Free speech and the internet can be either a mutual thing, or they can be sinister in very many ways. For starters, according to this
New York Times article, they basically went as far as to say that the government wants to be able to view what you do in private messages, chat rooms (private or not), even email may be included. What if they wanted to go as far as to even view your browsing history whenever they wanted?
This topic is one that could cause a lot of grief with people, and I'm certainly positive that it will if it ever reaches national news. People have the right to privacy, and the right to free speech in America, so what exactly gives the government the right to watch what you do on the internet without consent? That would be like having the police just raid your house without you even knowing and saying that it's just an anti-terrorism measure. Now don't get me wrong, terrorism is always on the minds of people anywhere in the world, yet how would this even help by intruding on citizens' private internet sessions without their permission? Think about this for a second from your point of view, and be honest, would you go as far as to push the constitution and it's foundation because you suspect that someone on your street could be a terrorist and is using the internet to help build on that? Well doesn't that sound like what the article is getting at?
Even though my thoughts are very against this issue, the whole article here would be completely biased if I just stated everything that could be wrong with it, because believe it or not there is actually some good that could come out of it, it just takes a keen eye to these kinds of things, especially to someone who opposes it strongly. Internet predators could be caught easier if a federal monitoring system were to go into play, yet the only way that access should be granted is if this person is a sex offender already, or is suspected with good reason that he / she would be possibly heading down a predatory path towards children on the internet. It makes sense if the person has already been convicted of a crime like that right? Again, from your point of view as the reader, it would be a good idea to keep a monitor on a sex offender's internet history or internet browsing sessions to see if he / she could possibly be preying on minors thinking that it could be a way to get away with more sexual related crimes. But checking innocent people's internet history randomly for no apparent reason or suspicion should be considered an invasion of privacy, though even that contains loopholes.
People release a lot of personal information on the internet almost on a daily basis without really realizing it. That's the reason for a majority of identity theft cases with recent deals with an unknown business or client online, yet no one really thinks about what they put out there. If some web hosts wanted to possibly work with the government and release people's personal information to them then that would be a very low thing to do, but if the company / web host didn't steal it, and the person with the account or affiliation with that website / company relinquished their information willingly, then technically the company could release it to the government if they felt the need. Though that seems like a very logical and complicated thing to realize, most companies or websites will have privacy policies that they will follow to prevent things like this from happening, because eventually hackers could get it as well, but that's a totally different topic.
I honestly and truly feel that this law should NOT go into effect, at all. It is a definitely evil thing to bring up because of the fact that millions of people would be able to be tracked without knowing, and that is ultimately invading privacy. Something stated in the constitution that privacy is a right. Yet apparently now as long as the word terrorism is thrown about, it makes the bill of rights pretty much null right? Again, honest question I leave you with, do you feel that every time the word terrorism gets thrown into a conversation or something dealing with a high up government position about a subject relating to our rights that the government will suddenly act out to bend the constitution to the point of nearly infringing rights?
