Do Terrorists Prefer Starbucks or McDonalds?

By John Galt
July 30, 2011

The title of this editorial will be the question that rages across America in the months and years ahead. As I covered on my radio program last night and my friend Invar covered at his blog Sword at the Ready in the article ‘Feds Mandate Your ISP Monitor and Log Your Internet Activities for a Year’ , it has become quite obvious that the United States government is now fully engulfed in finding every nook, cranny, or orifice that a law abiding innocent American citizen may wish to use to keep secrets from Big Brother. Yesterday the Republican controlled House Judiciary Committee changed the name of a particularly absurd piece of legislation to its latest newspeak alternative:

Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 (H.R. 1981)

It is pretty hard to not be against child pornography and in fact if anyone is engaged in such activities, I encourage throwing the book at such individuals or even phone booking the scum with the Shanghai white pages if possible. Yet in reality once you get past the flowery proclamations and initial legislative issues addressing the vile activity of child pornography, deeper within the realm of this proposed piece of legislation is a series of regulations which basically mandates that private corporations spy on their customers and the data be made available to law enforcement at any level, local, state, or Federal, for review without obtaining a search warrant or dictating probable cause. This blatant violation of our Fourth Amendment rights is no shock since the Republican and Democratic parties have both been supporters of the Transportation Security Administration’s molestation of our freedoms since day one, instead of attacking the threat of Islamist terror head on.

But where did these luminaries of Constitutional destruction get their ideas to start masking the destruction of the Bill of Rights?

Perhaps from America’s Central Bank located in Beijing; also known as Communist China.

I have put the word “communist” in bold and italics to remind everyone that despite the internal and external displays of a nation growing rapidly under an evolutionary state controlled capitalist system, the central government and party still holds all of the power and dictates and rations freedom to its people; much like our two political parties do now. The Communists in China are as paranoid as the Republicans and Democrats though and have upped their game in the past seven days by issuing a state mandate via their internal security apparatus which takes the ISP monitoring issue one step further.

The Chinese authorities have ordered all public Wi-Fi spots to install an expensive software monitoring system which records the IP addresses and names of all citizens who use public locations for their internet communications. The small businessmen are grumbling loudly as bars, restaurants, cafes, etc. are now being forced to either shut down internet access which attracts customers or to install the expensive software for reporting purposes (At this link: China Daily-Businesses, public pan WiFi monitoring). From the aforementioned article on July 28th:

BEIJING – A regulation that requires bars, restaurants, hotels and bookstores to install expensive Web-monitoring software has sparked controversy among business owners and the public.

The software, which is designed to supervise illegal activities by passing the identities of customers using free wireless services to public security departments, will cost business owners 20,000 yuan ($3,100). Those who refuse to pay and offer unfettered Internet access may face a 15,000-yuan fine.

Ye Jia, a cafe owner in Wudaoying Hutong, Dongcheng district, told China Daily that her brother was asked to install the software during a meeting at the district’s public security bureau on July 22.

“All small businesses with WiFi in our area attended that meeting,” she said. “But I won’t use the software, because I can’t afford the costly fees.

“If the restriction on the wireless service is put into effect, my cafe will be affected and I won’t be able to keep offering this service.”

Many business owners in the city who had not heard about the new regulation expressed disapproval when they were told how much the installation would cost.

“It’s a requirement of the public security organs. Why should we pay the fees?” said Yang Xiaowen, manager of UBC Coffee in Chaoyang district.

A 40-year-old customer surnamed Guan using the WiFi in a Sculpting in Time cafe in Chaoyang district said she thought the regulation violated her privacy.

“I don’t want to be watched. It will make me uncomfortable,” said Guan, who works for a consulting company.

The funny thing is, the mainstream media in the United States appears to be more concerned about the Chinese story than the Republican action in the House Judiciary Committee which received scant coverage or mention domestically. Why is this? In my opinion it is because the media in the U.S. is now completely in league working with the domestic spying aspects within the national security departments. The mainstream media is not ignorant nor foolish in this regard and can foresee future profit and benefits from working within a new structure which imposes more controls on the flow of news, information, and data via the Internet and all other electronic media.

In other words by sacrificing freedom and redefining the First Amendment to apply to only those sources recognized as “legitimate” legacy news organizations, they should be the only corporations or groups permitted to express and share news and opinion via all “legal” media providers. The model of a centralized command and control economy can not co-exist as long as the Bill of Rights remain intact and the soon to be irrelevant establishment media realizes the danger facing their centuries old monopoly in the face of freedom. Hence to assume they would oppose any restrictions on the freedoms of American citizens is both naive and foolish.

The next question which will be asked is coming soon to a debate near you after the next act of domestic terrorism as the “danger” of public Wi-Fi hot spots will be declared a tool which enables terrorists to plot and plan terrorist activities against the government and American people. In the post-disaster analysis, much like after September 11, 2001, legislation which follows up to the “Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″ will be expedited through the Legislative branch of our government and more rights of law abiding citizens destroyed in the process. After this happens, there will only be one more series of questions to find answers for: