It’s the end of 2015, and one fact about the internet is quickly becoming clear this year: Americans’ freedom to access the open internet is rapidly dissolving.
Broadband access is declining, data caps are becoming commonplace, surveillance is increasing, and encryption is under attack.
This is not merely my opinion. The evidence is everywhere; the walls are closing in from all sides. The net neutrality victory of early this year has rapidly been tempered by the fact that net neutrality doesn’t matter if you don’t have solid access to said ‘net.
A lot is going to depend on whatever president the American public elects next year. All Republicans are obviously off the table when it comes to an open and free internet, and Clinton, too, considers encryption a problem that needs to be addressed (i.e., broken, users be damned).
I don’t want to do any endorsements, but I think y’all can do the math. Make it happen, America.
I’m assuming you’re speaking of Bernie Sanders. One can only hope he is elected, but the Right is pushing the “ermagherd he’s a socialist” propaganda, while simultaneously propping up a guy who publicly and shamelessly embraces the National Socialist movement (you know, those snazzy SS guys from the ’30s and ’40s), racism and all. Replace “Jews” with “Muslims” and Trump is basically Hitler.
We’re fucked.
Internet rules say this conversation is over comment 1. Impressive
Don’t feel discouraged.
I’ll make a bet with you. Sanders is going to win Iowa and New Hampshire come February, and he’s going to beat whatever Republican nugget remains standing next year. Semi-Republican Clinton is already shaking in her boots.
100% convinced. It’s going to happen.
You don’t know the south very well, do you? Even if Sanders does manage to get past Hillary, his nomination will scare the shit out of conservatives, and they’ll probably show up to vote in record numbers. Same/same for liberals if Trump gets nominated.
If it ends up being Trump vs Sanders, that’s gonna be one HELL of a show!
It most likely will be. Right now, every single poll has Sanders beating trump by landslides – in fact, Sanders beats him by far larger margins than Clinton does! Of course, polls are effectively meaningless this far out, but it’s quite telling nonetheless.
I love American presidential elections – the whole process – so I try to follow it as closely as I can, watch all the debates, read all the articles, etc. A weird fascination of mine
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Oh and I actually have been to the south
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If that happens, I’ll probably gain 20lbs from all the popcorn I’ll be eating. It’ll be even better than the circus
The last place I expected to find election popcorners, Thom
The polls aren’t both meaningless and telling at the same time. History is riddled with outcomes that contradict polling, even when the finish line is relatively near. Upsets aren’t an oddity in American politics. Any polls you’re looking at now serve only to fuel gossip. The only thing they’re telling of is the medias lack of reporting on anything important & relevant such as Paul Ryan attaching, at the last minute, the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 to the budget bill that had to be passed or else. We’re served speculation 24/7 and it’s all worthless shit.
As far as having a Sanders vs. Trump election… That’s not going to happen. Even in the event that Sanders were to become our next president, he simply doesn’t have the power to deliver on all his great ideas (and I don’t say that with sarcasm). I like Sanders but the POTUS doesn’t run the show here. He/she has power in limited capacity and functions in large part as a figurehead. There’s a reason all the fantastic promises we hear every election cycle never come to fruition.
Lastly, it’s par for the course to criticize the American public. Yes, we do have a lot of stupid people in our population of 321+ million, but we also have a lot of people who do care and make an effort to see through the mud that is American politics and the manipulating American media. It’s not an easy thing for people to navigate and I doubt many of those who love to criticize from the outside would do any better.
I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that it isn’t that matchup come November.
Hey. If a black, Kenyan born, secret Muslim, Communist, Northern liberal college elitist – who also attends a church with a violently anti-White pastor (despite being a Muslim) – can get elected not once, but twice, well, I think we’re safe from the influence of southern conservatives.
Seriously, though, I think there are a significant number of Republicans that will absolutely refuse to vote for Trump. If he gets the nomination, I think the Republicans will have lowest voter turnout in a while.
Plenty of Dems won’t vote for Sanders either.
True, but I think far more Democrats will support Sanders than there will be Republicans supporting Bush.
Socialism isn’t the super scary bogeyman it was 7 years, even among Republican voters.
Yeah, but the Dem party is not the party that many American “progressives” think it is.
There is no way the DNC is going to get a non-party insider get the nomination, Sanders has always ran as an independent up to this year. Furthermore, the DNC is basically controlled by the DLC, and Hillary is their candidate, so she’s the one which will get the nod this time around. Besides, the deal was already struck when she yielded for Obama in 08. Sanders is just the convenient useful idiot that help reign in “progressives” to vote for the Dem side once again.
