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Yearly Archives

2014

From the Desk of Bob Barr

Technology-Driven Narcissism Cheapens Life and Morality

by Liberty Guard Author
written by Liberty Guard Author

Years ago, what one was having for dinner was news only for those sitting around the table. But in today’s hyper-connected society, every common, banal activity is deemed sufficiently important to be captured, cataloged, and broadcast to a global network of equally insipid “friends.” There are even specialized terms like “selfie” and “hashtag” to describe a process that, until now, was nothing more noteworthy than a group photo. The self-titled gurus of this social media realm call it “creating content,” despite the obvious fact that nothing is being created.

One need only spend a few minutes on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to see that today’s youth are more self-absorbed and feeling more self-important than ever. Rather than find role models and inspirational leaders in the likes of Steve Jobs, who changed modern digital technology with the production of the first iPhone, or Marc Andreessen, who helped launch the first web browser and now is helping push an equally revolutionary technology,Bitcoin, many “millennials” are obsessed with vapid Hollywood tabloid starlets like Kim Kardashian, or the latest YouTube “celebrity” – as if becoming a celebrity actually takes true talent anymore.

This growing obsession with other people’s lives, and with believing that other people must be interested in every daily detail of our lives, has reached the point at which there now is a hashtag to describe this feeling — #FOMO, which stands for “fear of missing out.”

Rather than enjoy the tangible reality of our own, God-granted existence, we cling to social media in order to live vicariously through the ephemeral, digital experiences of others. In the process, we are losing our sense of decency, morality and humanity.

Some might posit that our culture of social media makes us more interconnected; but if so, it comes at the cost of sacrificing the connection with ourselves. And, to compensate for the increasing hollowness of our own existence, researchers discovered people, especially those suffering from loneliness or depression, desperately attempt to fill it by sharing even more about ourselves, thus feeding the cycle rather than breaking it. “There’s a lot of social pressure to show that everything’s great,” one observer told Market Watch. “It’s a never-ending quest to be interesting and intellectual and unique, and strive to prove something to the world. You [can no longer] just be yourself.”

There is a darker side to this obsession as well; one that is pushing our society even further into the cultural abyss. Not only have we become bored with our own lives, choosing instead to live second-hand through the lives of others, we also are now experimenting with experiencing second-hand deaths. This macabre obsession first surfaced several years ago in the “Bodies” and “Body Worlds” exhibits making the rounds of major American cities. These featured the flayed, “plasticized” bodies of cadavers in varying poses marketed to the public as “art.” The public was and remains so eager to satisfy some grotesque urge to look at these “cool” displays of dead people, that they will pay money to do so.

Now, Europeans are taking this necromania to the next level, with a museum exhibit created by Dutch scientists that employs manufactured smells and sounds to recreate the deaths of famous people like John F. Kennedy, Princess Diana, Muammar Gaddafi, and Whitney Houston. Patrons experience these “famous” deaths by being shoved into darkened, metal, morgue-like boxes and then — according to media accounts — exposed to scents such as a recreation of Jackie Kennedy’s favorite perfume or Houston’s bath oils, accompanied by sounds such as splashing water and Houston’s voice as she drowns during a drug-laden bath. Presumably the deaths of Diana and JFK are accompanied by the sounds of crashing automobiles and gunshots, in order for the patrons to properly experience their death rush and get their money’s worth.

The use of technology for such bizarre and pointless purposes is rapidly turning into the same type of synthetic-sensory experience as that of “Feelies” — contrived movie theater events described some eight decades ago by Aldous Huxley in his dystopian novel, Brave New World. Huxley described how people were exposed to a manufactured, full-sensory environment in order to weaken their ability to experience truly genuine emotion; thereby facilitating the government’s drive to control the citizenry.

All this should serve as a warning sign that we indeed are losing touch with the true meaning of living; found in acts of creation, production, and achievement — and instead trying to supplement the growing emptiness with second-hand experiences and reality. The problem with the incessant drive for sensorial pleasures is that not only does it cheapen the value of the individualized life experience responsible for positive human achievements, but it turns individuals into budding sociopaths incapable of feeling any sort of emotion that is not provided through external means. We begin to pursue only those things that make us feel happy and safe, without any regard to morality, or understanding of how this blind pursuit of emotional satisfaction is making us pawns to others, including the government.

