Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on February 16, 2011

More members of Congress are taking notice of the FCC’s power-grab under the deceptively friendly-sounding, so-called “net neutrality” regulations it plans to implement and of Team Obama’s Internet “Kill Switch” — George Orwell’s “Big Brother” prediction is getting much closer to reality.

Despite the fact that the FCC lacks authority in this area, the federal government agency continues to reword and revise its attempts to take over and regulate the Internet.

From Politico, GOP blasts FCC on net neutrality:

Republicans took the FCC to task for enacting a net neutrality order without any sound market-based analysis to justify it at a House hearing Wednesday.

“The FCC has done nothing to specifically quantify any harm requiring intervention, or the potential harm to consumers, innovation or the economy from the proposed rules,” Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said during his opening remarks.

Several other key Republicans hammered on the same point.

“The FCC even confesses in its order that it has done no market analysis,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the communications subcommittee. “It just selectively applied the rules to broadband providers, shielding Web companies.”

The open Internet order adopted by the commission in December applies more rigorous rules to traditional wireline providers than it does to wireless.

All five commissioners appeared before the House communications subcommittee Wednesday.

Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) also expressed disappointment that the commission hadn’t conducted a serious analysis of threats to the open Internet. Lee has written the commission requesting such a study.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski disagrees.

“We did do a market analysis in our order,” Genachowski said to the lawmakers.

Members of the GOP also sounded off on criticisms they have voiced for months over net neutrality, saying the FCC lacks authority in this area and that the order will undermine investment in the Internet.

“Under the FCC’s rationale, its authority is bounded only by its imagination,” Walden said.

This FOX News interview on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s “Freedom Watch” with Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn about “net neutrality” was broadcast in December 2010 — the congresswoman explains how the FCC has NO authority to control cyberspace with its new regulations and what is being done in Congress about it:

FOX: FCC Has ZERO Authority Over The Internet!

From USA Today, ‘Kill Switch’ Internet bill alarms privacy experts:

SAN FRANCISCO — A raging debate over new legislation, and its impact on the Internet, has tongues wagging and fingers pointing from Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C.

Just as the Egyptian government recently forced the Internet to go dark, U.S. officials could flip the switch if the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset legislation becomes law, say its critics.

Proponents of the bill, which is expected to be reintroduced in the current session of Congress, dismiss the detractors as ill-informed — even naive.

The ominously nicknamed Kill Switch bill is sure to be a flashpoint of discussion at the RSA Conference, the nation’s largest gathering of computer-security experts that takes place here this week.

The bill — crafted by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; and Tom Carper, D-Del. — aims to defend the economic infrastructure from a cyberterrorist attack. But it has free-speech advocates and privacy experts howling over the prospect of a government agency quelling the communication of hundreds of millions of people.

“This is all about control, an attempt to control every aspect of our existence,” says Christopher Feudo, a cybersecurity expert who is chairman of SecurityFusion Solutions. “I consider it an attack on our personal right of free speech. Look what recently occurred in Egypt.”

Its critics immediately dubbed it Kill Switch, suffusing it with Big Brother-tinged foreboding. “Unfortunately, it got this label, which is analogous to death panels (during the health care debates),” says Mark Kagan, director of research at Keane Federal Systems, an information-technology contractor for the government.

From Big Government:

Governments throughout the world – Egypt, Iran, Syria, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and on and on — block or dramatically control their peoples’ access to the Internet.

We in America have enjoyed a government-free Web. Which has led to it becoming a free speech, free market Xanadu.

[...]

Now we are told we need an Internet “kill switch” — granting the President the power to shut down or commandeer control of the nation’s ISPs.

Much like the recent moves of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Does not this cognitive dissonance cause you policy whiplash?

We have many examples of governments around the world expurgating the Internet. And we have literally ZERO current examples of ISPs doing the same – or anything even remotely close.

So why is our government illegally inserting itself – and dragging us in the direction of all these censorious regimes?

From Washington Times, FCC chairman faces heat from House Republicans:

Facing sharp criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski defended his agency’s new “net neutrality” rules to regulate traffic on the Internet at a congressional hearing Wednesday morning.

“Some people say that our open Internet framework doesn’t go far enough. Some people say it goes too far. I think we got it about right,” the chairman told the panel in his opening statement.

Rep. Greg Walden, the Oregon Republican who chairs the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, which oversees communications policy, has called the FCC action adopted late last year a regulatory overreach.

Mr. Walden, who has called for denying the funds to implement the FCC‘s new regulations, said that, “in essence, the FCC argues it can regulate anything,” he said.

“I am relieved, however, that the FCC declined under its newfound authority to regulate coffee shops, bookstores, airlines and other entities,” he noted sarcastically.

The net-neutrality rules are part of the Obama administration’s effort to create “rules of the road” for the Internet and protect consumers and businesses from anti-competitive manipulation of the Internet by the broadband providers, such as AT&T and Comcast, that serve as its gatekeepers.

From Fierce Cable, Congress expected to zap FCC net neutrality stance:

FCC commissioners will walk into enemy territory when they step (or sit) before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee headed by Rep. Greg Walden, no friend of the commission’s net neutrality policies, today.

The Oregon Republican is already on the record questioning whether the FCC has the right to regulate the Internet, calling it a “power grab (that) will allow the commission to regulate any interstate wired or wireless communications on barely more than a whim.”

Categories: Business & Economy, Freedom of Speech, Government, Social and Political Climate, Technology
Tags: 1984, 1st Amendment, Barack Obama, Big Brother, Congress, cyber-police, cybersecurity, cyberspace, Egypt, FCC, Federal Communication Commission, federal government, federal law, First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, George Orwell, government control, Internet, Julius Genachowski, market research, Marsha Blackburn, net neutrality, Obama, privacy, Rep. Greg Walden, Rep. Lee Terry, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Team Obama, terrorism, wireless