[governance] how about this... M$ preaching for world governance

[McTim]

yeah they are not on the side of the angels...they have started what
seems to be a multipronged campaign in recent weeks.
-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel


On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Carlos A. Afonso <ca at cafonso.ca> wrote:
> Dear compas, see the sequence of articles in the attached text file.
>
> frt rgds
>
> --c.a.
> ____________________________________________________________
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> http://www.corbettreport.com/articles/20100205_rising_tide_internet_censorship.htm
>
> The Rising Tide of Internet Censorhsip
> Will recent successes in fighting internet controls be enough to stave off
> tyranny?
> James Corbett
> The Corbett Report
> 5 February, 2010
>
> The focus is back on Internet censorship this week as a pair of articles
> from Time Magazine and The New York Times came out almost simultaneously
> advocating for licences to operate web sites. These articles were skillfully
> skewered by Paul Joseph Watson as lame attempts to shore up a disintegrating
> establishment media in the face of a blogosphere that is increasingly
> replacing them.
>
> The articles follow on calls by Craig Mundie—Microsoft's chief research and
> strategy officer—for an Internet licencing system. Introducing the idea, he
> said "We need a kind of World Health Organization for the Internet."
> Evidently unaware of the ongoing investigation into the WHO's role in
> manufacturing the H1N1 pandemic hoax to line the pockets of Big Pharma,
> Mundie added that an international Internet authority should be given the
> same kind of authority that the WHO has in dealing with a pandemic. "When
> there is a pandemic, it organizes the quarantine of cases. We are not
> allowed to organize the systematic quarantine of machines that are
> compromised." These calls are worrying because they represent only the
> latest instance of influential figures proposing increasingly tyrannical
> controls on free speech on the Internet.
>
> The Obama presidency has seen an increase in hype over cybersecurity
> threats, with the influential CSIS "think tank" having written white papers
> proposing cybersecurity as a key issue for the 44th president. As we
> reported last July, CSIS argued for "minimium standards for securing
> cyberspace" because "voluntary action is not enough."
>
> Shortly after Obama took office last year, Senator Jay Rockefeller
> introduced a Senate bill (S.773) that would give the president the power to
> "declare a cybersecurity emergency" and shut down the Internet. The bill
> would also require network administrators in the private sector receive
> licencing from the federal government after taking a federally-mandated
> certificagtion program. During Committee hearings, Rockefeller went so far
> as to say that it would have been better if the Internet had never been
> invented.
>
> In November of last year it was reported that an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
> Agreement (ACTA) being negotiated by the world's leading economies would
> force ISPs to cut off subscribers who were found to have shared copyrighted
> content on more than two occasions. Recent reports indicate that this
> proposal was not discussed at an ACTA meeting last month, but the so-called
> "three-strikes rule" has already passed in France.
>
> Earlier this year, it was revealed that Obama's information czar, Cass
> Sunstein, has blamed the blogosphere for spreading anti-government
> sentiments and advocated that the government actually employ people to
> infiltrate online communities and spread information favorable to the
> government in an effort to destabilize them. As remarkable as such a
> proposal may seem from a high-ranking government official, it is only one
> aspect of an official Pentagon strategy to fight the net as if it were an
> enemy weapons system.
>
> All of these proposals and numerous other stories we have reported on the
> past (e.g. here and here) represent only the latest attempts to stifle free
> speech on the Internet. Although groups like the Electronic Frontier
> Foundation have been fighting such moves for a long time, the explosive
> power of the online community in derailing the carbon eugenics agenda and
> exposing the Federal Reserve has awakened many to the nascent medium's
> potential...and its value. The value of the Internet is directly tied to
> freedom of speech, a principle that is opposed solely by the establishment
> media who thrived for decades in a virtually competition-free era before the
> rise of the Internet. As one commenter on the Time Magazine puff piece
> calling for Internet licencing notes, "There is NO grass roots movement
> anywhere calling for government intervention in the internet. It is not
> broken. It works too well, that is a problem for tyrants."
