Screwed

Freedom of information? Nyet! I get the feeling we are becoming as bad as the Russians. This morning looking for the accounting office’s Daily Tax Statement, I find that everything prior to 12/27 has been erased. This is not the first time. The dates of postings show up on the PDF files. The data appears often to be reposted months later after the fact. A good conspiratist can draw only one conclusion: they (sic) are monkeying with the numbers.

If our government gives us manipulated information, if the media captures information to dispense it only with advertising, if the industrial age monopolies alter reality through lobbying and if the Motion Picture Association and the Recording Industry suppresses art culture and information through over-extended copyright, then it looks like we are screwed.

What is needed is a new freedom of information act or better still, amendment. The issue involves truth, bandwidth, access and monopolistic pricing. Governments should not be permitted to distort the truth for political ends and old world monopolies should not be allowed to create fabricated scarcity in order to stick us with high prices. We may have to fight as hard to get free information as we did to get freedom of movement, speech and congregation. If Truth is a key virtue, then so should be the freedom of sharing it.