Why #SOPA and #PIPA Protesters Are Protesting The Wrong Thing (It's The #NDAA, Stupid!)

The Stop Internet Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act are both worthy of protest.  If passed, they will allow for the effective shutdown of entire websites that are viewed as infringing copyrights by the copyright holders.  This would be like the government having the ability to reach into your home without a warrant and seize the newspaper collage your kid made for a class project.  But which is worse? Being unable to access your favorite blogging websites or someone's inability to access anything at all?



That's what the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2012 allows.  Basically, any person that the United States Government suspects of being a terrorist or of supporting a terrorist group (or associated forces) can be detained indefinitely.

This is flat out a violation of the US Constitution.  The sixth amendment guarantees a quick and speedy trial.  Since we already agree that all humans (not just Americans) are guaranteed certain inalienable rights (aka life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), it doesn't matter that Obama said he wouldn't use this power on Americans.  It's still unconstitutional.



If the Internet vanished tomorrow, we'd still have ways to exercise our freedom of speech. Without a doubt the loss of the Internet would be a huge and horrible thing. But if you showed up at an #Occupy rally and were arrested and held indefinitely, you'd have a hard time expressing anything. Even if authorities are mistaken, you could be kept from a lawyer and from any contact with the outside world.  And think about it, if they were mistaken, how would you prove it without a lawyer?

The Internet is an amazing tool for communication and MUST be protected but the NDAA allows for the abridging of not just your freedom of speech but your literal freedom, itself--and the NDAA is already a law.  This law being on the books makes the President of the United States, effectively, a dictator.  He can point to you or anyone he wants and say, "that's a terrorist!"

Don't think it can happen? It already has with a New Mexico-born cleric who the Obama administration killed with a missile from a drone--and that was before the NDAA was passed.

Now, neither SOPA nor PIPA have passed either house of Congress, yet everyone is freaking out about them.  Meanwhile, the NDAA is so bad a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist is suing the Obama administration over it.

The human race managed to express itself in a great many ways for a great many centuries before the Internet came along and made it so incredibly easy. But indefinite detention of any human sets America back much further than that.

So, while Wikipedia and other sites were dark Wednesday, ask yourself why they didn't go dark to protest the December 31, 2011 signing of the NDAA. (Yep, it was so controversial that Obama waited until New Years Eve to sign it.) I don't know why they didn't.

Would any website go dark if you were wrongly imprisoned?