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IPFS News Link • Internet

2016's Assault On The Internet Was Brutal. Will 2017 Be Worse?

• http://dailycaller.com

Nothing may have had as bad of a year as the Internet.

The Internet has been hit with an onslaught of criticism and suffered several setbacks in 2016: from relinquishment of American control over web address management, introduced surveillance measures in the United Kingdom, social media backlash for users' hate speech and terrorist affiliations, to censorship and fake news.

The Obama administration let a contract with an American corporation expire at the very end of September, so that a central portion of Internet governance control could be handed over to an international bureaucracy.

Now countries like China, which have vastly different perspectives on freedom of speech than America, will have a say in how Internet addresses will be managed.

In October, a large portion of websites were shutdown for the majority of the Northeast in America. Now that power has been shared with other countries, such attacks could be harder to overcome and thus could become a severe and regular problem for America's internet infrastructure, which is absolutely critical for a number of things like the country's electoral process, national security and commerce.

The U.K. passed a surveillance bill in November that significantly expands the government's spying powers, namely over the Internet. The Investigatory Powers Bill is considered so expansive, it's informally called the "snoopers' charter." The European Union's top court ruled the measure was illegal because it calls for the "general and indiscriminate" retention of people's online web traffic, but it remains to be seen if the ruling will ultimately matter.


 


www.universityofreason.com/a/29887/KWADzukm