David Orange

They laid the cornerstone and it's still there, along with portals to every aspect of the internet that exists, including tons of applications and capacities that ordinary citizens neither know about nor have anything to do with.

More or less the same way the government "invented" the bomb: they paid university people to do it. And when those university folks working in the employ of the US government had created the bomb, who "owned" the bomb? Certainly not the scientists or the university and the same applies to ARPANET.

That's not what I "think of as the internet". Those are just protocols that run on the internet, which is still and always will be ARPANET at core. And everyone who ever uses the internet for anything will be walking on top of a US government machine. And all their information and methods will always be accessible to the government, as they always have been.

To think that DARPA's part in it was anything but central is both ignorant and naive. And to think that DAPRA/CIA/NSA don't have complete access is also naive.

In any case, the internet has now become both a vital necessity and a critical vulnerability for American society. Whether anyone thinks it's good or free, our government has the means to control any and every part of it and really should. When Russians, Chinese and AQ actively seek every day to learn to control our vital infrastructure through that porous system, there must be someone who can shut some of the doors and lock some of the windows when and as necessary.

The surprising thing is that the universally-intrusive Bush administration didn't do more to protect it than they did.

Current efforts to formalize that power are nothing more than formalities and those who would try to blow it up to something bigger should join up with those who claim that Obama is stockpiling guillotines and provisioning concentration camps.