..while all the major manufacturers of network equipment are trying their best to implement and even standardize logging, tracking, data collecting and traffic filtering "features" requested by governments of different countries, including US.
President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
201–210 of 449 posts
Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
#202As per usual with all politicians, these are just words. Nice words, but until a bill is passed and there is movement in the senate to make something like this closer to a reality, words are meaningless. My question to Obama is: why now? This whole net neutrality debate has been going on long before Obama started his first term of presidency, why wait until you are almost out of the White House to act upon something…
Obama already has a legacy that we can talk about... Expanding a police surveillance state, and raining hell-fire down upon our "enemies" like no other president before him.
Someone needs to learn American History...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Censorship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
When the FBI start assassinating American Citizens in their sleep after an agent drugs their food to silence African American Political movements... THEN we can start talking about a "police state".
Remember: Martin Luther King Jr. was spied on by the FBI for years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.#FBI_sur...
Today's laws make such surveillance and wiretapping illegal.
Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
But words don't always lead to bills, and Obama's been talking about net neutrality since 2007, before his first election, and before he named a cable lobbyist to lead the FCC[0]. If these words do lead to a bill, then great! But OP's complaint is that he/she believes this to be unlikely, given past precedent. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler
Tom Wheeler was a cable lobbyist from 1977 through 1984. He was a cable lobbyist before the consumer Internet existed, let alone cable Internet. His status as an anti-neutrality lobbyist is a powerful Internet meme based, so far as I can tell, on very few facts. It's sad how much force a tiny factoid can pick up in a public policy debate on the Internet. Public policy facts are about as reliable on the Internet as Go…
agree with your argument--but also important to note that once you start digging into the broader context of the current administration's financial and other relationships with Comcast, the sentiment becomes more understandable, even if it's not accurate or supported by direct evidence.
Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but Obama is suggesting that we re-classify ISPs as utilities. That would force them to lease out their lines to competitors.
That's not going to happen. Comcast is one of Obama's - and the Democrats in general - closest corporate sponsors. And were the Republicans to win the Presidency, I can't see them pushing for a formal classification either. They think Comcast is a private company competing in a market, when it's actually a government protected and sanctioned monopoly just like AT&T and Verizon.
On the other hand, Obama does not need to worry about his own re-election and it seems like quite a few Democrats threw him under the bus in the past election.
Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
#205Yeah, one that he controls and regulates.
Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
At no point since 2009 did the Democrats control 60 or more seats in the Senate, which would be a requriement to beat a filibuster from the opposing party. So no, the Democratic party did not have a free license for appointee approvals. EDIT: Came to my attention that Democrats did have a exactly 60 seats in the Senate for a brief period before Ted Kennedy passed away and his seat was won by Scott Brown in 2009. Howe…
as they passed the ACA, they simply changed to rules to use the reconciliation process to pass what they wanted without the Republicans being able to say a word. Reid was pro at changing the rules to prevent opposing views, people need to understand just how much of the problems in th Senate were his doing and his doing alone. Mister Nuclear just got nuked by the electorate
>as they passed the ACA, they simply changed to rules to use the reconciliation process to pass what they wanted without the Republicans being able to say a word.
Untrue. Fillibuster rules were only changed in late 2013, after years of being unable to even get votes on nominees.
Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me explain a few things about the American government. The most important thing to understand is that the ability of the executive to influence the direction of the government is limited. The reasons for this are several, but I will try to elucidate a few here. First, it is commonly believed that because of the ability to hire/fire people the President can more or less do whatever he wants in regards to the direc…
While I've suspected that the "deep state" as you and your source calls it are "behind the scenes", Obama did come out in support of the intelligence community after the Snowden leaks, so he certainly did not oppose them completely. [1] While I'm happy Obama is supporting net neutrality, I don't find him blameless. [1] You didn't explicitly say that Obama really desired to reign in this "deep state," just that any at…
No, I did not mean that. And I certainly believe that there are actions that the President could take that would help to promote a more limited role for the intelligence agencies, etc. I do believe, however, that the ability for any President to limit the power of the government is limited both by Congressional action and by the government itself. No agency wants to see its powers reduced, and will oppose any measures which could affect them.