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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Sony’s Cyber-Carelessness a Wake-Up Call for Government and Taxpayers

by Liberty Guard Author
written by Liberty Guard Author

“There is no overall Strategy in the departments of IT,” reads one 2012 internal evaluation from within the Information Technology department at Sony Pictures. “Unfortunately my department which is supposed to be in the front line of progress is actually close to obsolete,” reads another. These evaluations, leaked as part of a devastating data breach, paint an ominous picture for the ongoing cyber-attack against Sony that has rocked the entertainment industry; and even has implications for American foreign policy as North Korea appears to be the likely (or at least a likely) perpetrator of the attack.

It might seem odd that a company as large and as cash-rich as Sony would find itself in the middle of a massive data-security breach. However, as leaked internal documents now make clear, the possibility for such an assault was not a matter of “if,” but “when.” These documents paint an unflattering picture of Sony’s corporate IT culture; suggesting that not only were the company’s data security practices woefully deficient for a company of its size and complexity, but its ability to evolve to meet new cyber-security threats was hamstrung by corporate bureaucracy and outright apathy.

Far more important than what price Sony will pay for its cyber- somnambulance are the lessons for the federal government, whose vast data assets are to potential hackers infinitely more enticing and valuable than those of any corporation.

Many of the unflattering descriptions of dysfunction and incompetence within the IT department at Sony could readily be applied to nearly any program of the federal government; but most especially to those related to technology. A prime case in point is the launch of Obamacare. According to Bloomberg news, as of last February the federal government had spent more than $800 million on computer systems to run the online healthcare portal that serves as a gateway to the Obamacare system. In spite of this staggering amount of taxpayer dollars, the system — which did not even make it out of the starting gate without catastrophic system failures — remains to this day, nearly a year later, plagued with fundamental functionality issues and critical data security flaws that have yet to be resolved.

The news in early September that the Healthcare.gov portal had been hacked elicited little surprise, except for the fact that the attack occurred more than one full month before anyone noticed. While no data appears to have been stolen, and the attack appeared to be the beginning stages of a larger attack, it was definitive proof of the nightmare scenario predicted by privacy watchdogs: An arrogant and inept government agency now was in charge of massive quantities of highly sensitive personal information, and it could not even detect an attack on that information in spite of hundreds of millions of dollars spent to do just that.

Sound familiar?

Unlike Sony, in which the fallout from its data breach is limited primarily to its employees and contractors, the federal government holds within its databases personal information on hundreds of millions of individuals touching on virtually every aspect of their lives: criminal, financial, health, travel, and even private communications harvested through the National Security Agency’s data collection programs. Reflecting Uncle Sam’s insatiable appetite for data, these databases are only growing larger and more comprehensive. This makes government targets not only attractive to agenda-driven attackers from countries like North Korea, Russia, China, and others, but also to entities looking to use such information for financial gain.

As we see with Obamacare, the idea that the government can be trusted with protecting information on us that it compiles is not only foolish in theory, but a responsibility it has proven itself incapable of meeting time and again in the real world. Moreover, the refusal to accept this grim reality out of a desire to save face, as Democrats have done regarding Obamacare, only compounds the problems.

Even when the government does get around to discussing cyber-security, its goals usually are more about expanding its own power in domestic surveillance, than it is about data protection for citizens. For example, legislation supposed to protect Internet privacy, such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), wound up trampling the very privacy concerns they were supposed to protect.

If we are to take any lesson from the Sony hacking, it is that a culture of incompetence and apathy to data security, such as we so often see in some of the largest federal agencies, creates a target-rich environment for hackers and energizes their endeavors. As government’s demands for data continue to grow both in the scope of data it collects on citizens and in the highly sensitive nature of such information, we should be strongly questioning not only if government is qualified to protect this data from theft, but if it should even be harvesting it in the first place. After all, hackers cannot attack a database that does not exist.

