Global Research

On Thursday the Federal Communications Commission made public a document detailing its so-called net neutrality rules that were approved two weeks ago on a 3-2 vote.

A PDF version of the document can be downloaded here.

The rules impose heavy regulations on what is currently a free and open internet and will ultimately result in federal government micromanagement.

The rules will also accelerate and finalize a long term government objective of censoring political enemies and limiting their use of the internet. Serious political opposition to the establishment has flourished on the internet and the federal government has stumbled in previous efforts to regulate speech its considers politically threatening.

Control of the internet is the primary motivation behind the FCC rule-making agenda, not net neutrality and the fallacious call to regulate corporations and enforce the principle that all data is equal.

This was made clear by opponents to the FCC report and order on remand.

“Americans love the free and open Internet. We relish our freedom to speak, to post, to rally, to learn, to listen, to watch, and to connect online. The Internet has become a powerful force for freedom, both at home and abroad. So it is sad to witness the FCC’s unprecedented attempt to replace that freedom with government control,” writes FCC commissioner Ajit Pai.

The desire to assert that control became obvious in February, 2014, when the FCC terminated a study that threatened the First Amendment right to freedom of the press. The study on “critical information needs” would have asked journalists about their “news philosophy” and raised the specter of an underhanded attempt to revive the Fairness Doctrine.

“The Commission’s decision to adopt President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works. It’s an overreach that will let a Washington bureaucracy, and not the American people, decide the future of the online world,” Pai continues.

“Let’s leave the power where it belongs — with the American people. When it comes to Americans’ ability to access online content or offer political speech online, there isn’t anything broken for the government to ‘fix,’” Pai wrote in a Politico op-ed in February.

“It is difficult to imagine where we would be today had the government micromanaged the Internet for the past two decades as it does Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service. Neither of us wants to find out where the Internet will be two decades from now if the federal government tightens its regulatory grip. We don’t need to shift control of the Internet to bureaucracies in Washington.”

Concerted Effort to Neutralize Political Speech on the Internet

The entire rubric of cyberespionage and cybersecurity is designed for state control over the individual, not for protection from Anonymous and hackers in China or Russia.

“Some argue that heightened surveillance, restrictions on Internet freedom and even censorship are necessary to protect intellectual property rights, prevent cyberespionage, fight child pornography, and protect national interests such as nuclear power plants from hackers,” Fox News noted last February.

“Consequently, lawmakers — even President Obama in his State of the Union address — have been motivated to take steps to stem the hacking tide. However, the road to better security could also stifle free speech.”

In fact, the drastically overblown and often fictional threat of cyber security is engineered specifically to curtail speech, not harm from child pornographers but from political opposition to the state.

Recently refurbished cyber security legislation, having failed to become law in the recent past, is now being dusted off in congressional committees. Once enacted, cybersecurity measures will run concurrent to FCC rules and will impose a matrix of control over the internet.

The FCC and the corporate media continue to prortray the latest effort to regulate the internet as a win for the little guy, when in fact regulation will not diminish corporate control of the internet.

As Infowars.com noted in February:

Obama and the federal government have bent over backwards to portray net neutrality as a win for the little guy. In fact, despite all the siren warnings about socialism and the FCC by Obama’s opponents, the agency is in the pocket of the telecommunications industry and always has been.

Its current appointed boss, Tom Wheeler, is a former lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry, with positions including President of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.

“Net neutrality is a classic Trojan horse,” I argued. “It will be used not only to censor speech and marginalize opposition to the political class, but will also deliver the internet to large and forever consolidating media corporations.”

As the NSA and the behavior of corporations in league with the intelligence community reveals, the internet will, after the FCC rules take hold and cybersecurity laws are implemented, finally be sanitized of meaningful political opposition and, as well, serve as a surveillance platform and a tool for corporate advertisers to categorize and target individuals.