It saddens me that Republicans are behind something like this. I hope ‘Dingy’ Harry Reid kills it in the Senate.

Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year–in case police want to review them in the future–under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.

The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall’s elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.

A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored.

It represents “a data bank of every digital act by every American” that would “let us find out where every single American visited Web sites,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who led Democratic opposition to the bill.

I think that bill is pretty damn outrageous. Internet providers have no business logging every move a user makes and then storing it. The potential for abuse is huge. Republicans have gone too far on this one. Privacy has to count for something.

But here’s where it gets really infuriating. And it’s so predictable for the GOP to pull something like this:

To make it politically difficult to oppose, proponents of the data retention requirements dubbed the bill the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, even though the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well.

“The bill is mislabeled,” said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”

To be fair, both parties use that tactic but it’s still sick no matter who does it. Whenever the government wants to take away one of our rights or invade our privacy they say it’s for the kids. They just want to protect kids. What about the rest of us? Who the f*ck is protecting us? This bill doesn’t have a damn thing to do with protecting kids. It’s about giving the federal government and law enforcement more power.

I’ve been on board with the Patriot Act and even the warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, but this is a bridge too far. Enough is enough.

This article titled “China boosts internet surveillance” was written by Tania Branigan in Beijing, for The Guardian on Tuesday 26th July 2011 10.27 UTC

Police have told cafes, hotels and other businesses in central Beijing to install surveillance technology for Wi-Fi users or face fines and possible closure, in a further tightening of internet controls.

China has the world’s largest and most sophisticated web censorship and monitoring system, which it has tightened still further after the Middle Eastern uprisings. Measures included blocking major virtual private networks, which allow people to evade internet controls.

The new software, which costs about 20,000 yuan (£1,900), allows officials to check the identities of users and monitor their activity. Businesses that fail to comply face a fine of the same size and could have their licences revoked.

Strict controls already apply at internet cafes, which poorer people rely on for access.

It is unclear how strictly the measures will be enforced, and it appears that only Dongcheng district has told owners of the regulations. A staff member at its internet security unit said the initiative was city-wide, but Beijing police headquarters had not responded to a faxed query at time of writing.

The Dongcheng police officer added: “This regulation is made to enhance internet security and to assist public security bureaux to break criminal cases. Details of implementation are confidential.”

According to the New York Times, a notice from the district office said the measure would tackle offenders seeking to “conduct blackmail, traffic goods, gamble, propagate damaging information and spread computer viruses”.

“This is undoubtedly an invasion of Wi-Fi users’ privacy,” said Jason Chen, a 22-year-old Beijing resident.

“We have already felt the restriction on university campuses, since they have always been monitored. But this time, the control is stretching to cafes and people’s feeling of violation is sharper. If cafes cancel their Wi-Fi I will care a lot, and I believe young people will react strongly.”

Some venues in Dongcheng complained they were already losing custom after cutting off Wi-Fi.

“It is just unbelievable. Customers are not happy either,” said Leona Zhang, manager of the Contempio bar.

“Some owners simply think this is for the public security bureaux to make money from us. The charge is the same regardless of size, even for small ones with only two or three tables.”

Businesses in other parts of Beijing said they had not heard of the measure.

“If the regulation was implemented here, it would struggle to be accepted. The cost is too high,” said a worker at the New Seven Day Bar in Haidian.

“Furthermore, there is also the privacy of our customers to protect.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

This article titled “Washington moves to classify cyber-attacks as acts of war” was written by Ed Pilkington in New York, for The Guardian on Tuesday 31st May 2011 22.27 UTC

The US government is rewriting its military rule book to make cyber-attacks a possible act of war, giving commanders the option of launching retaliatory military strikes against hackers backed by hostile foreign powers.

The Pentagon has concluded that the laws of armed conflict can be widened to embrace cyberwarfare in order to allow the US to respond with the use of force against aggressive assaults on its computer and IT infrastructure.

The move, to be unveiled in a US department of defence strategy document next month, is a significant step towards the militarisation of cyberspace, with huge implications for international law.