The thing is that Thom’s understanding of American politics is as competent as his grasp of science and technology, i.e. fairly superficial at best.
I’m one for sure. I would even vote for Sanders over Trump, and I think Sanders is delusional. Well meaning maybe, but delusional.
Still, at least he is a fully evolved human – that puts him way over the top for me. I refuse to vote for a lesser primate.
correction: I’m not a Republican, but I do consider myself a conservative, at least on fiscal and defense issues. I’m a atheist though, so no party wants me
Edited 2015-12-24 08:41 UTC
You should read this: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/7-things-people-who-say-t…
jal_,
IMHO the author is wrong. A fiscally conservative person doesn’t have to be socially conservative too. In fact I’d assert that conflating factors (like pro-life, anti-gay, pro-corporate, anti-union, etc) are a big problem when it comes to political representation under a dual party system. One should be able to vote for a fiscally conservative government without having to support the pro-religion party. But when it comes to Republicans versus Democrats, voters may not get the benefit of any candidates to represent their views.
I think the author is not implying that. The author is making clear that if you are fiscally conservative, you hurt people without money, and you are therefore explicitly not socially progressive.
jal_,
I can see why you cited the link in response to galvanash, it’s precisely the kind of scenario the author wanted to address. But being fiscally conservative does not imply being pro-life, anti-gay rights, pro-rasist. These are points he literally raises himself when asserting his premise that separating fiscal conservatives from social conservatives is “W-R-O-N-G”. Even though I can relate with many of his political opinions, I think his premise is groundless. Either it’s way overstated, or it relies on the very political stereotypes that people like galvanash feel the need to differentiate themselves from.
If galvanash is a fiscally conservative atheist, I can understand his dilemma when it comes to voting. This is just one of many cases where choices get compromised at the polls.
Again, I don’t think the author implies that. Being fiscally conservative means you are in favour of measures that disadvantage the already disadvantaged. You cannot be fiscally conservative and socially progressive, as fiscally conservatism leads to more poverty for the poor, etc. However, “not socially progressive” doesn’t mean “pro-life, anti-gay, racist”. But being pro-choice, pro-equality etc. is meaningless if you’re fiscally conservative.
jal_,
There may be some correlations between some variables doesn’t mean it’s meaningless to distinguish between them. Feeling one way about X doesn’t mean one has to (or should) feel the same way about Y. That’s too simplistic in understanding our core motivations. For my example, let me point out a case where a fiscally conservative view can contradict a socially conservative one: military spending. Yet this is a very popular view among many conservatives.
After the gerrymandering that took place when the GOP’s turn came to draw the electoral boundaries, it’s not at all difficult for the incumbent rightwing to retain control down South.
So even if Sanders wins a Red state and the Dems flip the Senate, taking back the House is a Herculean task.
And even if they did, we’d not necessarily be better off than we are now. Remember that it’s a dem in power at the moment too, and look at the mess he made by pandering to the health care bigwigs. Being selfish and greedy has nothing to do with left, right or even the middle and I wish we’d all take a breath and remember that. It depends on the kind of people they are, not which side of the debate they claim to support. A bastard is a bastard, no matter what their political agenda.
The ACA was an attempt by Obama to try to bridge the gap between the aisles of Congress by adapting & implementing a system that was proposed a conservative think-tank and adopted by a Republican governor in a Blue state. It was pragmatic, not pandering.
Unfortunately, the then-naive CinC forgot that of all the colors of flags, states & bills, the most important was that of his skin.
Not betting against you, because I hope you’re right.
That said, you are forgetting how ignorant and gullible the American public has become over the years. Literally all it takes to sway the opinion of the masses is to get a particular piece of propaganda to make the rounds on Facebook and Twitter, and suddenly everyone loses their shit.
Take the DNC voter database “scandal”; Sander’s staffers report a vulnerability and the Clinton-favored DNC cuts off their access only, instead of cutting off every candidate’s access until the hole is patched. Clinton-friendly CNN’s headline is “Sanders Camp Hacks DNC Database, Steals Files”. Most other outlets report the facts, but guess which version was trending on social media?
Try not to mistake the general public with the actual voters.
FDR nearly got ousted in a military coup, and we were way more of a democracy then than now. Sanders is a huge favorite of the people, but expecting the corporate warlords to let him take office without a major fight and dirty tricks is like expecting Genghis Khan to keep his horde politely away from the walls.
