The Revolution Will Be Liveblogged

A typically great article by Glenn Greenwald went up on Salon today in which he discusses the government's efforts to control the flow of information on the internet. As Glenn has said many times before:

"The free flow of information and communications enabled by new technologies -- as protest movements in the Middle East and a wave of serious leaks over the last year have demonstrated -- is a uniquely potent weapon in challenging entrenched government power and other powerful factions."

Worth excerpting here are two things. First, this:

"Earlier this week, when San Francisco residents gathered in the BART subway system to protest the shooting by BART police of a 45-year-old man, city officials shut down underground cell phone service entirely for hours; that, in turn, led to hacking reprisals against BART by the hacker collective known as "Anonymous." As the San-Fransisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation put it on its website: "BART officials are showing themselves to be of a mind with the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak." Those efforts in Britain and San Fransisco are obviously not yet on the same scale as those in other places, but it illustrates how authorities react to social disorder: with an instinctive desire to control communication technologies and the flow of information."

And also this:

"It is not hard to understand why the fears driving these actions are particularly acute now. The last year has seen an incredible amount of social upheaval, not just in the Arab world but increasingly in the West. The Guardian today documented the significant role which poverty and opportunity deprivation played in the British riots. Austerity misery -- coming soon to the U.S. -- hassparked serious upheavals in numerous Western nations. Even if one takes as pessimistic a view as possible of an apathetic, meek, complacent American populace, it's simply inevitable that some similar form of disorder is in the U.S.'s future as well."

"The intensely angry "town hall" political protests from last August, though wildly misdirected at health care reform, gave a glimpse of the brewing societal anger and economic anxiety; even Tea Party politicians are now being angrily harangued by furious citizens over growing joblessness and loss of opportunity as Wall Street prospers and Endless Wars continue. This situation -- exploding wealth inequality combined with harsh austerity, little hope for improvement and a growing sense of irreversible national decline -- cannot possibly be sustained for long without some serious social unrest."

"Economic suffering and anxiety -- and anger over it and the flamboyant prosperity of the elites who caused it -- is only going to worsen. So, too, will the refusal of the Western citizenry to meekly accept their predicament. As that happens, who it is who controls the Internet and the flow of information and communications takes on greater importance. Those who are devoted to preserving the current system of prerogatives certainly know that, and that is what explains this obsession with expanding the Surveillance State and secrecy powers, maintaining control over the dissemination of information, and harshly punishing those who threaten it. That's also why there are few conflicts, if there are any, of greater import than this one. "