By Alfredo Lopez
"Connectivity," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a CNN interview last year [1], "is a human right."
If it surprises you that one of the kings of the corporate Internet would repeat a slogan used by Internet activists to mobilize against companies like his, examine the context. Zuckerberg made his remark to support and explain a new set of Facebook strategies that will, if successful, put the world's Internet connectivity under his company's control.
It's called internet.org [2] which is not only a real website but a consortium of companies and government agencies Facebook is leading. The very name -- "internet.org [3]" -- also provides a glimpse of Facebook's intentions.
Using a combination of drones, satellites and other technologies, Facebook seeks to bring connectivity to the entire world. The picture is remarkable: Facebook satellites and drones with six month life cycles will bounce every connection signals (like Wify) to people in every corner of the earth. Every human being will now have access to the Internet.
On its face, it's a wonderful idea until you realize that this would put all the world's connectivity in the hands of one company and a coalition of partners it's brought on to realize the project. Those partners, by the way, include -- are you ready? -- the National Security Agency of the United States.
Zuckerberg reminds us that this isn't imminent; it's a project for what he calls "the far-off future". But he doesn't explain how far off "far-off" is. Connectivity projects are a process and portions of the world would be progressively "hooked up". In fact, his company has already invested $1 billion in the project and, he says, will continuously invest a lot more.
The people of the world are, Zuckerman says, "...going to use it to decide what kind of government they want, get access to healthcare for the first time ever, connect with family hundreds of miles away that they haven't seen in decades."
The Facebook announcements followed by a year an announcement by Google that it's researching how to use huge balloons to bring the Internet to the world or at least to remote locations in it [4]. Google calls it "Project Loon".
The obscene irony in using drone technology (used, among many other things, to kill thousands of people a year) to bring the human race together is offensive, but the very real threat posed by putting most people's communications in the hands of one company is deeply disturbing. To grasp that threat and the reason behind these initiatives, one must understand that this is a corporate response to a very real problem.
For the rest of this article in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new uncompromising four-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/facebookdrones [5]