New threats to the Internet

Last week, WorldNetDaily published a series of stories about a
government-corporate plan to introduce the notion that Internet sites
should be “handicapped accessible.”

Maybe some people thought it was a joke. It certainly sounded like
one. I was surprised by the lack of reaction to the story and the threat
to our freedom that it revealed.

Yet, I’ve got to tell you, there is another graver and more immediate
government threat to Internet freedom — not just in the United States,
but worldwide.

Later this month, the European Union will consider a plan, developed
at the initiation of the Clinton administration’s FBI, to require
manufacturers and operators of all digital communication forms to build
into their systems “interception interfaces.” In plain English, what
that means is “back-door surveillance devices.”

In the early 1990s, the FBI tried repeatedly to get Congress to pass
laws making it easier to tap the new digital telephones. The agency’s
goal was to turn every type of modern communications system into a
national surveillance network capable of real-time, full-time access to
anyone in America.

Frustrated with inaction by Congress, the FBI switched tactics in
1993. Officials invited to Quantico their colleagues from foreign
nations — Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom,
Norway, Denmark, Spain and Hong Kong — and called the new organization
the “International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar.” A year
later, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Portugal and Spain had joined the
group.

Behind the scenes was the National Security Agency, which had already
successfully completed its Echelon project, an international
eavesdropping system for phones, faxes and email communications.

The whole approach to this massive global surveillance has been one
of secrecy. However, you can see for yourself what the EU will be
discussing later this month in a restricted document titled Enfopol
19, leaked to the
Foundation for Information Policy Research. There has been no public
debate, no legislation submitted to the will of the people, no release
of information to an unsuspecting public.

In fact, to my knowledge, this column represents the first media
report on this draconian plan to be written and widely distributed in
the United States.

Nevertheless, this plan is in an advanced stage of development and
implementation. It may sound like science fiction, but we’re talking
about off-the-shelf technology. The only thing that could possibly
prevent this plan from being fully implemented would be an expression of
outrage from the American people. That, of course, can not and will not
happen if the American people are kept in the dark about what’s in store
for them.

It’s no coincidence that this plan got off the ground during the
Clinton administration — the most abusive, power-hungry, repressive and
corrupt in the history of our Republic. It was Clinton’s hand-picked FBI
director, Louis Freeh, who, along with the goons at the NSA, nursed and
incubated this plot. It was in 1993 that former FBI Director William
Sessions was summarily fired by the White House to create the conditions
for a thoroughly politicized FBI.

For two years, I’ve had a ringside seat for a demonstration of how
the Internet has the potential to liberate Americans and people around
the world with information they could be systematically denied by the
corporate-government media establishment. It represents a real threat to
the forces of darkness — those in government around the world who would
like people to remain subjects rather than free, self-governing agents.

If the new media are stifled, controlled and regulated, I believe in
short order the world will be consumed in cataclysmic tyranny. In other
words, all that stands in the way, right now, is the ability of free
people to communicate freely and efficiently — without the constant
threats of government interference, spying and coercion.

Those threats are arising — fast and furious. The old corporate
media establishment — threatened as much by the new media as are the
tyrants of government — will not lift a finger to inform you of the
dangers we face. So shortsighted are they, so blinded by jealousy and
ineptitude, the old-line press dinosaurs are probably secretly hoping
that something — anything — will stop their inevitable decline and
fall.

But if you cherish your freedom, if you love the information
revolution represented by the Internet, you had better pay close
attention to what’s happening in Brussels and Washington. And help me
sound the alarm.