Spooks in the Machine

By Shannon Cochran

March 4, 2002

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"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed."

—Thomas Jefferson

It seemed once that the Internet would be the greatest instrument of free speech that the world has ever known. As a system for disseminating information, it's nothing we couldn't live without: The television networks exert a vaster sway, and for large amounts of data, books are a much preferable format. But as a system for subversive publishing, the Web is unparalleled in its efficiency.

But as Jefferson said, "The freedom of the press...is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions." Quietly and methodically, corporate and governmental interests around the world have been working to gain control over Internet communications, and silence those writers whose opinions are deemed unacceptable. Over the last few years, they've largely succeeded.

There are now 21 countries that have installed firewalls between their nations and the rest of the Internet, allowing "unacceptable" traffic to be filtered. As a recent Weekly Standard article pointed out, this censorship was only made possible by the cooperation of American companies. Meanwhile, in the United States, the DMCA allows these same corporations to jail security researchers who point out flaws in their products, and to sue journalists who follow up on such stories.

It's clear that free market capitalism provides no defense to Internet liberties. And government has been no greater help. The American government has mostly kept itself busy concocting new and better ways to spy on its citizens, only taking the occasional break to arrest a visiting scientist or shut down the web site of a teenage anarchist.

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