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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Congress Gives Uncle Same “ESP” – Enhanced Surveillance Powers

by Liberty Guard Author
written by Liberty Guard Author

In 1964, wrote that American society was quickly heading toward what she called “the stage of ultimate inversion,” in which “the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” Rand, who came to America to escape the tyranny of the Soviet Union, saw in mid-20th Century America a country following a similar course as the one she escaped; in which government ruled by “brute force” and increased its power as it eroded individual rights.

In 1964, Ayn Rand wrote that American society was quickly heading toward what she called “the stage of ultimate inversion,” in which “the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” Rand, who came to America to escape the tyranny of the Soviet Union, saw in mid-20th Century America a country following a similar course as the one she escaped; in which government ruled by “brute force” and increased its power as it eroded individual rights.

Now, more than three decades after her death, and with the age of the Internet in full swing, Rand’s fears of government “inversion” have become truer than ever. Last week’s bipartisan congressional passage of the FY 2015 Intelligence Authorization Act is clear proof of how far we have travelled down the road Rand predicted.

Since the mid-1990s, when anti-terror initiatives championed initially by the Clinton Administration and GOP leaders in the Congress provided the foundation for the massive federal surveillance apparatus in which we now live, privacy watchdogs have warned about the mission creep of federal authority deemed necessary to “protect us.” However, it was not until the 2013 leaks by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald, exposing the breadth and technological sophistication of the government’s surveillance programs, that the public finally recognized what the blank check of “trust us” was really costing us.

As it does with every scandal it faces, the Obama Administration defended against the allegations with the usual gobbledygook, masked as promises of reform. Compounding the problem, the refusal by Republicans in Congress to so much as even debate limiting domestic spying, ensured that in spite of the overwhelming public outcry to the contrary, nothing would be done to limit the abuses. In fact, as last week’s vote on the FY 2015 Intelligence Authorization Act demonstrates, the only actions Congress and the Administration favor are those that expand government surveillance powers.

Buried in Section 309 of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 are — for the first time in “public” statute — procedures for how federal agencies can retain “incidentally acquired communications” obtained through domestic surveillance programs, including communications known to be between U.S. citizens with absolutely no ties to “terrorism’ (which had served as the justification for the initial authority). As Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) explained in a Facebook message detailing the truly odious nature of the bill’s expedited passage, it was only after he quickly organized his legislative staff for a review that anyone noticed “one of the most egregious sections of law [Amash] encountered during [his] time as a representative.”

For years, the government’s ability to surreptitiously collect, analyze, store, and disseminate the private communications of U.S. citizens not suspected of violating any laws was based on dubious legal memos, classified decisions of the secret FISA courts, assumed powers in Executive Actions, and “plausible denials” concocted by federal officials responsible for conducting the very actions they were defending.

Congress’ most recent and feeble attempt at “reforming” that process in fact has enshrined in law those powers that, until now, existed in legal limbo. Any attempt at actual reform through court challenges now has been rendered even more difficult.

On the surface, Section 309 may appear an attempt to place a finite limit on how long government can retain the records of digital communications of U.S. citizens obtained without warrants or court orders. However, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details. Exceptions to the five-year limit carved out in the procedures, such as for communications “reasonably believed to have a secret meaning” or — a government favorite — communications “necessary to protect the national security of the United States,” renders moot any meaningful limitations.

But perhaps the most problematic language in Section 309 is the exception made for communications “reasonably believed to constitute evidence of a crime and is retained by a law enforcement agency,” which provides the legal authority to continue creating a digital rap sheet on virtually any U.S. citizen spanning federal, state and local governments, without any real consideration as to whether a crime has been committed.

Last week in this column, I explained how the government’s over-criminalization serves as a mechanism to control the citizenry. The government leverages minor, impossible-to-avoid criminal offenses to ensure cooperation when it so desires for either regulatory control or financial gain. The erosion of personal privacy through powers such as those found in the Intelligence Authorization Act serves only as a “multiplier” — moving us as at an accelerating rate toward that inversion state against which Ayn Rand warned us many decades ago.

