A few years ago I was momentarily fooled by the "net neutrality" campaign. At that time I was surprised to see a coalition for net neutrality featuring liberal MoveOn.org and conservative Gun Owners of America. I just checked and this coalition is still in effect.

More recently I haven't been paying attention to the net neutrality issue. I was surprised yesterday to learn that President Obama is a big backer of net neutrality. Here's a 50-second video of Obama speaking at Google back on November 14, 2007, where he said, "I will take a back seat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality."

In contrast, constitutionalist Congressman Ron Paul is opposed to net neutrality regulation of the Internet based on his opposition to government regulation and support for a free market economy, as you can see in this 56-second video:

See these two video clips from yesterday's Glenn Beck program for more information about the net neutrality issue and how it fits in with President Obama's agenda to regulate free speech on radio, TV, and the Internet:

Big Brother used to be watching just you. Now, with a new investment with a private technology firm, he’s in an even better position to monitor your blogs, tweets, Amazon.com reviews, and other online activities.

According to a recent report on Wired’s online edition, In-Q-Tel, created in 1999 by the Central Intelligence Agency, has formed an investment partnership with Visible Technologies, a company specializing in software that monitors social media. Visible Technologies has announced the partnership on its website. Neither party has been willing to disclose the size of the investment.

The intelligence community — especially the CIA — is interested in monitoring publicly available information buried in the flood of online articles, blog posts, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos, and so on.

Hey bloggers, do you trust the government?

That's what the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants you to do. In response to the controversy over the FTC's plans to start regulating the speech of bloggers over trumped up worries about product and service ads and reviews online, the agency now says it won't be going after individuals.

“We will be focusing any enforcements on advertisers, not on individual endorsers,” said Mary Engle, the FTC’s associate director for advertising practices, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We are not planning on investigating individual bloggers.”

According to an NSA analyst, under the Bush administration, all communications from Americans were potentially intercepted, though the agency lacked the computer capability to examine everything. Specific American organizations -- even if they had no ties of any kind to terrorism -- were targeted according to the analyst.