Don't Be Evil:
Google fights back against the Orwellian
Bush Administration and
says 'no' to handing over search data.
The attempt by the Bush administration to get Google to allow it to spy online on millions of the world citizens is another good reason that the Internet Protocol should not be controlled by one country.
China, Arab-League Build New Internets
Recently there was controversy of the addition of a .xxx domain name as the US government twisted the arm of Icann to squash this new domain name. Other countries cited this example of how the US controls the Internet and have subsequently pressed for Icann to be under the UN’s control. As the Internet becomes a bigger part of every country’s daily lives and economy the fear of having US control over such an important network is growing.
In response, the US is saying that countries like China, Libya, Syria and Cuba who complain about US-based Internet control don’t have democracies and as such taking control of the Internet for them means they will use their power for censorship.
Alternatives to Icann are also popping up in Europe where the Open Root Server Network or ORSN mirrors Icann and is there almost as a safeguard in case Icann starts to behave badly. In other words this root can be used as leverage to ensure Icann operates in a fair and equitable manner.
Should World Make Room For Another Wide Web?
Grundmann told Vixie that he set up ORSN in February 2002 because of his distrust of the Bush administration and its foreign policy. He fears that Washington could easily "turn off" the domain name of a country it wanted to attack, crippling the Internet communications of that country's military and government.
To build a better Net
Reforming the Internet to fence off thieves and to shore up performance could make cyberspace safer and possibly faster. In the transition, however, much of what is appealing about the Internet — the abandon with which information is traded; the ability to sound off anonymously; the wealth of links built over the brief, rich history of the World Wide Web — could be lost.
Those are among the reasons researchers are at work on a better Internet. In a room whirring with the soft buzz of computer hard drives financed by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security, computer scientists set up a mock battlefield at the Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research Network, or DETER, on the campus of the University of Southern California. Stocked with a thick library of subversive software, the project offers a “test bed” equal to 2,000 quarantined personal computers where worms and viruses are set free to war against good-guy software.
While Google is an American corporation, its reach is world wide, and as a truly transnational corporation it has responbilities to those who use its search engine, to gurantee our privacy whether we are American citizens or not.
Which is what Google has done in rejecting the search demand made by the Bush Big Brother Regime. While also protecting its commercial software search engine. Intellectual property rights, patent and corporate secrecy trump the American State. Ironic that.
While being done under the auspices of protecting children this is no different than the recent scandals in the US about the Bush administrations warrentless spying on emails, phone calls, mail etc of thousands of Americans.
How Cheney used the NSA for domestic spying prior to 9/11
Instead of using the excuse of National Security or War on Terror, which would immediate raise the hackles of civil libertarians, the Bush administraion uses the red herring of child porn to attempt to sweep through weeks of Google searches.
Spying on innocent Americans unlawful
It doesn't stop with Google, and what is scary is that unnamed commercial Internet sites have been sited as having already complied.
By trying to get Googles records, the Bush Administration is threatening the privacy of the worlds citizens and not just its own.
If Russia or China attempted this same kind of move we would rightly call them authoritarian and view this as a threat to Free Speech. The same applies in this case.
Good for Google, Bad Bush Bad.
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