OPINION:
Communications kill switches have become tyrannical tools of domination and oppression to stifle political dissent, shut down resistance, forestall election losses, reinforce military coups, and keep the populace isolated, disconnected and in the dark, literally and figuratively.
In an internet-connected age, killing the internet is tantamount to bringing everything — communications, commerce, travel, the power grid — to a standstill.
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These government-imposed communications shutdowns serve to not only isolate, terrorize and control the populace, but also underscore the citizenry’s lack of freedom in the face of the government’s limitless power.
This is what digital authoritarianism looks like in a technological age.
Digital authoritarianism, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies cautions, involves the use of information technology to surveil, repress, and manipulate the populace, endangering human rights and civil liberties, and co-opting and corrupting the foundational principles of democratic and open societies, “including freedom of movement, the right to speak freely and express political dissent, and the right to personal privacy, online and off.”
For those who insist that it can’t happen here, it can and it has.
In 2005, cell service was disabled in four major New York tunnels, reportedly to avert potential bomb detonations via cell phone.
In 2009, those attending President Barack Obama’s inauguration had their cell signals blocked — again for the same rationale.
And in 2011, San Francisco commuters had their cell phone signals shut down, this time, to thwart any possible protests over a police shooting of a homeless man.
With shutdowns becoming harder to detect, who’s to say it’s not still happening?
Although an internet kill switch is broadly understood to be a complete internet shutdown, it can also include a broad range of restrictions such as content blocking, throttling, filtering, complete shutdowns, and cable cutting.
How often do most people, experiencing server errors and slow internet speeds, chalk it up to poor service? Who would suspect the government of being behind server errors and slow internet speeds?
Then again, this is the same government that has subjected us to all manner of encroachments on our freedoms (lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, shadow banning, etc.) in order to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, preserve the integrity of elections, and combat disinformation.
These tactics have become the tools of domination and oppression in an internet-dependent age.
It really doesn’t matter what the justifications are for such lockdowns. No matter the rationale, the end result is the same: an expansion of government power in direct proportion to the government’s oppression of the citizenry.
In this age of manufactured crises, emergency powers and technofascism, the government already has the know-how, the technology and the authority.
Now all it needs is the “right” crisis to flip the kill switch.
This particular kill switch can be traced back to the Communications Act of 1934. Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the act empowers the president to suspend wireless radio and phone services “if he deems it necessary in the interest of national security or defense” during a time of “war or a threat of war, or a state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency, or in order to preserve the neutrality of the United States.”
That national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal — all on the say so of the president.
Given the government’s penchant for weaponizing one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security, it’s only a matter of time before this particular emergency power to shut down the internet is activated.
Then again, an all-out communications blackout is just a more extreme version of the technocensorship that we’ve already been experiencing at the hands of the government and its corporate allies.
In fact, these tactics are at the heart of several critical cases before the U.S. Supreme Court over who gets to control, regulate or remove what content is shared on the internet: the individual, corporate censors or the police state.
Nothing good can come from techno-censorship.
These censors are laying the groundwork to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.
You don’t even have to be a critic of the government to get snared in the web of digital censorship.
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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest books “The Erik Blair Diaries” and “Battlefield America: The War on the American People” are available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.
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