"Cyber Security Bill S.773" - What does it mean for gamers and the United States?

As I promised, a follow up to the Internet Bill recently passed.

The recent revision of S.773 is not only vague but a bit terrifying when you look at it in a very broad spectrum. I'm going to break down what I can and explain what this means for our country and for gamers alike. But for me to explain all this we need a bit of back story.

As just about everyone has heard from main stream news the recent elections caused quite a few problems for the country. People were speaking out and saying that the election was bunk, their leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the election illegally. At 1:30pm (their time) their entire internet structure was turned off for several hours for what is "speculated" time their government needed to put filters into place. Some would ask what type of filters? Well think of it. If the government is trying to control the content that is available you would have filters against blogs, the search of certain subjects, etc. Ultimately control over any information they wanted. 


A couple of other good examples. The military regime in Burma completely shut down its internet and communication avenues (phones, etc) for a solid 6 weeks to control their public and to this day is considered one of the most controlled sources of information. Yahoo and Hotmail and 85% of all webmail sites are completely blocked because "they allow an avenue for freedom of expression which cannot be monitored by the state." (Taken from...) Where as Burma is policed almost completely allowing very little in or out China has quite the opposite. China's filtering allows a very open and secure program allowing traffic in and out but at the same time controls certain websites and search subjects.

So as you can see the control of information goes a lot further than just television. Our freedoms that we have and are allowed in the United States with our web are quite "Free" and we can express anything we want, play any games we wish. With this new bill there is quite a bit at stake.

What S.773 means for this country: It means a lot. There are very very vague words used in the revision and pretty much the President of the United States of America has the keys to our web freedoms. I'm not saying it will happen but it could. They claim the purpose of the bill is to secure our safety an deter against a cyber attack. But its vagueness allows the government and our President to more or less set the parameters for what is "considered" a cyber attack.

What S.773 means for gamers: More or less guys and gals ... we could lose our internet gaming fun time. Its a sad thought but something we need to come to a conclusion about.

Hopefully this article enlightens some and teaches others. My next post will be more gamer oriented I promise. I'm going to do a few reviews and talk about how gamers have aged with our demographic and why this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Until next time ... The Conservative Gamer signing off.