Government Intervention On the Web
During the past decade, our society has become based solely on the ability to move large amounts of information across great distances in a very short amount of time and at very low costs. The evolution of the computer era and our growing need for ultra-fast communications has caused a global network of interconnected computers to develop, commonly referred to as the Internet or the world wide web. The Internet has influenced practically everyone's life in some way whether it was done directly or indirectly. Our children are exposed to the Internet at school, and we are exposed to the Internet simply by just watching our television sets. The Internet has become the primary key to the future of communication in our society today. Because of this, the government feels that it has the right to regulate and control the contents of information distributed through the World Wide Web, contrary to the opinions of most Internet users, myself included.At the present, this network is the epitome of the first amendment, freedom of speech. It is a place where people can speak their minds without being reprimanded for what they say, or how they choose to say it. The key to the success o
There's nothing wrong with asserting your privacy. Perhaps you are not really concerned about encrypting your e-mail because you believe that you have nothing to hide. I mean you haven't broken the law in any way, right? Well then why not just write letters on postcards instead of sealed away in envelopes? Why not submit to drug testing on demand? Why require a warrant for police searches of your house? Do law-abiding citizens have any need to encrypt their e-mail? What if everyone believed those law-abiding citizens should use postcards for their mail for the simple reason that you have nothing to hide? Just because you haven't done anything wrong, doesn't mean that you want the whole world to have access to your letters or e-mail. Analogously, it would be nice if everyone routinely used encryption for all their e-mail, innocent or not, so that no one drew suspicion by asserting their e-mail privacy with encryption. "Think of it as a form of solidarity" (Zimmerman). The current body of laws existing today in America does not apply well to the Internet. Is the Internet like a broadcasting medium, where the government monitors what is broadcast? Is it like a bookstore, where servers cannot be expected to review every title? Is it like a phone company that must ignore what it carries because of privacy? Available Ftp:net-dist.mit.edu Directory: pub/pgp/dist
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Approximate Word count = 6123
Approximate Pages = 24 (250 words per page double spaced)
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