http://www.prisonplanet.com/…

Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event” which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said “of course there is”.

Skip to 4:30:

Lessig is the founder of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. He is founding board member of Creative Commons and is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.

Anyone who doesn’t think the Internet as we know it can be controlled by the government is missing the obvious. The telecoms, which own all the major hubs and backbones, are in bed with the government. They now have immunity from instances where they work with the government to spy on subjects. They work with the NSA to tap major internet hubs with machines able to do realtime analysis of all traffic passing through it. The government even provides them with monopoly status in many parts of the country isolating them from competition. Just like all large corporations which are regulated… they are in bed with the corporatists running the government.

Part 2, Part 3

Not bad. It would have been nicer to give him a bit more time but that’s always the case.