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From the Desk of Bob Barr

The Real Tragedy Of Eric Garner’s Death, And Where The Debate Should Be Focused

by Liberty Guard Author
written by Liberty Guard Author

“I’m minding my business, officer,” pleads the man on the video. “Please just leave me alone.” Minutes later the man, confronted by police for allegedly selling “loose” cigarettes, would be placed in a chokehold and wrestled to the ground, eventually dying from injuries sustained by the restraint.

The video recording of Eric Garner’s death is deeply disturbing, and has once again stoked protests and fiery debates about police tactics and racial biases. However, focusing the anger and debate on racial bias or specific actions by individual police officers, misses the broader and far more important public policy issues raised by this case: the over-criminalization of our society, and the use of the law enforcement power of the state to regulate commercial actions and raise government revenues.

Make no mistake — whether Garner was targeted because of his race and whether the officers who confronted him employed excessive or improper force, are important issues. And both should be debated and addressed within the context of civil and criminal laws and procedures.

But neither of these questions addresses the far more important issue of why we as a society have clothed police with the authority to consider it within their power to arrest someone for engaging in such a trivial act. Ultimately, it is not so much the police officers who should be the focus of this debate and of our concern; it is ourselves.

If left unanswered, the questions about over-criminalization and abuses of police power to regulate commercial activity and raise revenue, threaten to overwhelm the fundamental principle on which our nation was founded — that government exists to protect Liberty. Unfortunately, what the Garner and so many other cases have come to reflect is the warped principle that the police power of the state exists to protect government.

How bad this problem has become is illustrated in the growth of the federal criminal code. Just three decades ago, a Justice Department study of the U.S. Code estimated there to be approximately 3,000 criminal offenses. In the years since, the Congress has added nearly 1,500 more crimes to the books. And this does not include the thousands of state and local offenses, or the thousands more regulatory edicts with which individuals and businesses are forced to comply.

While many Americans may believe it is easy to stay out of trouble with the law, and thus avoid confrontations with police, prominent civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate notes in his seminal work, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, this is a myth. Silverglate’s well-documented research into abuses of police and prosecutorial powers establishes that there are so many different and confusing criminal and regulatory laws on the books, that the average person in America cannot make it through a normal day without running afoul of at least three government “gotchas.” As Silverglate correctly concludes, this is no accident. “As a civil liberties matter, a government which has the ability to prosecute innocent citizens at will, is a government which has achieved the power that has characterized all tyrannical governments throughout history,” says Silverglate.

As documented further by Silverglate, despite the sometimes trivial or often technical nature of offenses charged, the laws and regulations on which such prosecutions are based are sufficient to empower the government to use its vast law enforcement powers to control whoever they want whenever they want. This applies whether it is a single citizen attempting to sell something as innocuous as a cigarette on a street corner, or a physician who has prescribed to a patient more of a government-controlled drug than federal or state drug agents have decided is appropriate.

In a broad sense, and as philosopher and noted author Ayn Rand opined more than half a century ago, since there is no way to absolutely control free men, government simply declares so many things “illegal” that it makes it impossible for citizens not to break the law.

Back in the 1930s, federal agents had to spend seven years engaged in creative thinking and investigating in order to find a way to bring to heel Al Capone’s vast criminal empire; finally settling on the then-novel use of the federal tax code. In 21st Century America, federal agents can choose from a lengthy (and ever-expanding) menu of regulatory and criminal offenses on which to easily and quickly build a case against someone as big as an Al Capone or as small as an Eric Garner.

It is not only the incessant drive to control people and businesses that fuels the engine of over-criminalization. Government at all levels has become so big and so costly, that revenues are never deemed sufficient to meet those perceived “needs.” Hence, the drive to find ever more creative – and liberty-stifling – ways to bring in more revenues; such as outlawing the selling of a cigarette by one person to another as a way to ensure such “commercial transactions” are taxable and taxed.

This expansion of police and regulatory powers reflects the unhealthy crony relationship between businesses seeking favors through tax breaks or government-mandated monopolies; the violation of which then leads often to criminal prosecutions.

Ultimately, of course, it is we the people who elect and reelect to public office the legislators, governors and presidents who both expand and abuse the powers to which their oaths of office were sworn. Let us not squander the current opportunity to seriously debate and reform these fundamental problems, by refusing to see the forest for the trees.

