Last Friday, John Kerry assured the American public that he supports the PATRIOT Act. Passed three years ago in the wake of 9/11, the controversial bill gives new freedom to law enforcement, expanding, among other things, their ability to monitor phone and internet communications. With the Senator’s stance on Iraq (he would have gone, he’s said, but he would have been “smarter” than Bush-whatever that means), that makes at least two issues on which the choice between Kerry and Bush seems to be no choice at all.
Some recent internet censorship cases have brought the issue to the forefront in the geek community. A Dutch group published a study earlier this month that shows how spineless most European Internet Service Providers are when they are asked to take down “offensive” websites. The study does point out some protections Americans enjoy from the same kind of seizure. As if on cue though, last week the FBI helped UK police seize an independent journalism network’s London web servers, deactivating at least 20 websites. With the FBI actively engaging in censorship overseas, it’s unclear how interested the U.S, Government is in civil liberties, especially with both presidential candidates in support of the PATRIOT Act.
Last Thursday, the FBI helped British authorities seize hard drives from a web-hosting company called Rackspace. The London-based servers were hosting websites that belong to Indymedia (http://www.indymedia.org), a left-leaning media network that sprung up in the wake of the Seattle protests in 1999. Many of the sites that went down aren’t even political: Blag, a version of the free Linux operating system, is currently unavailable. Blag’s website (http://blagblagblag.org) now depicts a decidedly creepy picture of a penguin with an arrow through its heart and the text “the blag server was seized by the U.S. government.” The penguin is Linux’s official mascot.
Last Friday, the Register, a British news website, reported the FBI asked Rackspace to remove photos last month of Swiss undercover police at a French protest. Many agree this is probably the grounds for seizure, but that’s all speculation: no one notified Indymedia before the data was confiscated and international law binds everyone involved to an oath of silence.
Last week, a Dutch civil-rights group called Bits of Freedom published the results of an experiment in which they published non-copyrighted work using 10 different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and sent fake copyright-violation notifications using a free Hotmail account.
The text the group used was a parable by Dutch author Eduard Douwes Dekker. The group’s paper summarizes the essay’s contents: “The sheep chase away a tyrant, only to find themselves in need of specialists to represent them and they end up inviting the tyrant back, disguised as ‘Specialist’.” The text clearly states in the opening line that the work dates from 1871. That means the essay’s copyright expired decades ago under international law.
The group lodged fake complaints with the hosting companies under the auspices of the fictional “E.D. Dekker Society.” The emails claim that the text belongs to the group and request that the ISPs remove the offending essay “immediately.” Most of the ISPs complied with the request, some within hours. Some of the ISPs asked for the complainer’s address and telephone number. After receiving that information (which was also fake), these ISPs then took the websites down, apparently having never checking the site’s content (which was legal) or the complaining party’s existence (which was false).
In all, seven of the ISPs took down the information and one even sent all of their customer’s personal information to the fake plaintiff without being asked for it.
In the wake of the Indymedia case and with both prospective presidents in favor of undermining our rights to speech and unreasonable search and seizure, it’s looking like the near future will be interesting for free speech in America and online.