That’s a bet you’re going to lose but I’d be happy if you won it. Really, really, REALLY, happy
Clinton is 25 points ahead nationally and at least 10-15 points ahead in every state except New Hampshire and Vernont. She also has virtually all super delegates already committed to her. It is almost certain she will win the Democratic nomination at this point.
Far from ‘shaking in her boots’ she seems pretty comfortable with her current position. Indeed, in the last debate she didn’t bother with Sanders, she just focused on her likelly republican rivals.
Let’s talk in a few months.
Larry Lessig was OK, but he didn’t make it.
It was an interesting idea to make his platform voting reform. I think if he was elected, it would have shown congress that reform really is necessary. I wonder what would have happened. I doubt it will ever happen.
Apart from it not being true that Trump “embraces the NS movement”, it’s also false that “the Right is pushing” him. Neither the party establishment nor the Tea Partiers like Trump (and that’s an understatement).
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/donald-trump-getting-his-cues…
You were saying?
Edited 2015-12-24 18:34 UTC
The fat that someone can find parallels between Trump and Hitler doesn’t mean that Trump “embraces” nazism. Afaik to “embrace” something means to actively, openly associate yourself with it. But perhaps your definition of “embrace” just means “does the same as X”.
Reading “Mein Kampf”, saying in public that it has good ideas, then campaigning on a platform of interment, marking, and deportation of American citizens who follow a religion he doesn’t agree with? Yep, that’s embracing it in my book.
That said I still don’t really think he’s going to win or even come close. I’m just surprised by the number of Americans who have come out in support of him because of his cartoonish Nazi-esque ideas. Either they’re delusional, or they’re sane and serious, and I don’t know which is scarier.
Indeed. I’m also wondering whether he actually means all that, or whether he’s just pandering to the crowd.
You know that Tump’s son in law is an NYC jewisah bankster, and his daughter converted to judaism. Also Trump has the largest open endorsement from AIPAC of all candidates.
It’s an endless parade of Hitlers, oy vey!
IMO, this article is quite hyperbolic. While there’s some truth in what it says, I think the tiered pricing and the data caps are mostly going to affect people who want to binge watch Netflix and Hulu. If you want to get online and actually learn something, you don’t need 300gb for that. And even if you get priced out of broadband, go get yourself a cheap chromebook and find some free wifi hotspots, and you’re in business. For educational purposes, this will work.
That’s not to say that the situation doesn’t suck, but to portray it as some doomsday scenario where the world’s going to stop spinning on its axis if everybody in the house can’t stream House Of Cards at once is a bit disingenuous.
Pot, kettle, black?
I do agree with you to a point though; aside from a few edge cases, 300GB/month is good enough for most folks who are on plans where their download speed doesn’t exceed 15Mbps or so. The problem comes when Comcast puts that same 300GB cap on 100Mbps plans, and users on those plans get 4K TVs for their Netflix fix. Suddenly that 300GB cap is blown away in the first few days and they are forced to pay over twice their usual bill for that month.
Which is exactly what Comcast wants.
Sure, but this is a first world problem and largely unimportant in the grand scheme of things, esp. in relation to how the article portrays it. Like, how did we go from ‘it might be prohibitively expensive to stream House of Cards on a 4k TV’ to ‘OMFG they’re taking the Internet away from poor people!!’ Maybe they can’t afford a 100mbps connection, but unless they live out in BFE, Internet access is relatively easy to obtain, even if they don’t have it at home.
I hope I live long enough to see the day when Internet access becomes a public utility. Until then, the carriers will find ways to screw us from all sides, whether it’s first worlders trying to watch 4K TV, poor rural folks who would be happy to be able to read the news and check their email, or poor urbanites who can’t afford broadband and can barely afford their cellphone plan.
Ubiquitous WiFi via mesh networking is another dream of mine, and I already have a couple of routers converted to HSMM-Mesh, but it’s going to be a while before that technology is built in to commercial devices.
Good Mesh networking isn’t a simple problem and if it gets popular I’m not sure how well it can stay connected to the regular Internet.
Naming and addressing are at least 2 of the challenges, but I’ve seen a lot of interesting ideas that people are trying to use.
More on the spirit of WorknMan by now. Getting over it and looking at alternatives.
On the other side, your side, Lennie. I finally came to learn that any effort at networks detached from the one and only Internet is going to be discouraged.
If done proper, it will be possible to make a parallel (mesh/internet) network. With it’s own DNS/naning and addressing system.