Pentagon officials disclosed the decision to the Wall Street Journal, saying it was designed to send a warning to any hacker threatening US security by attacking its nuclear reactors, pipelines or public networks such as mass transport systems. “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” an official said.

The new strategy would adapt the existing right of self-defence contained in the UN charter by bringing cyberweapons under the definition of armed attacks.

Joel Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham University in New York who teaches IT law, said the policy was an important recognition that new forms of warfare could harm Americans, “and that the US will protect its citizens in their 21st-century activities.”

Sami Saydjari, a former Pentagon cyber expert who now runs a consultancy called Cyber Defense Agency, said the rule change was a logical and reasonable next step. “The US is vulnerable to sabotage in defence, power, telecommunications, banking. An attack on any one of those essential infrastructures could be as damaging as any kinetic attack on US soil.”But other cyber specialists warned the new provision would be extremely hard to implement and could escalate the militarisation of the internet.

Jody Westby, co-author of the UN publication The Quest for Cyber Peace, said attacks were difficult to track and trace back to their origins, often making it impossible to determine who is behind them.

She called for more diplomatic efforts to increase co-operation between governments rather than widening military options. “Sabre-rattling like this in the cyber age could backfire on the US, as it could spark further cyber-attacks on US infrastructure that could be massively destructive for American civilians.”

The Obama administration signalled its intentions two weeks ago when the White House released its vision for the future of cyberspace. “When warranted, the US will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country,” it said, adding that such responses included “all necessary means” including military ones.

The US is considered especially prone to cyber-attacks because millions of computers in America have been infected and because its military networks are so highly computerised.

Alan Paller, research director at the Sans Institute, which trains computer security professionals, said military and defence computers in the US had come under attack from foreign states at least since 2003, with losses including key technical data for the 0bn F35 fighter.

“The military knows its systems are under constant and increasingly sophisticated attacks,” he said.

US analysts have their sights particularly on China and Russia as potential sources of state-sponsored cyberwarfare. A congressional panel has warned that China had the capability of hitting federal networks connected via the internet, such as the national electricity grid, in a way that “could paralyse the US”.But tRussia was blamed in 2008 for a computer attack on the US Central Command which oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia was also implicated in more localised cyber attacks on Georgia and Estonia.

The US has also been implicated in cyber sabotage. It has been suggested that Stuxnet, the computer worm unleashed last year against Iran, was the work of the Israeli government, backed by Washington. Westby pointed out that the US has not denied the claim. “It seems we’re happy to launch our own cyber-attacks when it suits us. That’s hardly good diplomacy.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “YouTube urged to delete radical cleric’s sermons” was written by Vikram Dodd, crime correspondent, for The Guardian on Monday 28th February 2011 22.01 UTC

Sermons from Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric said to be linked to multiple terrorist plots against Britain and the United States, remain on YouTube despite calls for them to be taken down.

The news follows the conviction of Rajib Karim, a former British Airways computer specialist, for terrorism offences after being inspired by Awalki to explore ways of staging al-Qaida style attacks.

YouTube has been under pressure to remove sermons from Awlaki, who the US say is the “spiritual leader” of al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula and is currently holed up in Yemen.

His sermons have inspired people in Britain and the US to carry out terrorist attacks, with the internet being Awlaki’s main way of spreading his message that violence against the west is justified. Among scores of his videos on YouTube are a 22-part series called “The constraints [of] Jihad”, a five-part interview with the al-Qaida cleric, one called “It’s a war against Islam” and even a defence of Awlaki by a commander from al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula.

The home office said it was looking into the issue, which was highlighted last year by the security minister, Lady Neville-Jones, who called on the White House to “take down this hateful material” when it was hosted on servers within US control.

Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, former chair of the counter-terrorism sub-committee, said: “This is criminally irresponsible, this material continues to inspire jihadists. I’m amazed it is in the public domain so easily. The government must put pressure on YouTube to get this stuff down immediately.”

Awlaki has already inspired at least two Britons to commit to violent jihad. They are Rajib Karim, convicted of terrorism offences, and Roshonara Choudhry, a student from London, jailed last year for trying to murder the Labour MP Stephen Timms after watching Awlaki’s sermons online.

