"The dream of a free and open Internet is slowly being killed by overregulation, censorship and bad laws that don’t stop the right people, a top computer crime defense lawyer says.
The annual Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas kicked off Wednesday with a keynote address from Jennifer Granick, director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Granick said that while the Internet needs to be reasonably safe in order to be functional, it’s no longer the revolutionary place it was 20 years ago.
No one is murdering the dream of an open Internet, she said, but it’s withering away because no one is prioritizing its protection. On top of that, new Internet users are coming from countries whose citizens aren’t protected by a Bill of Rights or a First Amendment.
“Should we be worrying about another terrorist attack in New York, or about journalists and human rights advocates being able to do their jobs?” she asked."