Just like .bit or .onion is trying to do. That way it doesn’t conflict and you can use the legacy and mesh-based Internet at the same time. If one fails you can still use the other.
Yes, that is probably best.
Also think of Cjdns or maybe GNUnet.
Remember One Laptop per Child?
That is MIT work. [Not that they could create a really cheap ecosystem, that need a global effort. But they could create a convincing concept].
Fear…from children.
I am fortuned to live in a location where internet is a ‘public utility’ in the sense that our community has it’s own (mandated) provider that is run and managed by our home owners association.
1TB down/100 MB up, $70, no limits of any kind ( and no logs; DMCA takedowns are replied to with a ‘sorry we have no way to comply’ ). Oh and we’re 2 hops from a meet me room.
Morgan,
I was paying $55 for a 30Mbps/3Mbps package with a 250GB cap, of those variables the 3Mbps was the most annoying restriction. It went up to 8Mbps for $120, but as far as I can tell the 250GB cap applies to all the packages. That’s what you get when there isn’t competition.
My parents moved to a rural area in California and discovered that the only internet provider in the area (ATT) was shutting down their DSL services with no replacements, and that left my parents with no broadband options at all. They used to enjoy streaming movies, but they went back to “old netflix technology”, aka DVDs via courier. What’s really a shame is that there’s no more video calling the grandkids.
I hope he wins just so I can enjoy seeing how much of a train wreck he is. Obama’s disaster has been great fun. I love the chance to say I told you so. I’ll be voting for him if he’s on the ballot in the general election. Otherwise I’ll just stay home.
Obama hasn’t been a disaster, he’s just been disappointing. He’s got a long list of accomplishments, one being not further ruining the American economy. Failing to close Guantanamo is of course a failure, but it’s the fault of the previous government’s policies: some of the prisoners can’t be prosecuted because the evidence collected against them was illegally obtained.
The alternative would certainly be worse.
The least offensive part of a crap is still shit.
“Do the math” about encryption and politics is precisely the problem.
Because encryption is about math and logic, and because there are known ways to make unbreakable crypto (the easiest and oldest being just hiding the actual message content signification).
Forbidding strong cryptography is like making a law stating that PI=3.
Treza,
They found him at the wine bar before the vote, thanks God!
Two words: electoral college. Look them up, then get back to us on how foolish we all are. In the end, the power lies not with those of us who cast the popular vote. We’re more gullible than you imagine, because some people here still believe it matters how they vote every four years. If you want your vote to count, you vote your local and state level and hope as hard as you can that your elected representatives follow the popular vote of your state. In many places, they don’t have to.
“In many places” is an understatement. It’s nearly half!
Our system is bullshit. Everyone knows it but nothing will be done to correct it. A bunch of angry citizens complaining and protesting isn’t ever going to motivate those in positions of power (but in government and business) to relinquish any of it.
And that is why Larry Lessig was part of the race.
It was good to see at least someone trying again.
Edited 2015-12-24 11:01 UTC
Perhaps you’re forgetting a particular senator from Kentucky named Rand Paul?
I also hope we all get berned these next 8 years. We will see.
A couple of weeks ago, we started getting polls out of Iowa showing Ted Cruz taking a pretty significant lead over Trump. While Cruz isn’t neccessarily my candidate of choice, it does seem to be a pretty good sign that the silly season of this election cycle is ending and voters are getting serious and starting to look beyond sheer entertainment value.
As for the notion that the people actually elect the president, darknexus is right that the Electoral College means that’s not quite how it works. The States elect the president in a very similar way to how it used to be the States and not the people that elected Senators. Used to be the House of Representatives that was the only federal elected office that was determined directly by the people. People think differently because both schools and media have done a terrible job of explaining this fact since at least the Eighties.
And btw, strong encryption has been in a precarious position since the beginning. Go read “Crypto” by Steven Levy.
One more thing I forgot to mention. Just about a year ago the FCC redefined what broadband meant, requiring much higher speeds than before to qualify. How much of the decline there is providers having been unable or unwilling to upgrade their services appropriately?
amrothery,
I can’t tell if this was meant to be sarcastic or not, but now that you mention it, I wonder if it has any connection to ATT’s shutdown of DSL services.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Will-Detail-the-Fate-of-Its-…
It could just be a coincidence. ISPs aren’t interested in serving rural areas, ATT wasn’t even able to offload it’s customers to anyone else.
