In August 2012, the US House of Representatives voted 414-0 against governments trying to control the Internet
The House resolution calls on U.S. government officials to tell the ITU and other international organizations that it is the “consistent and unequivocal policy of the United States to promote a global Internet free from government control.”
I wonder if we will see more resolutions like this. It wouldn’t surprise me.
John Quiggin 
yes ,the the description plural applies.
not having the training or aptitude for the closely reasoned and logically coherant arguments neccessary for an academic discipline, trying to make sense of the drunkards walk of consequentially ever changing info can indeed render a comment not-quite- the-thing.
oh well.
the point i was trying to make is that worrying about government intrusion into areas of our lives that are none of it’s business,while being perfectly valid,does not obviate the need to also worry about market driven intrusion,from very large,politically active corporate bodies that have no purpose but to gain as much as possible from their areas of operation while giving as little as possible in return and amassing personal info that may or may not be accurate,can be considered a commodity, used in ways we know nothing about,may not give consent to and not be deleted.
in fact given the role of government in the areas of social protection from mad as a meataxe ideologists and really hungry-gutted profit driven predators(wanna buy a young kid/baby?great big gun?blow-the-top-of-your-sanity-into-oblivion recreational substance?half the worlds private and banking details,with passwords?where the best chances of getting some murder-with-impunity action?etc,governments have a duty to pay attention.
having proper protections of the non perpetrators of such behavior while pursuing the never ending where there’s money,there’s psychopaths, is the challenge of keeping the balance between accountable administration and denied and deniable collateral damage.(us).
@Tim Macknay nixon was the first to be named as an unindicted coconspirator becuase he was the first president who was a crook.
@Jim Rose
“he (Nixon) was the first president who was a crook.” – Jim.
You haven’t read much history have you? There were considerable whiffs of corruption swirling about several presidencies. However, only two presidents have been impeached, namely Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, but none have been convicted. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.
It would depend on your definition of “crook” of course but my guess is that at least 10 US Presidents were outright crooks in one way or another. The US system has a high bias to protect US presidents from impeachment and conviction as such events call the office and the system into question.
There have been 44 US presidents to date. If the yardstick were general moral honesty in office and having the interests of all US citizens at heart, then I would very much doubt that the US has had more than 4 good Presidents out of 44. I don’t recall any good ones in my lifetime (viewing things from afar and assessing how the US has affected other countries too).
@Ikonoclast in the interests of brevity, i did not go into a long aside on corruption in american political history and machine politics.
@Tim Macknay
This brings to mind a great line in one of the Naked Gun movies in which “Frank Drebben” is sacked for incompetence and he moans to his colleagues “just think: the next time I shoot someone, I could go to jail.“