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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Bizarro-World View Of Self-Defense On Display In Ferguson

by Liberty Guard Author
written by Liberty Guard Author

Last week, residents of Ferguson, Missouri might have noticed a strange sight amidst the scenes of burning buildings, overturned cars, crazed rioters, and police in full military dress. Standing stoically on the rooftops of buildings in areas threatened by prolonged rioting were men dressed in masks and camouflage, armed with buckets of water, fire extinguishers, and occasionally AR-15 rifles.

These men were not members of the Ferguson Police Department or the Missouri National Guard. They were members of the Oath Keepers, a nationwide collective of military veterans, former law enforcement officers, first responders and other concerned citizens who have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. They were drawn to Ferguson to help protect the people and property of the town from the rioters and criminals, who largely had avoided being stopped by the police and National Guard troops.

While the appearance of the Oath Keepers came as a relief to citizens and small business owners affected by the riots, to the authorities they posed a threat. That’s right. Within just days of arriving, rather than being thanked by the police for volunteering to help protect lives and property, these law-abiding volunteers were ordered to get out of town, apparently for “operating without a license.”

Absurd as it is that a person would need a “license” to do nothing more than protect private property from wanton destruction — especially when the police force’s apparent “best efforts” to do so were woefully deficient — that is exactly how government views the right to self-defense in the Bizarro World of 21st Century America.

While the government’s assault on the principle of self-defense underlying the Second Amendment is nothing new, the degree to which federal and state officials misunderstand or simply choose to ignore the fundamental principle of self-defense, is truly disheartening.

Many people consider that the modern era of gun control began in the late 1960s following the assassination of Robert Kennedy; but it actually dates to 1934 when the Congress passed the 1934 National Firearms Act. Since that seminal event, a distinct anti-firearms philosophy has taken hold in large segments of society; one that considers personal ownership of a firearm not as an exercise of a God-given right to defend oneself, but rather as a direct threat to “public safety.” Adherents of this group-centric philosophy consider the right to defend oneself with a firearm as something separate from — indeed, inferior to — the collective responsibility of government to protect society. In this world view, “public safety” trumps both individual responsibility and individual liberty.

Employing footholds gained through advocacy in the legislative, judicial and executive branches at all levels of government, these anti-gun forces have worked steadily to transmogrify the Second Amendment into a public-policy commodity, subject to the at-will regulation of government officials. The ultimate goal of this movement is to empower government as the exclusive owner of the means to personal defense; thus relegating citizens to a position of absolute reliance on the government for their personal and property protection. It is all about Control.

The historically-sound notion that citizens possess primary responsibility for protection of their persons and property, is reflected not only in the clear intent of the Second Amendment, but as well in federal court decisions. For example, in 1981, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit noted inWarren v. District of Columbia, that “. . . government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular citizen.” This assertion was reiterated a year later by the Seventh Circuit, in Bowers v. DeVito, when that Court held “there is no constitutional right to be protected by the state.”

Government, of course, wants to have it both ways. While accepting it is under no absolute obligation to protect citizens from harm (thereby avoiding liability for failing to protect against criminal actions), government officials constantly seek to acquire and maintain a monopoly of the means by which individuals are able to exercise their responsibility to protect themselves – that is, by remaining free to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Thus the bizarre spectacle of police in Ferguson rejecting efforts by citizens to protect lives and property when most critical to do so.

Unfortunately, the reaction by state and local authorities in Ferguson to citizen-based self-defense represents not the exception, but the prevalent view of “public safety”; and not only in the United States but throughout western society generally. It is, however, particularly discouraging that such a fundamentally flawed understanding of individual rights and constitutional history are run amuck here, in what Ronald Reagan correctly described as “the last best hope of man on earth.”

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From the Desk of Bob Barr

21st Century Technology And Government Power Put Orwell’s “Thought Police” To Shame

by Liberty Guard Author
written by Liberty Guard Author

“Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever,” George Orwell wrote in 1984, describing the “Newspeak” term for any crime that was evidence of disloyalty. “You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.” Though written more than six decades ago in 1949, Orwell’s dystopian fiction has been hauntingly prophetic in its accuracy describing the nature of totalitarian societies, particularly the frightening methods for exacting control over the population.

