Their agendas threaten digital democracy – the last frontier of press freedom.
Trump’s FCC chairman Ajit Pai called Net Neutrality’s days numbered. He intends undermining digital democracy, letting users access all content without restrictions, limitations, or discrimination, an online level playing field for everyone.
At stake is compromising the last vital truth-telling space, threatened if content is censored or controlled.
Pai wants a free and open Internet eliminated by getting rid of FCC legal authority to enforce Net Neutrality rules – adopted in 2015.
They prevent ISPs like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from blocking and discriminating against web sites and other online material.
If current rules are abandoned, ISPs no longer will have to treat all web content equally.
They’ll be able to establish toll roads or premium lanes, charge extra for speed and free and easy access, control content to stifle dissent and independent thought, along with undermining digital democracy.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May opposes online freedom. She and other Tory hardliners want its content regulated, a scheme to impose government thought control, allowing what it considers acceptable, prohibiting what it wants suppressed.
May’s Tory manifesto calls for Britain becoming “the global leader in the regulation of the use of personal data and the Internet.”
“Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet. We disagree,” it says.
Tories want government control over what people write, post and share online, the end of UK online freedom if enacted into law.
Britain’s new Investigatory Powers Act requires Internet companies to maintain records on customers’ browsing histories, along with ministerial power to breach online privacy, including encrypted content – on the phony pretext of assuring no “safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online.”
May’s scheme involves having government act as online content gatekeeper, the way all police states operate.
Following the Manchester and London Bridge/Borough Market incidents, May renewed her call for global Internet regulation, on the phony pretext of “depriv(ing) the extremists of safe spaces online” – elements America, Britain, NATO, Israel and other regional rogue states support.
Saying “(w)e cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” rings hollow. She, Trump and likeminded rogue leaders want free expression stifled, using the ruse of global terrorism supported by Washington and its allies as a phony pretext to suppress criticism of their agendas.
May wants ISPs working with No. 10 cooperatively, helping to advance its agenda. She wants Britain becoming more of a police state than already – the same thing going on in America.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Featured image: dailyinbox.com