Ted Cruz said he would carpet bomb Syria and alluded to using nuclear weapons if necessary.
Given a choice between Cruz and Trump I would have to think Trump is the more rational choice, as absurd as that sounds.
K
It puzzles me how is possible for broadband usage to decrease in a civilised country, you would expect people need for it to be larger and larger. Surely hasn’t the definition of broadband changed?
On the other hand, from the numbers it looks like an important number of Americans are content enough with their mobile internet, they don’t see a need for a wired connection at home, just like cable cutters, but for wired internet. After all, if one’s main use for internet is reading facebook on a mobile device, why pay for wired data?
Also, there is the whole contradiction in the article about freedom: “internet freedom” and the “freedom to access the open internet” are very different beasts. “Access” is pretty much “read”.
Not to defend the evil ISPs, but arguing the data caps limit the freedom to read the open internet is alike arguing speed caps on the limit the freedom of movement on open roads.
If you had to pay extra for every mile you made over an alloted cap of road usage, it would.
The only reason a lot of “conservatives” claim Senator Sanders is crazy is because they have not read US history. Not only did social programs created a social safety net on USA and empowered the working class, but it is only good for the economy when there is more people investing and actually being able to do stuff for a society as opposed to a few conglomerate groups of super rich in states.
It’s easier to just reason and take short decisions, hence the republican party being so popular in a lot of USA. I do get it, but that only makes the film idiocracy a self fulfilling parody.
I’m wondering if the author’s (not Thom’s) blog post is a bit overblown. As far as Thom goes, I definitely agree that the Republican Party is as corrupt as it gets. They thought they could sell the Internet to the highest bidder (Comcast); until Net Neutrality got in the way. They’re outraged. The entitled party think$ it $hould alway$ get it$ way.
But anyway…
The notion that the sky is falling because somebody’s data usage was capped at somewhere over 300 Gigs just strikes me as fatuous. Does anybody really need to download that much? For what? Business, yes; but personal use?
My wife and I use 250-280GB per month. Between Netflix and other online media, serving media via Plex to my sister-in-law and my parents, running a Minecraft server from the house, and my hobby of testing new versions of Linux and BSD OSes as they are released, we come close to the limit every single month.
Even without the Plex server, Minecraft server, and ISO downloading, we’d still hit 150GB or so just on Netflix and casual use. If we had a 100Mbps account, we’d blow through the 300GB cap in two weeks.
I think if they would raise the 300GB cap to 1TB and eliminate caps on 100Mbps and faster lines, they would go far towards mending their image in the public’s eye.
One of the big problems with ISPs is that many firmly resist investment into their own infrastructure. There’s little competition in most places, and in addition the major providers have manipulated the system by intentionally not competing in several markets. Investing costs money so why would they when the customer has practically no other options? The more of a monopoly a company has in any given market, the less customer satisfaction and service quality matters. There’s a reason Comcast, Time-Warner Cable, and AT&T are consistently appear year after year after year in the list of Americas Top 10 worse companies.
That type of mentality is exactly the problem. People need whatever they use be it 300MB or 300GB, and they shouldn’t have to justify it. If a person uses 300GB a month, they use 300GB a month, it doesn’t matter what type of data in contained within those packets. Whether it’s a single disabled person watching streaming tv every day, or a family of 4-5 all doing their own thing, criticizing usage is stupid.
Rather than demanding the problem is the customer, how about the problem is ISPs overselling their services? How about truth in advertising? ISPs have no problem telling you what theoretical maximum speed you can get under perfect conditions, but do everything they can to hide what speeds you’ll actually see with typical usage during typical times of the day. It’s a shame ISPs don’t have to legally say “your download speeds are likely to be greatly reduced during `peak` hours AKA when you’re probably going to be using it”. Could you imagine if the power company behaved like that? It’s easy to imagine the outcry. Why should internet service, which IS a public utility, be any different?
First of all Trump has no shot of becoming President so don’t worry your pretty little head about that. Second, it is unlikely any of the Republicans will win unless they nominate a sane candidate and that doesn’t look likely at this point. Clinton is not good on encryption and neither is Kasich (probably the two most center politicians from both sides) but neither will be able make any important changes that will hurt encryption. This was tried before with the Clipper chip and failed miserably. Third, certain surveillance techniques they have been using for years are now illegal. I think paranoia is driving a lot of this fear. Now don’t get me wrong, we need to be vigilant about our freedoms and they are trying to take them away all the time but I think we are in better shape and people are now more aware then you give them credit for.