>
> As with everything related to the Internet, however, the collaborative
> efforts of concerned citizen in opposing Internet censorship is paying off
> in positive developments. The newfound awareness of the Internet's power and
> importance is raising awareness that online liberties are in fact
> fundamental rights that cannot be taken away. Even China was forced to back
> down from an Internet licencing scheme (exactly like that proposed at Davos)
> because of public pressure. A draconian Australian law that would have
> required all online political comments to be accompanied by the commenters
> full name and address is likely to be repealed by the Attorney General.
>
> Whether or not these individual successes in fighting back the approach of
> online tyranny will ultimately derail the establishment's agenda remains to
> be seen. It depends largely on public outcry over the loss of online
> liberties becoming a genuine grassroots movement.
>
> ============================
>
> http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/01/30/drivers-licenses-for-the-internet/
>
> Driver's licenses for the Internet
> Posted by Barbara Kiviat Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 5:16 am
> 70 Comments • Related Topics: technology world economic forum , Craig
> Mundie, Davos, Internet security, Microsoft, WEF
>
> I just went to a panel discussion about Internet security and let me tell
> you, it was scar-y. Between individual fraud, organized crime, corporate
> espionage and government spying, it's an incredibly dangerous world out
> there, which, according to one panelist, is growing exponentially worse.
>
> These are incredibly complex problems that even the smartest of the smart
> admit they don't have a great handle on, although Craig Mundie, Microsoft's
> chief research and technology officer, offered up a surprisingly simple
> solution that might start us down a path to dealing with them: driver's
> licenses for the Internet.
>
> The thing about the Internet is that it was never intended to be a worldwide
> system of mass communication. A handful of guys, all of whom knew each
> other, set up the Web. The anonymity that has come to be a core and
> cherished characteristic of the Internet didn't exist in the beginning: it
> was obvious who was who.
>
> As the Internet picked up steam and gathered more users, that stopped being
> the case, but at no point did anyone change the ways things worked. The Web
> started out being a no-authentication space and it continues to be that way
> to this day. Anyone can get online and no one has to say who they are.
> That's what enables a massive amount of cyber crime: if you're attacked from
> a computer, you might be able to figure out where that particular machine is
> located, but there's really no way to go back one step further and track the
> identity of the computer that hacked into the one that hacked into you.
>
> What Mundie is proposing is to impose authentication. He draws an analogy to
> automobile use. If you want to drive a car, you have to have a license (not
> to mention an inspection, insurance, etc). If you do something bad with that
> car, like break a law, there is the chance that you will lose your license
> and be prevented from driving in the future. In other words, there is a
> legal and social process for imposing discipline. Mundie imagines three
> tiers of Internet ID: one for people, one for machines and one for programs
> (which often act as proxies for the other two).
>
> Now, there are, of course, a number of obstacles to making such a scheme be
> reality. Even here in the mountains of Switzerland I can hear the worldwide
> scream go up: "But we're entitled to anonymity on the Internet!" Really? Are
> you? Why do you think that?
>
> Mundie pointed out that in the physical world we are implicitly comfortable
> with the notion that there are certain places we're not allowed to go
> without identifying ourselves. Are you allowed to walk down the street with
> no one knowing who you are? Absolutely. Are you allowed to walk into a bank
> vault and still not give your name? Hardly.
>
> It's easy to envision the same sort of differentiated structure for the
> Internet, Mundie said. He didn't get into examples, so here's one of mine.
> If you want to go to Time.com and read all about what's going on in the
> world, that's fine. No one needs to know who you are. But if you want to set
> up a site to accept credit-card donations for earthquake victims in Haiti?
> Well, you're going to have to show your ID for that.
>
> The truth of the matter is, the Internet is still in its Wild West phase. To
> a large extent, the law hasn't yet shown up. Yet as more and more people
> move to town, that lawlessness is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. As
> human societies grow over time they develop more rigid standards for
> themselves in order to handle their increased size. There is no reason to
> think the Internet shouldn't follow the same pattern.