Orwell’s omnipresent “Thought Police,” who penetrated every facet of civilian life, were replicated for decades until the fall of the Berlin Wall by the feared East German “Stasi”; and until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, by the KGB. Russian citizens today, under Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB official, reportedly suffer similar “Big Brother-ism.”

Even in the United States, we see eerie similarities developing within and among the myriad federal agencies that are either directly or indirectly involved in gathering, processing, disseminating, and data-basing information on and about the citizenry. This is no longer a concern that should be directed only at those agencies historically tasked with such activities – the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA primarily. Virtually every federal agency has now become part of the problem.

The Transportation Safety Administration employs “behavior detection officers” to scan facial expressions in order to identify would-be terrorists. DNA is harvested at roadblocks on public highways. The US Postal Service conducts hundreds of thousands of “mail covers” each year, “come rain, shine or dead of night.”

But it is the arena of electronic communications data gathering that has provided the most abundant – and scary – harvest of personal information a la George Orwell.

Owing largely to the actions of Edward Snowden and reporter Glenn Greenwald, we know that any digital communication in which a person participates can be, and likely is, recorded, stored and analyzed by the NSA. The Department of Justice even uses fake cell phone towers on Cessna airplanesto surreptitiously collect cell phone data from American citizens.

Last weekend, however, America moved yet another step closer to fulfilling Orwell’s vision for the future under a totalitarian state as the New York Times revealed that a disturbing number of federal agencies are now using costly, and largely unsupervised, “undercover” investigations to conduct surveillance. These “Secret Police” pose as “business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers” in order to catch suspects, or whomever else may fall within the ever-expanding registry of federal criminal offenses (now approaching 5,000 in number).

For years privacy advocates have warned about the steady expansion of virtually unchecked powers both granted to, and assumed by, federal law enforcement and clandestine services agencies. The situation is made far worse by virtue of the fact that many of these activities now are undertaken “in the shadows,” with minimal or no real oversight by the President, agency heads or even congressional overseers. The agencies thus are left largely free to carry on as nearly autonomous entities, guided only by the vague, if not meaningless principle, that they are “protecting us” — whatever the financial or legal costs.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the notion of “Saving America” is now more of a rote mantra used to justify whatever actions government agencies or individual employees decide to undertake so long as such actions can be shoe-horned into the box labeled “homeland security.” The mammoth mechanism of the federal government has transmogrified from an entity designed to protect liberty, into an opaque and self-justifying Praetorian Guard made almost impenetrable to the citizenry through the double-edged sword of modern technology.

This now-galloping mission creep once was relegated primarily to the major federal law enforcement and spy agencies. No longer is this the case. Last weekend’s New York Times revelations illustrates clearly how this toxic mentality has infected virtually every facet of the federal government. Like financial institutions that believed themselves “too big to fail,” the federal government now considers itself “too important to restrain.” Each department, agency, or office has a mission it considers absolutely essential to protecting America from crime, corruption and terrorism — where even discussion about limits to their extra-legal exploits is taboo.

The tangible threats posed by this paradigm are fundamental and widespread. If someone with the I.R.S. can pose as an attorney to catch criminals, how are citizens supposed to trust in the integrity of the right to defend themselves against government charges? If a special agent with the FBI can pretend to be an AP reporter, is any media product free from suspicion? And, if an employee of the DEA can steal content and photos from citizens to use in sting operations, how are we to trust that even our friends’ and family’s online communications are not the product of government snoops?

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment,” Orwell wrote 65 years ago.“You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” Sadly, the ubiquity of home computers, smart phones, iPads, and other information-sharing devices – all susceptible to government GPS tracking – have make Orwell’s society, in which at least the dark of night provided some relief from government’s prying eyes and ears, a quaint relic of a bygone day.

