Internet is easy prey for governments

exceprt:

Meanwhile, UK's Vodafone complied with Mubarak's orders first to turn off cell phone use in Egypt, and later to flood cell phone users with incendiary pro-government messages.

More virtual ink was spilled in the United States about Vodaphone-partner Verizon's version of the iPhone than on Vodafone's utter complicity in the violence fomented by the commands it promoted through its networks. Although Vodafone continues to apologize publicly for its ongoing policy of serving the goon squads of a dictatorial regime, it has also continued to follow that regime's orders.

If bottom-up networks are this dependent on the good graces of top-down authorities for their very functioning, then how bottom-up are they? While in the United States we may have policies protecting free speech and open communication, it is these laws -- and not some feature of our internet -- that prevent the kinds of censorship we are witnessing in Egypt.

And, as we saw when push came to shove over WikiLeaks in the United States, how quickly this very same authority can be used to cut off "enemies of the state" from access and funding.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/05/rushkoff.egypt.internet/index.html?hpt=C1