>
> Though that's not to say it'll happen anytime soon. Governments certainly
> have been talking to each other about this (almost by definition, any
> effective efforts will have to be international in nature), but even in
> Europe, where there is a cyber security convention in effect, only half of
> the Continent's nations have signed up.
>
> One stumbling block that was mentioned at today's panel discussion:
> governments' own intelligence agencies are huge beneficiaries of the
> Internet's anonymity. We managed to spy on each other before the Web, but
> how much easier it is now that we can cruise around cyberspace without
> anyone even knowing we're there.
>
> So don't expect any changes in the short term. But do know that the people
> in charge—as much as anyone can be in charge when it comes to the
> Internet—are thinking about it.
>
> Read more:
> http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/01/30/drivers-licenses-for-the-internet/#ixzz0hkGBvgT4
>
> ===========================
>
> http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/drivers-licenses-for-the-internet/
>
> February 3, 2010, 6:33 am
> Driver’s Licenses for the Internet?
>
> Today’s idea: Let’s have “driver’s licenses” for the Internet to counter
> online fraud, hackers and espionage, a Microsoft executive suggests.
>
> Internet | Maybe on your busy junket to the World Economic Forum in Davos
> last week you missed the panel where Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief
> research and technology officer, offered up the Internet licensing proposal
> above. Barbara Kiviat of the Curious Capitalist blog was there, and
> summarizes the idea thusly:
> Isaac Brekken for The New York Times Licenses for both wheel and Web?
> (Audi’s planned dashboard screen, right.)
>
> What Mundie is proposing is to impose authentication. He draws an analogy to
> automobile use. If you want to drive a car, you have to have a license (not
> to mention an inspection, insurance, etc.). If you do something bad with
> that car, like break a law, there is the chance that you will lose your
> license and be prevented from driving in the future. In other words, there
> is a legal and social process for imposing discipline. Mundie imagines three
> tiers of Internet I.D.: one for people, one for machines and one for
> programs (which often act as proxies for the other two).
>
> Now, there are, of course, a number of obstacles to making such a scheme be
> reality. Even here in the mountains of Switzerland I can hear the worldwide
> scream go up: “But we’re entitled to anonymity on the Internet!” Really? Are
> you? Why do you think that?
>
> Mundie [above] pointed out that in the physical world we are implicitly
> comfortable with the notion that there are certain places we’re not allowed
> to go without identifying ourselves. Are you allowed to walk down the street
> with no one knowing who you are? Absolutely. Are you allowed to walk into a
> bank vault and still not give your name? Hardly.
>
> The Internet was never originally intended as a worldwide system of mass
> communication, Ms. Kiviat notes, let alone a largely anonymous one. But that
> is what it grew into, replete with feisty commenters like those reacting to
> her post. [The Curious Capitalist]
>
> ============================
>
> http://www.prisonplanet.com/time-magazine-pushes-draconian-internet-licensing-plan.html
>
> Time Magazine Pushes Draconian Internet Licensing Plan
>
> Establishment mouthpiece calls for web ID system that would outstrip
> Communist Chinese style net censorship
>
> Time Magazine Pushes Draconian Internet Licensing Plan 030210top
>
> Paul Joseph Watson
> Prison Planet.com
> Wednesday, February 3, 2010
>
> Time Magazine has enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon to back Microsoft
> executive Craig Mundie’s call for Internet licensing, as authorities push
> for a system even more stifling than in Communist China, where only people
> with government permission would be allowed to express free speech.
>
> As we reported earlier this week, during a recent conference at the Davos
> Economic Forum, Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for
> Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to
> be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in
> other words government permission to use the web.
>
> His proposal was almost instantly advocated by Time Magazine, who published
> an article by Barbara Kiviat - one of Mundie’s fellow attendees at the
> elitist confab. It’s sadistically ironic that Kiviat’s columns run under the
> moniker “The Curious Capitalist,” since the ideas expressed in her piece go
> further than even the free-speech hating Communist Chinese have dared
> venture in terms of Internet censorship.