In his message to Karim, Awlaki said his prime target was the United States, and it is the superpower that has borne the brunt of his attentions. Awlaki is linked to multiple attempted plots against the US, by plane and by car bomb.

A YouTube spokesperson said: “YouTube has community guidelines that prohibit dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech and incitement to commit violent acts, and we have removed a significant number of videos under these policies. These are difficult issues and material that is brought to our attention is reviewed carefully. We will continue to remove all content that incites violence according to our policies. Material of a purely religious nature will remain on the site.”

Washington officials believe the Islamist cleric is the prime suspect behind the “ink printer” bombs which were sent as cargo on planes and timed to explode over the eastern United States.

He is also linked to one successful atrocity – the fatal shootings of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas by an American Muslim fellow soldier in November 2009.

Awlaki, 39, was born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents. He is believed to have lived in London for 18 months before moving to Yemen in 2004, and is now thought to be in hiding in Yemen’s rugged Shabwa or Mareb regions, an area jihadists have at times found to be a safe haven.

The cleric is thought by US authorities to be connected to the attempted car bombing in Times Square, New York and the Christmas Day attempt to explode a bomb concealed in underwear on a flight over the US as well as inspiring the US army psychiatrist who opened fire at Fort Hood.

US officials say he is a “recruiter and motivator” for al-Qaida and skilled at using social media, including a Facebook page and YouTube, to spread his message of violent jihad.

In contrast to most extremist clerics, he communicates clearly, even referencing pop culture, alluding in one online sermon to the singer Michael Jackson to emphasise his point. Awlaki is the only US citizen known to be on the list of targets for assassination by the CIA because of his links to past attacks against the US.

After 9/11, Awlaki was seen as a credible voice against extremism and was once invited to speak at the Pentagon.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

China has the largest and most sophisticated Internet censorship program on earth. It’s known as “The Great Firewall” of China. The Great Firewall blocks access to sensitive subjects in China like democracy or Tibetan independace. It also blocks access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networking sites. Why would China want to block Facebook? Think Egypt.

The LA Times has a story about the man who created China’s Great Firewall. His name is Fang Binxing and he heads up the telecommunications department at Beijing University. Binxing is vilified throughout the country for creating the climate of censorship for Chinese Internet users. He says being the bad guy is a sacrifice he was willing to make for his country.

Ironically, Binxing admits to having six Virtual Private Networks (VPN) on his computer for getting past the very firewall he created.

VPN’s are illegal but nevertheless widely used throughout China to get through the Great Firewall. The fact that Facebook has 700,000 members in China even though the site is blocked speaks to that.

This article titled “Egypt blocks social media websites in attempted clampdown on unrest” was written by Charles Arthur, technology editor, for The Guardian on Wednesday 26th January 2011 19.57 UTC

Internet sites such as Twitter and Facebook were cut off within Egypt today as the government of President Hosni Mubarak tried to prevent social media from being used to foment unrest.

Many sites registered in Egypt could not be reached from outside, according to Herdict.org, a website where users report access problems.

Twitter, YouTube, Hotmail, Google, Chinese search engine Baidu and a “proxy service” – which would allow users to evade obvious restrictions – appeared to be blocked from inside the country, according to reports on the site.

Twitter said blocking was intermittent and some users were able to tweet while Bambuser, a Swedish site for streaming video from mobile phones, said it had been blocked after being used by some protesters this week.

About 24%, or 19.2 million, of Egypt’s 80 million population have internet access, usually through internet cafes, mobile internet or “public information technology clubs”. About 1m have home access via computer.

Far more people – about 26 million – have mobile phones, so protests could be organised via text message. Vodafone, one of the two largest mobile phone operators there, said it was not responsible for blocking Twitter. “It’s a problem all over Egypt and we are waiting for a solution.”

Other reports say the government has disabled mobile phone towers and the telephone service, and that all communications have been disrupted. This could not be confirmed.

The government could order internet service providers to filter out services or block sites, but usually cracks down on writers and bloggers. In 2009 the Committee to Protect Journalists listed Egypt as one of the 10 worst countries for bloggers because of the tendency to arrest critics.

