We should have stood up earlier

This is extremely to me, as a blogger, someone who had family in Germany in the 1930s and has studied the era of the rise of Hitler in my free time, and as an American.

This man should not be persecuted for reporting on something the government doesn't want to be leaked, because when the government gets to determine what constitutes freedom of the press it is the fox watching the hen house and it is impossible for anyone to be a neutral party when they are the person being investigated.

This is a very dangerous path, and it leads to where there is no independent journalism. I don't scare easily, but this does scare me. Democracy cannot thrive when freedom of speech is curtailed.

This is the gift of compromise. Democratic voters have been so willing over the last 20 years to make amends to the Republicans that the difference betwen the right wing Democrats and mainstream Republicans truly is small on a number of important issues. Sure, the Democrats still do some good things like the environmental action this week, but it is not enough. We need to protect our liberties and not allow them to do these actions in the background when we are not watching and celebrating a victory.

Shame on President Obama. He is giving up his heritage. This persecution of a journalist is treason.

Source:
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/244525/risen-obama-administration-is-this-generations-greatest-enemy-of-press-freedom/

Website Censorship

The FCC has finally caved into Comcast et al to allow them to block certain websites. This is a very slippery slope because they can just slow down the base service and the only decent speed will be for the people who pay up, effectively discriminating against small website owners like me. This is a very slippery slope I have no desire to explore. We need to keep the internet as a free and open forum where all people can talk freely. Looking across the world access to internet and other freedoms are very closely correlated and we need to make certain the United States stays ahead of the curve. We need to defend our constitution.

Call your representative and senators today: http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/04/net-neutrality-finally-dies-ripe-old-age-of-45

More legalese explanation: our founding fathers put in a public postal service as a job of our government. If our founding fathers were alive today I have no doubt they would see the existence of a free and open internet equal to importance to a well run postal service because of the possibility of corruption of companies that deliver mail. Having public oversight in a democracy provides a protection that the private sector in a monopolistic or oligopolistic market cannot provide. The same can be said about the internet, there will only be one major internet provider in any area, and we have seen Comcast become the largest ISP in the nation. Without regulation it is very possible that Comcast could abuse their position and removing these regulations will do just this. We need to protect our liberties in the spirit of our founding fathers to protect the free flow of information which was clearly important to them and is the American way. This decision is not just an assault on the internet but a direct assault on the fabric that makes America such a special and unique country among 196 different nations. This type of decision is going to damage our position on economic and liberty indexes and erode our liberties when these companies abuse their position for all of these reasons. History has shown unregulated monopolies routinely abuse their position, which is why we have the FCC in the first place to protect our civil liberties and political and economic culture.

European Privacy Law Improvement

Concerning: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57590869-38/eu-court-lawyer-backs-google-in-right-to-be-forgotten-case/

A case in the European Court of Justice recently decided that European residents do not have a right to force search engines like Google (the main party because they are the best search engine for most things) to eliminate results on them. This is a good decision for several reasons:

1. If you have committed a violent crime and are seeking employment the last thing you would want is for a potential employer to find that information. If the (I'm dying not to say crazy people) plaintiffs in Spain had won their case then a felon (or the reasonable equivalent in their country's law) would under  EU law have the right to remove their information from the internet making it harder for people to find their crime. Also, there are many types of search engines that are specific to finding information about people and if the EU gave people this right to remove their information from search engines than private investigators who companies hire to screen their employees would be unable to check that their applicant is safe unless if they had to go right to the specific location where the crime is placed. Since this is extremely tedious looking through every local court in the entire European Union this would of course be an absurd ruling and make background checks far too expensive for most small businesses to do because of the time it would take to get all that information every single time. This has no benefit to society and it is good that the EU decided people have no right to remove publicly available information from search engines. While I would understand some laws for people who have been acquitted of a crime removing information, a blanket allowance of removing information is a very slippery slope, and such a law would be extremely difficult to get right. An easier approach would be to not have restrictions on information (except threats, obviously) and that if someone acted inappropriately based on information they found on someone online they would be committing a crime which would be hitting the problem at the source, easier to enforce, and have no possibility of devolving into an infringement of the freedom of speech which is critical for democracy to function.
2. The website that hosts the information was not the party being targeted, it was the search engine which only directs people to other information. If one search engine started getting infringed on another search engine would pop up (probably through the Tor Network) that would allow people to get the information anyways. Information wants to be free. Despite their best attempts, both North Korea and China cannot block out the outside world's information, which makes this entire purpose completely moot.

I am pleased with this decision, it would be like arresting journalists for uncovering government corruption, like is happening right now with Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, but it is most like Julian Assange's charges for hosting a website whose purpose was to host news stories that are not covered by the private media. Now we just need to insert whistleblower protections to our laws to prevent further abuse of power as the next step.