>
> “Now, there are, of course, a number of obstacles to making such a scheme be
> reality,” writes Kiviat. “Even here in the mountains of Switzerland I can
> hear the worldwide scream go up: “But we’re entitled to anonymity on the
> Internet!” Really? Are you? Why do you think that?”
>
> Kiviat ludicrously compares the necessity to show identification when
> entering a bank vault to the apparent need for authorities to know who you
> are when you set up a website to take credit card payments.
>
> “The truth of the matter is, the Internet is still in its Wild West phase.
> To a large extent, the law hasn’t yet shown up. Yet as more and more people
> move to town, that lawlessness is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. As
> human societies grow over time they develop more rigid standards for
> themselves in order to handle their increased size. There is no reason to
> think the Internet shouldn’t follow the same pattern,” she writes.
>
> “The people in charge—as much as anyone can be in charge when it comes to
> the Internet—are thinking about it,” Kiviat barks in her conclusion,
> seemingly comfortable with the notion that shadowy individuals and not the
> Constitution itself are “in charge” of deciding who is allowed free speech.
>
> Despite Kiviat’s mealy-mouthed authoritarianism and feigned reasonableness
> in advocating such a system, Mundie’s proposal is little different to a
> similar system already considered by officials in Communist China to force
> bloggers to register their identities before they could post. At the time
> the idea was attacked by human rights advocates as an obvious ploy “by which
> the government could control information” and crack down on dissent.
>
> Indeed, the proposal was deemed too severe and the Chinese government
> eventually backed down. So a system considered too authoritarian and too
> much of a threat to freedom in Communist China is seemingly just fine and
> dandy in the “land of the free,” according to Kiviat and her ilk.
>
> Unfortunately for her, Kiviat was immediately reminded about what makes the
> Internet such a threat to the ruling elite for whom she is a well-trained
> apologist – almost every comment below her article disagreed with her.
>
>    “No. A thousand times no. This benefits no one but “the people in
> charge,” wrote one respondent.
>
>    “Drivers’ licenses ensure a basic level of driving competency, so that
> 13-year-olds don’t get drunk and drive into a schoolbus. That kind of
> stupidity doesn’t happen on the Internet. Enough security theater! Focus on
> actual security. Truly awful idea, Barbara.”
>
>    “I, for one, welcome our new internet overlords. It will be a comforting
> time when “the law” comes along to protect people from themselves on the
> net, because gosh darn it, freedom is dangerous,” quips another. “Not to
> mention, standards only ever come about through coercive government action,
> and never through private parties responding to their own incentives.”
>
>    I think bloggers ought to be fingerprinted, DNA tested for abnormalities
> and have the information safely stored in a government vault. That way when
> some authoritarian ruler of pit, decides you have broken his self made
> tyrannic law he can prosecute you,” jokes another respondent. “For being a
> journalist you sure are s—-d, anonymity protects the right of free speech
> especially when the scary internet is most dangerous in a nation that
> prosecutes freedom of speech and opinion. The biggest thugs and criminals
> you mentioned are corrupt governments. I bet you love China’s safe internet
> measures huh? But there are worse than China.”
>
>    “The internet is the only thing preventing total tyranny right now, and
> they are trying everything they can to chill free speech. There is NO grass
> roots movement anywhere calling for government intervention in the internet.
> It is not broken. It works too well, that is a problem for tyrants,” points
> out another.
>
> Shortly after Time Magazine started peddling the proposal, the New York
> Times soon followed suit with a blog this morning entitled Driver’s Licenses
> for the Internet? which merely parrots Kiviat’s talking points.
>
> Of course there’s a very good reason for Time Magazine and the New York
> Times to be pushing for measures that would undoubtedly lead to a chilling
> effect on free speech which would in turn eviscerate the blogosphere.