The government might have ordered the military to commandeer communications centres, leading to the blocking.

But any piecemeal attempt to identify sites being used to organise protests or beam video to the outside world will inevitably lead to a cat and mouse game between the authorities and protesters, who will be able to stay one step ahead.

Meanwhile, Egyptian government websites were targeted in return by Anonymous, the group of hackers who take on opponents they see as unpopular or oppressive. Reports suggested that a number of official sites had been hacked or put offline.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Starting today and continuing each weekend, I will post interesting documentaries covering a variety of subjects from technology to world affairs. Let me know how you feel about this change. Click the “Contact Us” button on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen to have your say.

The Virtual Revolution

Twenty years on from the invention of the World Wide Web, Dr Aleks Krotoski looks at how it is reshaping almost every aspect of our lives.

Joined by some of the web’s biggest names – including the founders of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, and the web’s inventor – she explores how far the web has lived up to its early promise.

The founding father of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, believed his invention would remain an open frontier that nobody could own, and that it would take power from the few and give it to the many.

Now, in a provocative, strongly authored argument, presenter Aleks Krotoski will re-assess utopian claims like these, made over many years by the digital revolution’s key innovators – and test them against the hard realities of the emerging Web today, exploring how the possibilities of the pure technology have been constrained, even distorted by the limitations of human nature.

Episode 1 (Parts 1-5)

This article titled “Facebook began as a geek’s hobby. Now it’s more popular than Google” was written by Jemima Kiss, for The Guardian on Tuesday 4th January 2011 07.00 UTC

Mark Zuckerberg faced a make-or-break year in 2010. From its first incarnation in 2004, Facebook had expanded effortlessly to a point where nearly half of the global online audience had visited the site but it was beginning to face a backlash from tech geeks, who accused founder Mark Zuckerberg of going too far in declaring the age of privacy over.

Flash forward to the start of 2011 and the outlook could hardly be more different. Bolstered by Facebook hitting the 500 million user milestone in July, a 0m (£290m) backing from Goldman Sachs and immortalised on film in Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network, Zuckerberg seems more confident, skilled and omnipotent than ever. And Facebook appears to achieved the ultimate coup: threatening to unseat the mighty Google as the superpower of the web.

There are some things money can’t buy and, for Google, they are market-leading social media propositions. Despite its position as a technology superpower and with an estimated bn in the bank, it has largely failed to deliver a convincing consumer proposition for social networking.

YouTube, which Google owns, has a vast network that reached 30 million monthly users in Britain alone last October, according to comScore, yet has little coherent, constructive community. Any enthusiasm for Google Buzz evaporated in a cloud of privacy controversy, while its Orkut site may be a Brazilian favourite but has failed to gain ground in Google’s home market.

Google is very far from anything like a crisis but it has been slowly undermined by Facebook’s audacious and rapid development, the realisation of Zuckerberg’s plan to reconfigure the web through social navigation and Facebook’s exploitation of its popularity to recruit some of Google’s hottest talent.

Google has never underestimated Facebook. In 2007 it attempted a major investment in Facebook but was beaten by Microsoft, which took a 1.6% stake for 0m. Facebook’s extraordinary, exponential growth – up to 633 million global users by October, according to comScore – is positioning it as the most powerful site on the web. Already secured as the busiest website in the world, Zuckerberg envisages a future where we will navigate the web through our social graph – our network of friends and contacts – with recommendations rather than searches determining what we buy, watch and discuss.

The statistics, as estimated by comScore, speak for themselves. By October 2010, Facebook had already become the UK’s largest display advertising publisher, showing 24.4bn ad impressions, or five times as many as Microsoft, to about 30 million web users. The number of advertisers tripled in a year. Revenues are estimated at bn for 2010, which would mean Facebook has raised revenues faster than Yahoo and almost as fast as Google.

Facebook also had the third highest number of video viewers, behind YouTube and just behind the BBC, with 9.4 million unique users. And 47% of the global online population visited the site in 2009. Facebook’s UK audience hit 31.6 million unique users for October.