Basically, any president which seeks to limit the existing power of government institutions will run into institutional resistance.
Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
#208I am not American (feel free to ignore my opinion) but this is just a bad joke from someone who seems to be an utmost failure. Especially in light of last week FBI/NSA/DHS undermining TOR and killing its utility for any dissidents and free speech in authoritarian states. Under his watch the surveillance state has expanded and has become downright creepy 25 years after the fall of the Berlin wall we should be saying "…
I am an American and I agree with your bad joke assessment. It's rather depressing to see my fellow citizens fall for these jokes over and over again, all the while losing their rights, even their right to privacy.
Agencies have been spying forever. From opening letters to eavesdroping phone calls. I'm not saying it's right, just that the agencies have not become worse with time.
However, I totally agree with you when you're concerned about the diminishing privacy. I think the advance of technology is the key factor for this. Agencies are as ruthless as always and use this new technologies.
Most people are totally fine to tell Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc. everything about their private lifes in exchange to ... distraction. Think of all the health shit ... they gonna make furtunes selling our data to the pharma and insurrance industry.
Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
At no point since 2009 did the Democrats control 60 or more seats in the Senate, which would be a requriement to beat a filibuster from the opposing party. So no, the Democratic party did not have a free license for appointee approvals. EDIT: Came to my attention that Democrats did have a exactly 60 seats in the Senate for a brief period before Ted Kennedy passed away and his seat was won by Scott Brown in 2009. Howe…
as they passed the ACA, they simply changed to rules to use the reconciliation process to pass what they wanted without the Republicans being able to say a word. Reid was pro at changing the rules to prevent opposing views, people need to understand just how much of the problems in th Senate were his doing and his doing alone. Mister Nuclear just got nuked by the electorate
>>as they passed the ACA, they simply changed to rules to use the reconciliation process
No they passed the bill with 60 votes during the only time they actually had a supermajority. There were no rules changes needed or required. ACA was passed and signed before changes were made in the reconciliation process.
Re: President Obama Calls for a Free and Open Internet
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
At no point since 2009 did the Democrats control 60 or more seats in the Senate, which would be a requriement to beat a filibuster from the opposing party. So no, the Democratic party did not have a free license for appointee approvals. EDIT: Came to my attention that Democrats did have a exactly 60 seats in the Senate for a brief period before Ted Kennedy passed away and his seat was won by Scott Brown in 2009. Howe…
as they passed the ACA, they simply changed to rules to use the reconciliation process to pass what they wanted without the Republicans being able to say a word. Reid was pro at changing the rules to prevent opposing views, people need to understand just how much of the problems in th Senate were his doing and his doing alone. Mister Nuclear just got nuked by the electorate
> as they passed the ACA, they simply changed to rules to use the reconciliation process to pass what they wanted without the Republicans being able to say a word.
Not quite. The Democrats had 60 Senate seats for a very brief period before Scott Brown took over Ted Kennedy's seat when he passed away. The main ACA bill in the senate was passed with 60 votes the normal way. A second bill that was to modify that bill was passed with reconciliation as a way to get members of the House to drop their version of ACA, accept the currently passed Senate version, and then modify that to appease some of the concerns of various congresspeople.
> Reid was pro at changing the rules to prevent opposing views, people need to understand just how much of the problems in th Senate were his doing and his doing alone. Mister Nuclear just got nuked by the electorate
I so very much hate the 'going nuclear' talk. Filibuster breaks at 60 votes is a shit idea in the first place, plus changing it only in one case for appointments is hardly shaking up the political order at large. In fact, the reluctance to do it for all types of votes shows how conservative leadership for the dems were being.