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.