“Facebook, along with Google, is now one of the titans of the internet universe,” said Simon Carmichael, of merchant banking firm Torch Partners. “Look at the audience it has and how they monetise that; advertisers are already very keen and they are creating a whole ecosystem around Facebook.”

Peter Thiel, an entrepreneur and hedge fund manager who was an early investor in Facebook, said in September that the company would not go public until 2012 at the earliest. Carmichael agrees. “Facebook doesn’t need to IPO to raise capital as its stock is already very widely spread, and there’s a very lively secondary market for Facebook stock in the US. But it would be good for the tech industry and an IPO at that level would make it easier for bn businesses to get out.”

Investors cannot get enough of Facebook on these secondary markets, which allow Facebook shareholders – though not current staff – to cash in on their stock. Trading has surged since November when Accel, one of Facebook’s largest investors, sold 15% of its stake for 7m, valuing the company at bn.

Under US law, firms with more than 500 different shareholders must go public but Facebook won an exemption in 2008 by stating that most shares were held by staff. Regulators are looking again at these markets because of the volume of trading. Facebook’s stock is by far the most popular and trades hands at rates valuing it at more than bn.

With investors convinced the Facebook phenomenon is only just beginning, how does the firm plan to grow? Zuckerberg has said that Facebook is “almost guaranteed” to reach the one billion user mark – and is attacking on every front.

The list of Facebook products introduced in the past 12 months testifies to Facebook’s ambitions to move beyond a simple network of social connections to become the default navigation tool for our online experience. From dominating photos and gaming, as well as expanding its email system, Facebook has now added features designed to add revenue potential to gaming and local commerce, including credits, deals, places, and a Q&A tool.

Juniper’s principal analyst, Windsor Holden, says Facebook’s future domination depends on mobiles. “Mobile usage is far more engaging because it taps that dead time, like waiting for a train. Previously it was sitting on a desktop – a primary activity – but now it is like snacking.” He says augmented reality, where images and information services are overlaid on a phone’s camera, will explode in 2011. “The industry so far has catered for a niche community but there are 100m augmented reality-capable smartphones in use. That could be powerful for Facebook’s advertising as it’s a natural fit for advertisers.”

Facebook faces challenges in reaching one billion users, not least because Europe and North America will soon reach Facebook saturation, and markets such as China and Russia are dominated by domestic rivals. But the developing world is a huge opportunity for Facebook and one it has already begun to address by working with at least 50 local operators to offer Facebook Zero, a pared-down version of the site that users can access for free via mobiles.

Already the web’s biggest photo site, Facebook has disrupted sites such as Photobucket and Yahoo-owned Flickr. Facebook has provided a vast platform that allowed games studios Zynga and Playfish to flourish; Zynga’s revenues alone are estimated at 0m for 2010.

Television is lined up next; Facebook is an important app being built into many internet-connected TVs from Samsung’s Smart TV to Yahoo’s Connected TV that will allow users to Facebook message friends about the shows they are watching together, finally giving TV the potential for targeted advertising.

The volume of information generated by Facebook globally is daunting. In any 20 minutes, Facebook typically sees 1m shared links, 2.7m photos uploaded and 10.2m comments. Facebook also records 7.7m “likes” every 20 minutes, generated not just by users on facebook.com but on more than 2m other sites across the web that have embedded Facebook’s commenting tools.

More than 10,000 sites are adding Facebook’s tools each day, and about a third of users access the site this way at least once a month. Facebook hopes this strategy will make the site ubiquitous by allowing users to take their Facebook identity with them throughout the web.

Until Facebook goes public, its priorities will be growth in users and revenues, which means more of these aggressive plans to expand. Those plans have just been boosted by a fresh investment round. With momentum like that behind Zuckerberg’s plans to dominate the web, it might be easier to ask what isn’t a target for 2011?

“In the next five years almost every major product vertical [specialist industry] is going to get rethought to be social,” Zuckerberg said, revealing his vision to the Web 2.0 Summit in November. “You’re either going to have an incumbent turn their business around, or some creative entrepreneurs with great engineers who are rethinking the product from scratch. Get on the bus.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “Wired journalists deny cover-up over WikiLeaks boss and accused US soldier” was written by Paul Lewis, for The Guardian on Thursday 30th December 2010 21.18 UTC

Two journalists with access to a secret transcript of comments by Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of leaking confidential material to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, have denied speculation that the material could potentially help a prosecution against Julian Assange.

