A fascinating NewsWeek article on the government’s efforts to gain control over this dangerous new frontier called the World Wide Web.

“The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 last week to prohibit businesses from offering broadband or Internet phone service unless they provide Uncle Sam with backdoors for wiretapping access. And in a separate decision last month, a federal appeals court decided that e-mail and other electronic communications are not protected under a strict reading of wiretap laws. Taken together, these decisions may make it both legally and technologically easier to wiretap Internet communications, some legal experts told NEWSWEEK. There may be more developments to come. In March, the same month the FBI requested that the FCC expand CALEA, the commission released a “Notice on Proposed Rulemaking,” which announced plans to look at whether and how the FCC should begin regulating the Internet.” According to Susan Crawford, an assistant professor at New York’s Cardozo Law School, “This is a turning pointing in the history of the Internet because telecom agencies all over the world are looking at their very broad enabling statutes and saying ‘Someone needs to be in charge of this Wild, Wild West’.”