US government exploring more Internet censorship options

If the recent news of the proposed Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) bill wasn’t enough to make you feel like the Internet is on its way to being excessively censored, some new information emerging this week could change your mind.

While COICA would create a government-mandated “blacklist” of domains accused of copyright infringement, a new initiative is underway by the US government that would enable the same type of censorship even without a law to enforce it.

ADVERTISEMENT

Barack Obama’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel, has been meeting with Internet registrars, ISPs, payment processors, and others connected to the online industry in an attempt to convince them to voluntarily censor websites per the government’s request.

"We are now actively calling on the private sector to do more in this area," Espinel said this week at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event. "In order to have a functioning Internet, there are many different types of entities and functionalities that you need to make that work. So we are calling on all of those to work cooperatively with the rights holders."

ADVERTISEMENT

In addition to pushing the industry to shut down websites at the whim of the government, at least one high-ranking American believes that the President should have control to shut down the internet. Former CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly stated this week that the threat of cyber warfare is severe enough to warrant such measures.

"My personal view is that it is probably wise to legislate some authority to the President, to take emergency measures for limited periods of time, with clear reporting to Congress, when he feels as if he has to take these measures," Hayden stated in an interview where he compared the internet to a new “frontier” for which we must develop protective measures.

While I think it’s great that the government would like to protect citizens from counterfeit pharmaceuticals and internet-based terror attacks, the forms of censorship that are being proposed here seem quite extreme. The ideas of allowing politicians to decide to deny a web domain to someone without legal documentation or turn off the internet altogether in the event of a perceived threat are both scary propositions to me. At what point do people decide that enough is enough and start to fight to retain online freedoms?

ADVERTISEMENT

No posts to display