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Roadblocks on the Super-Information Highway
from Workers Solidarity No 45
(1995)
In the last issue of Workers Solidarity we mentioned
the anarchist electronic library Spunk Press. Some of
our readers may have seen it mentioned since in the
Sunday Times (British) as part of a complicated
conspiracy theory which attempted to link it to
everything from drug making to school riots to bank-
robbing to "outlawed loyalist paramilitary groups"!!
The same weekend a computer bulletin board was raided
in Italy and the administrators of it charged with
"association with intent to subvert the democratic
order". This is a charge which carries a penalty for
those convicted of 7 to 15 years imprisonment. More
recently articles in the US media and a paper
published by the Rand institute have warned of the
danger of the internet making Mexico ungovernable
through 'netwar'. Essentially this refers to the
posting of EZLN communiqu?s and the organisation of
anti-repression demonstrations through mailing lists.
Anarchists are aware that capitalism will not allow
'freedom of information' in any real sense. The mass
media is all state owned or owned by wealthy
corporations. Its primary role is not to tell us
about the world we live in but rather to "manufacture
consent" (defining the limits of 'legitimate' debate).
As long as access to the internet was confined to a
narrow layer of academics and students, freedom of
expression was permitted. But now that it starts to
become a mass medium of communication the state is
seeking to impose limits on this expression.
In order to do so, it is trying to label those it
wishes to silence as 'terrorists'. That is the
purpose of all the events listed above. A month after
the Italian raids the material seized was returned.
In a press release Luc Pac, one of those charged,
pointed out "The complete restitution of the material
seized suggests that nothing useful was found amongst
it that might confirm the charges laid out in the
authorities' original warrants. In any case, the three
magistrates who ordered the raids have been unable to
find the time to meet with us over the past 23 days;
similarly, the Carabinieri (Police) who actually
returned the seized goods refused to answer any
questions concerning the enquiry or its future
course."
Effector on-line, a publication of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation [the EFF is a 'highly respected'
lobbying body supported by many parts of the computer
industry] describes the attacks on Spunk Press as
"replete with errors and remarkably
biased...Additionally it makes many wild and highly
unrealistic accusations of global anarchist
conspiracy. No relevant evidence or sources are
cited." Many of those involved with Spunk Press
suspect that the ultimate 'source' of this article is
MI5, desperately seeking a justification for their
funding now that the Cold War is over.
What is being attacked is the threat of effective
opposition to state repression. The attacks on the
mailing lists carrying EZLN communiqu?s prompted a
debate on the internet as to whether it was really
that effective or was is just a lot of "alienated
bourgeois professors" talking to each other. The
lists played a key part in not only getting out the
information but also organising opposition to the
January invasion by the Mexican army within hours of
it happening. Demonstrations and occupations have
been reported on it from Italy, France, USA, Canada
and Ireland along with other countries.
These lists gave activists not only detailed first
hand accounts of torture being used by the Mexican
state but also exposed the reasons for the invasion in
the form of a memo from Chase Bank saying that if the
government wanted to continue receiving loans it would
have to eliminate the Zapatista's. The liberal
mainstream media may be willing to cover events in the
third world from the point of view of "look what the
nasty tin pot dictator is doing". It is generally
unwilling to expose the involvement of western
companies and governments as the puppet masters behind
this repression. Eyewitness accounts circulated on
mailing lists have also revealed the use of US 'War on
Drugs' helicopters by the Mexican army in strafing
civilian targets.
Although the importance of the Chiapas related mailing
lists should not be over estimated they have served as
a conduit through which the truth about what is really
going on in Mexico can flow. Normally it takes months
or years for these stories to emerge, now it is taking
days or hours. At the time of writing it has become
obvious that the Mexican army is pursuing a policy of
causing food shortages in Chiapas. Although they have
now left many of the villages they occupied they
destroyed all or most of the foodstuffs before
leaving. Reports such as this from Santa Elana are
typical "As in Ibarra, they returned to find their
corn, beans and coffee (constituting a six-month food
supply) scattered and eaten by animals, and their
houses ransacked."
It is this sort of information that the state wants to
censor from the internet. The censorship will be
camouflaged by a mist of lies, hidden behind buzz
words like pornography, drugs and terrorism. The last
two months have seen the first shots in this battle
and have seen some liberals falling into line in this
new state offensive. According to the Sunday Times,
Chris Smith, Labour's Heritage spokesman, said the
findings of their article showed the need for
international agreements to ban groups preaching
violence from the information super-highway.
The states job will not be easy however. The current
structure of the internet makes effectively censoring
it a very difficult prospect. And the crude attempts
to set activists up for persecution has already met a
heated response as thousands have e-mailed protest
letters to some of the publications involved. One
magazine was forced to publish a double page of
letters protesting its original article. Many of
these letters came from workers within the computer
industry, protesting against the attempt to victimise
fellow workers. A key factor in keeping the
information freely flowing will be how far workers
using and maintaining the net go along with or oppose
this censorship.
Joe Black