The pair, from Wired magazine, said there was nothing “newsworthy” in unpublished internet chat logs between Manning and Adrian Lamo, a former hacker who claims to have discussed the leak with the young intelligence officer and later tipped off the FBI.

Wired.com claimed a scoop in June when it obtained a transcript of the chats and published excerpts in which Manning, 23, appeared to confess to being the source of classified material handed to WikiLeaks, which was founded by Assange.

However, in recent days the journalists have found themselves at the centre of an increasingly acrimonious spat with critics who accuse them of withholding crucial information about the largest leak of military data in history.

The dispute has centred on the 75% of the transcript Wired has not published, claiming the information would infringe Manning’s privacy or compromise sensitive military information.

Amid reports that federal prosecutors want to establish that Assange “encouraged or helped” Manning to leak the material in order to make him a co-conspirator, Wired has found itself under pressure to reveal more about the unpublished chats.

Over the past month, Lamo has made fresh claims about the soldier’s relationship with Assange.

Suggesting that Assange was more than a passive recipient of the leaks, Lamo has claimed that WikiLeaks either provided Manning with a special FTP server to prioritise his leak or arranged a physical drop-off in the United States. But he admits his claims are based on memory, as the hard drive that contained his copy of the full chat transcript was taken by the FBI. Apart from US law officials, the Wired journalists are the only individuals known to have copies of the full chat.

“The chats Wired has but is withholding – and about which they are refusing to comment – are newsworthy in the extreme,” Glenn Greenwald, one of Wired’s fiercest critics, wrote on Monday.

The following day Evan Hansen, editor-in-chief of Wired.com, and Kevin Poulsen, the journalist who obtained the web chats, published a response to what they said were Greenwald’s personal and unfounded attacks. Today both told the Guardian they had reviewed the unpublished transcripts in the last 24 hours. They concluded there was no discussion shedding new light on the relationship between Manning and Assange.

“If I were a prosecutor, everything I would be looking at [in seeking to mount a case against Manning or Assange] would be in the published record,” Hansen said. “We’re trying to get the news out there that is relevant to the public. If there was something like that in the unpublished [chat logs] we would have made that public six months ago.”

Poulsen also said that there was nothing “newsworthy” in the parts of the transcript they had decided to hold back, adding that nothing “of substance” about Manning’s relationship with Assange had been kept secret.

“We have discussions in the newsroom, at every major turn in the Manning case, about whether it is now appropriate to publish the complete logs,” he said. “And so far we have concluded it isn’t.”

Assange is fighting extradition to Sweden, where he faces unrelated allegations – which he denies – of sexual misconduct with two women. Although there is no evidence of an imminent indictment from the US. Assange has said his greatest fear is extradition to the US, where he believes federal prosecutors are “trying to strike a plea deal” with Manning so that he can be charged as a co-conspirator.

The material allegedly leaked by Manning is said to include more than 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables; redacted versions of a selection of these have been published by the Guardian and other media outlets over the last two months.

• This article was amended on 3 January 2011, to clarify that a segment of the leaked material has been published, rather than the entire body of material.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

The federal government simply cannot stand the thought of not having their hooks into every aspect of our daily lives. The last true outpost of freedom left in this country is the Internet. Something liberals in the Clinton administration fought for and subsequent Republican administrations. There’s been pretty much a bipartisan belief that an Internet free from regulation is a good thing. That’s why the Internet is a as good as it is today, because the government stayed out of it.

Then a little known Senator named Barack Hussein Obama took up the call by hard left Marxists and Communists to fight for so-called “Net Neutrality.”

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece today about how we got to a place where liberals are only days away from taking over the Internet. Taking it over to protect it from a completely made up threat.

Any Republican who doesn’t fight like hell to stop these thugs from hijacking the Internet should be thrown out of office on his/her ass.