Free speech on the Internet is getting hit from every angle, from Google’s scheme to register and verify online writers to new calls to bolster cyber-security by creating a back-up version of the Web.
All of it could be used to usher in a China-style Internet where everyone’s identity is revealed and harsh critics of the power regime are booted off the Web or arrested.
In China, you can get arrested for making jokes about the government on Twitter.
In America, you can get sent to a psychiatric hospital for posting on Facebook that 911 was an inside job. By the way, psychiatric punishment and detainment is also popular in China, according to the journal Psychiatry Online.
People who cannot fathom censorship on the Internet must not be aware it is already happening.
Talk show host Alex Jones is all too familiar with it. His websites Infowars.com and Prisonplanet.com have been blacklisted from Google News since 2010. The practice continues today, even though Jones breaks national news stories on a daily basis. Despite being barred from Google News, his websites still receive more traffic than mainstream outlets MSNBC and CNN, according to Alexa page ranking results.
Aside from losing his Google News spot, Jones has been censored multiple times by YouTube, Google’s sister site; and by Facebook for criticizing or making fun of government officials and programs. Videos, pictures and accounts have disappeared – some temporarily – and the actions were followed by emails lecturing him and his staff for making political statements online.
On Thursday, Jones ran a report on tech guru Danny Hillis who cited the need for a back-up Internet system, in case the current one sustains a massive cyber attack. The back-up could also serve as a means to create a highly-regulated and censored Internet, complete with increased requirements for running a website.
“Of course, this would be a routine procedure for monied corporations, prominent individuals and offshoots of the establishment itself, but could serve to strangle independent voices that have helped mould the Internet into what it represents today – the final bastion of true free speech,” Paul Joseph Watson wrote on Infowars.com.
“Internet ID cards or licenses would be issued to individuals who have proven themselves to be well behaved citizens – those have not used the web for illegal downloads, hacking, or God forbid – criticizing officialdom. The Great Firewall of China would be implemented globally – killing off all those annoying alternative media websites and blogs and allowing the mainstream media to reclaim its audience share.”
Google says if you’re a real author
Google’s scheme to register online writers also has potential to squelch government critics and others practicing free speech.
Under the guise of verifying writers’ identities, the Authorship program began by linking mug shots from Google+ accounts to online work. Back in 2011, Google hinted the program would morph into something more. And in recent weeks, it has generated a buzz online.
“We hope to use this information – and any information – as a ranking signal at Google,” Othar Hansson, who leads Google’s Authorship program, said in a 2011 video report. “So, in this case, we want to get information on credibility of authors, you know, from all kinds of sources and eventually use that in ranking. We’re only experimenting with that now. Who knows where it will go.”
Fans of the Authorship program are cheering as if it’s the best thing since a car that drives around and lifts private WiFi data from unsuspecting citizens, another Google operation. Street View cars gathered the data while photographing streets around the world, according to the New York Times. Information gathered included snippets of phone conversations and emails, which Google later called an accident.
These are the same people deciding what ranks highly online.
“Now who creates the content, and who does the linking out matters – which is why Google wants to know who you are via your Google+ authorship profile,” writes Brian Gardner of copyblogger.com. “What’s been dubbed Author Rank has the potential to be the biggest algorithmic signal for SEO since the hyperlink itself.”
Caitlin Muir of Author Media takes it a step further.
“You aren’t an author unless Google says you are,” she writes in an article linked in an email blast.
“You can write thousands of posts, but unless Google recognizes you as the author, it’s easy for someone else to steal your words,” she writes. “It’s like leaving a finished manuscript on a table at a writer’s conference. Someone is going to pick up your words and sell them as their own.
“Authorship allows you to register your words. If someone copies and pastes your words to their own site and tries to take credit for them, Google will know. The thief will be penalized.”
Yes, the all-seeing eye of Google will know because it is apparently wading into the realm of copyrighting as the globalists tighten up their matrix for killing free speech.
By the way, writing and other creative works are already protected by U.S. copyright laws.
“Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device,” according to the U.S. Copyright Office website. Further, registering works is not required unless someone wants to launch a lawsuit for infringement of work.
Why then, is it so important for the search engine to verify writers’ profiles? Is the government planning a system like China’s, where law requires Internet users to positively identify themselves before going online?
Rebuttals for gun control disinfo
This week Jones discussed how news agencies manipulate information and Internet search results to promote government agendas. The ranking system can clearly be gamed by organizations deemed to be credible sources. We recently saw this on the gun control issue.
When Jones appeared on CNN in January to debate Piers Morgan about gun control, he made the statement (loudly) that dictators Hitler and Stalin confiscated guns as a precursor to oppressing and killing their political enemies.
The correlation is damaging because it exposes the historical agendas for disarming the public, as well as the consequences.
Attempting to discredit the statement, some traditional media said dictators never came after the guns and had the stories placed at the top of Google.
Watson once again set the record straight.
“A meme has been launched claiming that historical gun grabs by dictatorships is a myth – an insulting attempt to literally re-write history in the name of pursuing a contemporary political agenda,” Watson wrote in an article titled “Yes, Hitler & Stalin Did Take The Guns.”
“In reality, the Nazis did take existing gun control laws and make them more draconian in order to target their political adversaries. That is a manifestly provable historical fact.”
In any event, Google’s power grabs are not surprising. It rules the Internet by setting a formula or algorithm that decides what appears first for search results. Being first offers the greatest potential for influencing public opinion or reaching customers.
Google has defended its past algorithm changes as a means to improve the quality of information found through searches. Admittedly, it is annoying to search for information on Thomas Edison and get results for tutorials on changing a light bulb, for example.
In addition to setting the algorithm, Google fields thousands of requests from government agencies around the world for user data. In 2012, the U.S. made the most requests - 7,969 out of the 20,938 inquiries made worldwide just halfway into the year, according to NBC News.
Google’s connections with the government is a story in itself - probably a book – and spans reports of investments with the CIA and working the CIA to scan social networking sites and gather intelligence data.
Oh, what a tangled algorithm we weave.
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