Internet Control

Despite strong opposition, on June 24 the US Senate passed the Fast Track bill 1,2 (known as Trade Promotion Authority or TPA) that gives the President carte blanche to negotiate and finalize free trade deals in complete secrecy, which brings us one step closer to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP, which appears to be nothing short of a corporate takeover of global powers, has the legal ability to thwart all future attempts at protecting the public from genetically engineered (GE) foods. For this and many other reasons, the TPP must be stopped.

TWO years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed, those journalists and others published documents revealing that democratic governments had been monitoring the private activities of ordinary citizens who had done nothing wrong.

In a very creative and off-beat campaign, one organization is trying to bring home how violative, of our privacy and peace of mind, is the unbridled and more and more “legal” right of our government to spy on us. 14 years of the Patriot Act has not made us safer as it was shown last year that it has not given us actionable information, yet it is still around. It is slated to expire in June of this year. The CISA Bill threatens to put another piece of legislation, worse than the Patriot Act in place.

In a blow to telecom and cable companies, FCC chairman Wheeler said he is proposing the FCC use its authority under Title II of the Communications Act to protect consumer broadband Internet. This move will allow the FCC to stop Internet service providers from charging content providers like Netflix more money for reliable Internet access.

Make sure you sign American Commitment’s petition to Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the FCC below—and tell him that the American people won’t stand for a federal takeover of the Internet. And we’ll send a copy of your petition to your Congressman too—just so that they know where their constituents stand in the fight to stop these crippling Internet regulations.
Sign the petition HERE…

Big retailers, including Amazon, have been lobbying long and hard for it, and now the Internet sales tax is back after being quietly reintroduced in the US Senate last week. The Marketplace and Internet Tax Fairness Act would force customers to pay sales taxes for online purchases from out-of-state online merchants, and it forces online retailers to collect and remit separately sales taxes to all US territories.