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Trump Advocates Closing Parts of the Internet; Obama and Clinton Renew War on Encryption

Accepted submission by takyon at 2015-12-08 12:58:21
Digital Liberty

At one of his campaign rallies, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald J. Trump advocated shutting down parts of the Internet [theregister.co.uk] as a response to radicalism:

As the video [twitter.com] below shows, Trump told a rally that "We are losing a lot of people to the Internet. We have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening."

"We have to talk to them [about], maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some way."

"Some people will say, 'Freedom of speech, Freedom of speech'," Trump added, before saying "These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

[EXTENDED COPY]

In two [twitter.com] tweets [twitter.com], Trump turned his attention to Jeff Bezos's taxes:

The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, @amazon.

The @washingtonpost loses money (a deduction) and gives owner @JeffBezos power to screw public on low taxation of @Amazon! Big tax shelter

Finally, a Trump campaign statement [donaldjtrump.com] released on Monday calls for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on".

Trump is in good company when it comes to clamping down on free speech. In the wake of the San Bernardino attack, both President Obama and Hillary Clinton have hinted at renewing the war against encryption and denying "online space" to ISIS [theintercept.com]:

In his Oval Office speech [medium.com] on Sunday night about the fight against ISIS, President Obama devoted one line in his speech to the topic. "I will urge high-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice," he said.

Meanwhile, Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, gave a talk at the Brookings Institution where she urged tech companies to deny ISIS "online space," and waved away concerns about First Amendment issues.

"We're going to have to have more support from our friends in the technology world to deny online space. Just as we have to destroy [ISIS's] would-be caliphate, we have to deny them online space," she said.


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