The guy who helped invent the internet, no not Al Gore, Tim Berners-Lee wants a new Magna Carta for the internet. If he was American it’d be a bill of rights or declaration of independence, if he was an anarchist, it’d be a manifesto. This call for a clear set of rules for the online/cyberspace is nothing new. The first article was written in 1986 – 3 years before the internet was created. This was when kids were using phones and a few other systems to hack things. The most recent was only a few years ago from an internet website.

Creating these documents is an effort in futility. We already have a bill of rights in the US that SHOULD be protecting us from the NSA, GCHQ, CIA, and other organizations. These organizations, at least the US ones, should be forbidden from given information they “accidentally” collect on US citizens to other governments. They do though. We have secret courts with secret interpretations of laws that we as citizens have no idea what they are. How is ANOTHER Magna Carta going to help?

There’s absolutely no reason to expect our governments to abide by these new laws when they are flouting the current laws – attempting to undermine existing laws through intentionally narrower interpretations of rulings – in many cases getting slapped on the wrist later for infractions that have been going on for years.

Creating a new bill of rights, Magna Carter, or whatever will not solve the problem. The problem is not the current set of laws, though that doesn’t help, the root cause of the problem is corruption and arrogance.

Now that it’s been uncovered that the CIA hacked Congress’s Intelligence Committee, one that had been defending the NSA, there’s all sorts of kerfuffle. Congress didn’t care, excepting Ron Wyden (and a few others), until they realized that they were just as likely targets any the average Joe.

Most members of Congress are funded through companies and special interest groups. These include companies that support the NSA and other intelligence organizations. If any of those orgs funded any member of Congress on a committee that oversees anything related to intelligence gathering there’s going to be corruption. Regardless of if it’s quid pro quo or not.

We will never pass a bill of rights for the internet as long as there’s potential conflicts of interest (funded by companies that bills are trying to regulate). We must address corruption before we can hope to have an effective set of rights for the internet or anywhere else.