The TPP: An Attack on the Internet

(Before It's News)

The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, initialed by the delegations of the 12 participating countries in early October, is one of the most talked-about mysteries of our time. The moment the treaty was announced, there was a tidal wave of commentary and criticism: most of it based on previous versions, speculation and a few leaks. Because it won't be published for months (even years perhaps), nobody really knew what the document actually said.

Then Wikileaks, the on-line bible of revealed secrets, published several leaked sections of what its editors believe is the final edition and the collective groan morphed into an outcry. It was, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation puts it, “all that we feared.” The TPP internationalizes some of the worst inequities and abuses specific signing governments are currently committing and nowhere is that more true that with surveillance and communications repression.

We now know the answer to that question.

Its measures deepen the illegality of whistle-blowing and broaden who can be held responsible for it. They use copy-right law to make on-line dissent and on-line scholarship and research much more difficult. And they chop away at the rights to on-line privacy.

The deal would fundamentally repress the Internet and, while proponents insist that the agreement would not over-ride the specific laws of each country, it allows and even encourages countries to pass more repressive laws.

It is, in short, a nightmare.

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