>
> Like the rest of the mainstream print dinosaurs, physical sales of Time
> Magazine have been plummeting, partly as a result of more people getting
> their news for free on the web from independent sources that don’t feed at
> the trough of the military-industrial complex. Ad sales for the New York
> Times sunk by no less than 28 per cent last year with subscriptions and
> street sales also falling.
>
> “The Internet, where newspapers are generally free, has siphoned off
> circulation and advertising,” conceded an October 2009 NY Times article,
> which is precisely why establishment publications like the Old Gray Lady and
> Time are pushing proposals that would strangle the blogosphere and in turn
> eliminate their competition – while devastating free speech all in one foul
> swoop.
>
> ================
>
> http://rawstory.com/2010/01/agency-calls-global-cyberwarfare-treaty-drivers-license-web-users/
>
> UN agency calls for global cyberwarfare treaty, ‘driver’s license’ for Web
> users
>
> By Agence France-Presse
> Saturday, January 30th, 2010 -- 2:35 pm
>
> web UN agency calls for global cyberwarfare treaty, drivers license for Web
> users
>
> The world needs a treaty to prevent cyber attacks becoming an all-out war,
> the head of the main UN communications and technology agency warned
> Saturday.
>
> International Telcommunications Union secretary general Hamadoun Toure gave
> his warning at a World Economic Forum debate where experts said nations must
> now consider when a cyber attack becomes a declaration of war.
>
> With attacks on Google from China a major talking point in Davos, Toure said
> the risk of a cyber conflict between two nations grows every year.
>
> He proposed a treaty in which countries would engage not to make the first
> cyber strike against another nation.
>
> "A cyber war would be worse than a tsunami -- a catastrophe," the UN
> official said, highlighting examples such as attacks on Estonia last year.
> Story continues below...
>
> He proposed an international accord, adding: "The framework would look like
> a peace treaty before a war."
>
> Countries should guarantee to protect their citizens and their right to
> access to information, promise not to harbour cyber terrorists and "should
> commit themselves not to attack another."
>
> John Negroponte, former director of US intelligence, said intelligence
> agencies in the major powers would be the first to "express reservations"
> about such an accord.
>
> Susan Collins, a US Republican senator who sits on several Senate military
> and home affairs committees, said the prospect of a cyber attack sparking a
> war is now being considered in the United States.
>
> "If someone bombed the electric grid in our country and we saw the bombers
> coming in it would clearly be an act of war.
>
> "If that same country uses sophisticated computers to knock out our
> electricity grid, I definitely think we are getting closer to saying it is
> an act of war," Collins said.
>
> Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, said "there
> are at least 10 countries in the world whose internet capability is
> sophisticated enough to carry out cyber attacks ... and they can make it
> appear to come from anywhere."
>
> "The Internet is the biggest command and control center for every bad guy
> out there," he said.
>
> The head of online security company McAfee told another Davos debate Friday
> that China, the United States, Russia, Israel and France are among 20
> countries locked in a cyberspace arms race and gearing up for possible
> Internet hostilities.
>
> Mundie and other experts have said there is a growing need to police the
> internet to clampdown on fraud, espionage and the spread of viruses.
>
> "People don't understand the scale of criminal activity on the internet.
> Whether criminal, individual or nation states, the community is growing more
> sophisticated," the Microsoft executive said.
>
> "We need a kind of World Health Organization for the Internet," he said.
>
> "When there is a pandemic, it organizes the quarantine of cases. We are not
> allowed to organize the systematic quarantine of machines that are
> compromised."
>
> He also called for a "driver's license" for internet users.
>
> "If you want to drive a car you have to have a license to say that you are
> capable of driving a car, the car has to pass a test to say it is fit to
> drive and you have to have insurance."
>
> Andre Kudelski, chairman of Kudelski Group, said that a new internet might
> have to be created forcing people to have two computers that cannot connect
> and pass on viruses. "One internet for secure operations and one internet
> for freedom."
>
>
>
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