FCC seeks back door to Internet censorship

Scott Bradner, Harvard's security guru, reports on an FCC proposal for a "free," wireless, censored Internet.

Government intrusion into the wireless Internet seemed to be fading as scheme after scheme for municipal Wi-Fi has collapsed. But now the FCC has come up with a big gun: making a chunk of the RF spectrum available to wireless Internet, on the condition that "pornographic" or "obscene" material be blocked.

We know from experience that any scheme ever devised to block obscene material has large numbers of false positives, and there is little agreement on people on what is obscene. If the FCC can push this plan through, it will be a serious blow to freedom of speech on the Internet.