Yes, I know I’m getting a little preachy here, but hear me out.
There were a couple of related stories that were published recently that I think are important to mention. One was an AP story about free speech on the Internet and how companies such as Yahoo and Google sometimes impose arbitrary limitations on that freedom. The other was a story on Ars Technica about the recent amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, an amendment that not only grants telcos immunity for aiding in government wiretapping, but also gives the federal government much broader eavesdropping powers, allowing them to wiretap at will with almost no judicial oversight.
We’re at a point in history where our desire for certain freedoms and civil liberties and our use of the Internet for the exponential flood of information are often at odds with one another. We want to be freely connected to the world, yet even online, there are limits to those freedoms.
The question is, with regards to the Internet, what should our expectations be concerning privacy and free speech in a society that is permanently online? Are we entitled to post anything we want carte blanche on Flickr or WordPress, and if not, where is the line drawn? And who makes that decision? (As the AP story points out, it’s not always clear.)
AT&T removing anti-Bush comments from a webcast of a Pearl Jam concert, Comcast throttling the bandwidth of Bittorrent users for fear of copyright infringement, Verizon blocking access to almost 100,000 USENET groups because 88 of them were found to contain child pornography. At what point does responsible corporate management become nanny-state censorship?
Missouri mom Lori Drew was recently indicted in California for creating a fake MySpace profile. The reason she was indicted wasn’t because she created the profile, however; it was because the taunting of her daughter’s 13-year-old neighbor via that profile led the young girl to commit suicide. The indictment, some argue, sets a dangerous precedent because it could make violating the terms of service of any website a felony. Further, in response to the girl’s death, the Missouri legislature set out to specifically outlaw online bullying. While the girl’s suicide is certainly tragic, are these actions reasonable responses or are we overreacting to what is essentially an isolated incident?
Our personal freedoms are not limitless, with or without the Internet. But I believe that it’s a slippery slope when we begin to give our freedom away to others without reservation, hoping they’ll do the right thing. Surely when it comes to Internet technology, there must be a balance between unrestricted autonomy and Big Brother regulation.
