you to listen to it from the beginning. Because the background on the 1996 Telecommunications act which itself is built on even older legislation is essential information for understanding the problem of how the federal government approaches the internet. And because this is a discussion that finally breaks free of the Net-Neutrality 101 explainers that endlessly attempt to dumb-down the issue for easy click-sumption on social media channels.
If you’re willing to march up the hill to protect net-neutrality then may the force be with you. But please don’t die on that hill just yet. Bringing the net neutrality era to a lobbyist-induced demise is not the end of the fight for a free & equal internet.