 

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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Net Neutrality: A 21st Century Trojan Horse

by Liberty Guard Author
written by Liberty Guard Author

“’Net Neutrality’ is Obamacare for the Internet.” With this single phrase, Senator Ted Cruz has sparked one of the most heated debates about the future of the Internet since the Federal Communications Commission first released its Open Internet Order in 2010.

Proponents of the cleverly-named proposal known as “Net Neutrality” argue government regulation is needed in order to keep the Internet open and free, by preventing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from establishing “Internet fast lanes” at premium costs. Opponents, including Cruz and many Internet experts, argue that opening the door to government regulation of ISPs in this way will stifle innovation, increase costs, and ultimately hurt consumers.

With some of the worst consumer satisfaction ratings nationwide, cable companies and ISPs seems to have gone out of their way to reinforce public perception that they care little about customer satisfaction and quality of service. This helps make Net Neutrality an easy sell to the public; advocates prey upon the fears and emotions of consumers — greedy ISP providers throttling internet access for more profit — then salves those fears with the siren song of government regulation.

However, this should not overshadow what we know for certain about government promises of protection; and it must not blind us to what Net Neutrality truly is: a 21st Century Trojan Horse filled with federal bureaucrats itching to control the single most powerful tool of the modern age — a free and unfettered Internet.

Net Neutrality is not some sort of trophy representing triumph over greedy cable and Internet companies. Rather, it is a sham promise by Obama to get inside the city gates. The real purpose is to mask what follows; just as the citizens of Troy discovered shortly after opening their city to what they mistakenly saw as a gift.

This is not the first time such a tactic has been used to massively expand the power of the federal government under the guise of protecting the public. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the also cleverly-named USA PATRIOT Act was sold as a way to protect citizens from terrorism; several years later, the Dodd-Frank Act was sold as consumer protection against Wall Street fraud; and, in the granddaddy of all federal panaceas, ObamaCare was sold as a plan to fix America’s healthcare system.

Not surprisingly, in none of these instances of federal “reform” did the promised manna fall from the heavens; and in every case, the supposedly “narrowly tailored” powers were expanded dramatically to sustain the government’s inevitable and insatiable appetite for control.

A similar fate is on the horizon for the Internet if Obama gets his way to implement “Net Neutrality.”

Departing from a long-standing tradition of “light-touch” regulation that has given ISPs the latitude to innovate and expand, Obama now wants the FCC to reclassify the Internet to bring it under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. This regulatory regimen would strap ISPs with common-carrier regulations first drafted eight decades ago, and which are woefully inapplicable to either the technology or the markets of this early 21st Century.

It may seem counterintuitive to discuss deregulating an industry dominated by a small number of ISPs; but less regulation, not more of it, is the only way to bring about long-term changes in the industry without seriously the jeopardizing innovation and improvement that has made the Internet a super highway for economic and political freedom.

This phenomenon can be seen elsewhere. For decades, taxi cartels enjoyed an unchallenged monopoly on transportation services because they worked hand-in-hand with government regulators to keep out competition. It was only with the arrival of Uber and similar ride-sharing servicesthat the paradigm finally began to shift in favor of the free market and the consumer.

Cable companies like Cox, Comcast, and others enjoy similar monopolies in local markets. However, as Erik Telford, senior vice president of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, notes, this is not the work of greedy capitalists, but of regulatory corruption. “Cable companies may hold local monopolies,” writes Telford, “but local governments and public utility commissions dictate this lack of competition through sweetheart deals designed to line the pockets of the city at the consumer’s expense.”

Giving more regulatory control to the government in the form of Net Neutrality will do nothing to address this problem. Rather, such a move will simply reinforce the cycle of “regulatory capture” that greases the skids for ever-increasing government control that limits options for all of us.

That Obama is attempting to effect such a far-reaching plan on his own, without the concurrence of Congress, should surprise no one; this President’s unshakeable arrogance makes such a course his default position. But the Republican House can stop him even before the new and also GOP-led Senate is sworn in next January. They can include an appropriations rider in the almost-certain omnibus reconciliation bill that prohibits any monies from being spent to implement Obama’s Net Neutrality. If that fails, they must do so as a first order of business in the new Congress. If they do not, the future of Internet freedom will become markedly less so.

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