A few thoughts on the free internet

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.
George Orwell, 1984

A few thoughts about the free internet:

There are so many changes happening to the way that out corporate masters are reworking the notion of an ISP, that keeping track of their actions is as difficult as keeping track of the criminal enterprise running the current administration. Yes, I have a great deal to say about those bastards, but that will have to wait as there are many people doing an excellent job tracking their evildoery.

Thankfully I know a little more about service providers than my political education based on School House Rock.

Let me get my main points across - your data is being monitored. It may not be by the NSA (though methinks that that is in all likelihood the case). It is by your ISP. Seeking to maximize profits as well as track possibly illegal web site access, your web browsing is being monitored and recorded. Those records are kept around for a long time. What you ask for is not always what you get. The data you request across your common carrier service provider will not always get to you if the profit margins are not high enough.

For those of you interested in citations:

Ex AT&T Tech Says NSA Monitors All Web Traffic
Google Hijacked -- Major ISP to Intercept and Modify Web Pages
ISPs Spying On and Modifying Web Traffic -- With Patent Application
German ISPs Must keep web content for 6 months
US Made Censorware used to oppress Burma
DHS wants master keys for DNS
Congress' copyright reform: seize computers, boost penalties, spend money
FBI Puts Antiwar Protesters on Criminal Database

The service that you the customer pay for is not the service that you get.

But who really cares?

You should care because the infrastructure exists to dynamically re-write the content that you see from any site. You should care because what you do is closely monitored by little brother. You should care because one of the only tools that exists for the dissemination and communication of viewpoints inconsistent with the corporate media message are carried over lines owned by those same corporations.

You really should care.