The US: Big Brother Everywhere

The U.S. Congress is debating passing a bill that would permit the government to mandate that Internet service providers block web pages that could violate copyright laws. The Stop Online Privacy Act would allow private businesses to include Internet pages that are “suspicious” or “offensive” on the black lists. The law would also allow banks to freeze transfers to the accounts of the owners of these pages.

The Avaaz platform has launched an international petition signing campaign in order to pressure Congress and, in this way, prevent the passing of a law that would affect Internet content around the world. Avaaz argues that the bill “to discourage piracy” goes too far. It gives power to private businesses to deactivate domains and Internet pages according to their own criteria without prior government supervision and without guarantees of protection for the owners of those pages, or the possibility for them to demand preventative measures. This law would end the presumption of innocence that characterizes the rule of law and allows for a necessary judicial security for the citizens.

Seeing the violence with which the government has reacted to Occupy Wall Street, the Avaaz platform suspects that citizens’ movements are at the forefront. The law would allow the cutting off of information channels and mobilization of these groups, who extend their messages using Youtube, Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as other social networks. In a matter of seconds, the government could order a block of “inappropriate” content.

The United States condemned the lack of Internet access in China before. The comparison with a “communist” regime has helped American citizens accept the premise that their government guarantees them their right to privacy and to freedom of expression. But 10 years after Sept. 11, they are beginning to question the powers that the government has delegated to itself in the name of security, with the excuse of protecting the same liberties it begins to attack.

At the time of its approval, the Patriot Act was controversial and the object of public debate. But many communication methods have remained here. Although it results in a withdrawal in the matter of civil liberties, the law did not give carte blanche for spying on U.S. citizens and foreigners, requiring prior authorization from a judge. It doesn’t happen that way with a secret NSA program approved by George W. Bush and with critics silenced by judges and politicians in a “you’re with us or against us” environment. The New York Times journalist James Risen denounced the program in his book State of War, which brought him the Pulitzer Prize in the investigative journalism category in 2006.

Risen tells that the secret opinions of certain judges in the circle of former president Bush have justified spying on telephone calls and email of millions of U.S. citizens and foreigners suspected of “terrorism.”

In actuality, the number of emails sent within the United States is calculated to be around nine billion. Cellular telephone calls reach two billion and landline calls, one billion. Many defenders of civil liberties in other countries worry over the fact that many international physical telephone lines pass through U.S. territory, which allows the U.S. government to investigate the citizens of other countries.

It would be fitting to ask how many of the prisoners in Guantánamo, Baghram and other clandestine jails, whose torture was used to obtain confessions, were captured by the use of information obtained in this way before the complicit silence of citizens, who accept a violation of some civil liberty that the government says it protects.

The threat, they say, is no longer in Afghanistan or Iraq, or even in Iran, while the [U.S.] government announces, to China’s disturbance, an increase in the number of troops in Australia. But citizens are beginning to wake up from the nightmare of Islamic terrorism and coming to understand the reality of the other terrorism: financial speculation. They react, but [the government] wants to silence them with laws contrary to the rights that make for a free country.