FBI Seizes Server From Progressive Internet Service Provider
Seizing this machine serves no useful purpose in tracking down or stopping the bomb threats, but it has many serious negative implications. Anonymous e-mail is an important part of the Internet. One of the benefits of Internet technology is the ability to communicate world-wide, and this communication is fundamental to the struggles of the world's people to address many of the world's ills. In a period in which our society has seen massive losses of privacy in which just about everything we do on-line can be tracked, logged, studied and used for all kinds of purposes, anonymous Internet-based communication tools provide shade from the intrusive searchlights of ubiquitous surveillance.
Insiders who reveal government and military malfeasance, corporate whistleblowers, critics within institutions, organizers who fear police repression, and others involved in liberatory struggle can and do use anonymous e-mail. Anonymous e-mail is one of the critical tools of the democracy movement unfolding worldwide, including the Middle East. Without anonymous communications, such movements would have had even greater difficulty organizing and would face greater risks and repression. Without anonymous communications, our already-constrained knowledge of what government and corporations actually do in our name and against our interests would be even more limited. Without anonymous communications, the Internet becomes little more than a caricature of its potential as a tool for building a just global society.
When authorities forcibly remove a computer from an anonymous communications network, they weaken that network and set a precedent for attack on anonymity in general. If we lose anonymous e-mail, we effectively lose the Internet as a tool for organizing and change.
The use of anonymous communications for bomb threats is horrible. We at MF/PL have never condoned threats of violence or the use of Internet technology to harm people. Such use runs counter to our vision of the reason the Internet exists and its proper use. We are deeply saddened by the pain caused so many people by these sociopathic activities. http://truth-out.org/news/item/8642-fbi-seizes-server-from-progressive-internet-service-provider
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