In the space of a few months debate has gone from "pressure on internet service providers" to make available user records to calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens.

In a display of bi-partisanship, both Democrats and Republicans are calling for such measures.

“Last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a Republican, gave a speech saying that data retention by Internet service providers is an ‘issue that must be addressed.’ Child pornography investigations have been ‘hampered’ because data may be routinely deleted, Gonzales warned,” reports Declan McCullagh of CNET News.

Now Democratic member of the Congressional Internet Caucus, Diana DeGette, wants an an amendment that would make such data deletion illegal.

DeGette says that any Internet service that ‘enables users to access content’ must permanently retain records that would permit police to identify each user. The records could not be discarded until at least one year after the user's account was closed.

This may mean that any normal website or blog would have to fall into line with such new rules and suddenly total web regulation would become a reality.

The excuse for this as either a standalone measure or as an amendment to a broad telecommunications bill that is moving rapidly through the House, is that it is designed to protect children.

We are being led to believe that a vast army of maniac pedophiles are on the loose and we must do away with all forms of privacy in order to stop them. This is akin to saying that blanket cctv prevents crime. As if to say "if we film everyone all the time, even innocent people, then no one will ever commit any crimes."

Increasingly we are seeing this in every aspect of our lives. Recording, tracking and retaining our data in the name of keeping us all safe. Everyone is now treated as guilty until proven innocent.

In reality the amendment would mean that such data would be accessible to any local or state law enforcement official investigating anything from drug possession to tax evasion.

Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute, said: "This is an unrestricted grant of authority to the FCC to require surveillance."

"The FCC would be able to tell Internet service providers to monitor our e-mails, monitor our Web surfing, monitor what we post on blogs or chat rooms, and everything else under the sun,"

We have previously exposed how moves are also afoot to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.

This would be a faster, more streamlined elite equivalent of the internet available to users who were willing to pay more for a much improved service. providers may only allow streaming audio and video on your websites if you were eligible for Internet 2.

Of course, Internet 2 would be greatly regulated and only "appropriate content" would be accepted by an FCC or government bureau. Everything else would be relegated to the "slow lane" internet, the junkyard as it were. Our techie rulers are all too keen to make us believe that the internet as we know it is "already dead".

Let's take a look at the possible effects that such moves would have on websites such as infowars and prisonplanet.

Given that they are already blocked by many regular filters because they are deemed to contain "inappropriate content" (even though 90% of our material is simply mainstream news) we would face the prospect of not being able to stream audio or video or of being locked out entirely if a telecom disagreed with our content.

Without the ability to stream our material we would have to rely on newsletters and mailing lists. However, the first steps in a move to charge for every e mail sent have already been taken. Under the pretext of eliminating spam, Bill Gates and other industry chieftains have proposed Internet users buy credit stamps which denote how many e mails they will be able to send. This of course is also the death knell for political newsletters and mailing lists.

With demands placed upon us to provide records of all our visitors, streaming audio and video gone, our ability to mass mail our content killed off and our position on Internet 2 DENIED, the sites would virtually be shut down.

The move to demonize the Internet and tar its reputation has been underway for a long time. The boom in blogs and alternative news websites has plunged the mainstream media into a panic. Their newspaper sales and hits to their websites are plummeting as people seek their own information from multiple sources. The mainstream has engaged in a desperate attempt to paint the internet as a dark place where criminals and weirdos are everywhere and all information is inaccurate and unbalanced.

AOL is still running ads equating Internet users with terrorists. In the next few years we may see a staged Internet shutdown which is blamed on cyber terrorists.

In reality it is the mainstream that is inaccurate and unbalanced, providing a one sided story firmly rooted in the past on printed paper or the nightly news.

For the aspiring dictator, the Internet is a dangerous tool that has been seized by the enemy. We have come a long way since 1969, when the ARPANET was created solely for US government use. The Internet is freedom's best friend and the bane of control freaks. Its eradication is one of the short term goals of those that seek to centralize power and subjugate the world under a global surveillance panopticon prison.

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