On October 1 this year, the US will surrender it’s de facto control over the Internet. There is a lot of noise on both sides of the debate as to whether this is really a good idea. I’ve been aware of it from some years, but the arguments were mostly full of unrealistic expectations and imaginary scenarios. We have had precious little leakage of the intentions of some of the major actors in this changing of the guard. Now we have something more concrete.
I’m keeping an eye on this: Leaked Soros Document Calls For Regulating Internet To Favor “Open Society” Supporters. Perhaps you heard that a computer cracker got into Soros’ computer servers. Some of the documents nabbed from Soros’ Open Society were made public, and one is of particular interest.
[The document] is also presenting underaddressed challenges, including lack of regulation of private operators that are able to decide, without due process procedures, what information is taken off the Internet and what may remain. A “race to the bottom” results from the agendas of undemocratic governments that seek to impose their hostility to free speech on the general online environment. We seek to ensure that, from among the norms emerging in different parts of the world, those most supportive of open society gain sway.
From this turgid bureaucratic legalese, we discern that Soros intends to shoulder his way into the debate about policies and controls of the future officially internationalized Internet. He intends to shape that policy to favor those who support his agenda.
Now, if you know nothing of Soros’ Open Society organization, it is a doctrinal assertion that humanity must be forced into a cosmopolitan mix without any national borders. Some of you may recognize that we at Kiln of the Soul are directly opposed to this. From Scripture we learn that humanity in a fallen state is required by God to live in a tribal society and under some sort of feudal government. This is hard-wired into human nature, so fighting it guarantees rejection by Creation, not to mention the direct wrath of God.
Also, Open Society is inherently atheist and buys into Western materialism.
So we have two issues here. One is whether Soros and friends can manage to assert their influence to bring about their regulatory dreams. It may not happen, but I wouldn’t bet on that. Given the known record of his influence on things so far, he may well get almost everything he wants. Two is whether such controls will affect our message on this blog.
As you might expect, I’m not likely to tone it down or keep things under my hat. A fake message is worse than no message at all. This is one of those things where the nature of what we do is all or nothing here. This is partly the reason I am working to reformat and edit my archives into a compact format. This is partly why I opened a second blog on my own server space. In my calculus, the privately hosted Kiln blog is not such a soft target as this blog. Also, this one gets way more traffic and attention from folks likely to take offense and complain.
This is behind some of my warnings that this blog could go away suddenly. However, you need to keep in mind that the freewheeling techies who make the Internet possible, and who keep it viable, aren’t going to tolerate too much squelching and censorship. While I can’t promise things will be alright for all of us, I can assure you the technicians are watching and their plans are far more activist than mine. Depending on how things turn out, I will likely share what I learn about their efforts. This is also part of why I previously mentioned using DD-WRT on routers; it’s a hacker’s answer to crappy software on those routers and the numerous backdoors already discovered in some of that software.
I’m keeping track for those of you who wouldn’t know where to begin.
