TPP to criminalize investigative journalism while destroying online media not run by globalist corporations
by: J. D. Heyes
NaturalNews.com
Monday, October 26, 2015
Are Natural News, its growing network of news and information sites and all other alternative media in danger of becoming extinct? This thought would become more than just a remote possibility if newly revealed data about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement the Bush and Obama administrations have spent years negotiating are revealed to be accurate.
According to the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organization that focuses on protecting civil liberties in today’s Information Age, a recent leak of a May 2014 draft of the TPP agreement revealed the addition of new text that criminalizes the misuse of trade secrets via “computer systems.”
“This is a significant revelation,” said the EFF in a blog post, “because we also know that trade secrets are planned for inclusion in the EU-US free trade agreement, TTIP (the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership).
“The revelation of the proposed text in the TPP provides a good indication that the same kind of language will likely also appear in TTIP,” EFF continued. “Frighteningly, this text contains no protections to safeguard the public interest.”
EFF says that the U.S. Trade Representative’s sudden interest in the protection of trade secrets comes mainly amid reports of rampant cyber espionage against U.S. government and private industry computer systems emanating from China. Such reports have also led to domestic proposals like this year’s Defend Trade Secrets Act, which was introduced in the U.S. Senate in April, along with a companion House bill. If approved, the measures would create a new federal right of action for theft of trade secrets, according to the EFF.
Criminalizing access to information?
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