Should The Government Effectively Censor the Internet?

Thesis: The United States Government must cease trying to reduce privacy and censorship on the internet, because it limits the right freedom of speech, builds mistrust towards the government, and it wastes resources better spent on other types of law enforcement.

The United States Government needs to stop drafting laws that aim to reduce online privacy and give the government the power to effectively censor the internet. The creators of these proposed laws would try to say that they will allow the government to better protect against cyber-attacks and to maintain intellectual property. But what they don’t say is that the bills lack certain privacy and civil liberties protection. These are rights that people in this country have begun to take for granted, while on the other side of the world, people are still giving their lives in hope to give their children freedom. For us to protect the freedom of speech and the right to privacy, the government must stop trying to pass legislation that allows the government to undermine these rights under the guise of national security. The United States Government must cease trying to reduce privacy and censorship on the internet, because it limits the freedom of speech, builds mistrust towards the government, and it wastes resources better spent on other types of law enforcement.

As the single largest reservoir of information and communication, the internet has to be protected from censorship because it limits the freedom of speech. The internet is the key to freedom of speech because it allows people share information with anyone anywhere on the planet. It lets individuals find and spread information not whoever owns the most printing presses. This is one of the reasons that it is so danger...

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... make our own choices are key parts of the American cultural identity; what one person considers offensive may not be questionable in the least to another. In the event of a regulated internet, who would make the final call on web content and its level of offensiveness? While there are certainly dangers lurking in the darker corners of the internet, the vast stores of knowledge that can be accessed outweigh them greatly. Changing the functionality of the web could quite possibly make it more difficult to access educational material in an attempt to censor more controversial content. The creation of a regulated internet would require an enormous amount of manpower in surveillance alone. Paired with the amount of money that would have to be spent on creating filters and sifting through the almost infinite amount of information available would be staggering.