Censorship, it’s what the Patriot Act was made for – from Slashdot:
“Cryptome, a website concerned with encryption, privacy, and government secrecy, has received two weeks’ notice from Verio that its service will be terminated for unspecified “violation of [its] Acceptable Use Policy.” Cryptome has a history of making publicly available documents and information that governments would rather keep secret. For the notice, and a public response by Cryptome webmaster John Young, see Cryptome Shutdown by Verio/NTT.”
That terse report hides a fascinating series of emails between Cryptome’s owners and their ISP, in which the ISP stonewalls in a very peculiar way and Cryptome tries to work out the subtext of what’s happening. Eventually they get this curt termination of service letter:
This letter is to notify you that we are terminating your service for violation of our Acceptable Use Policy, effective Friday May 4, 2007. We are providing you with two week notice to locate another service provider.
Cryptome had had no previous problems with the ISP despite it’s having had alleged copyright infringement complaints made against it by disgruntled exposees. So why the shutdown now?
Might it be that they’re currently exposing a massive hole in the US military’s electronic and data security?
Not to worry for the moment though, Cryptome will survive:
This never-to-be-explained self-gagging by ISPs has become characteristic around the net due to covert and open governmental, commercial and personal aggressions to suppress information. Librarians and lawyers, among others, battling to overturn clamps on information, have learned to exhibit coded signals to the public to indicate undisclosable measures to suppress. Could be that is what Danna and Verio are signaling. We’ve received over 30 offers to host Cryptome in several countries and will accept most to disperse the collection as protection against future shutdowns.
Although Cryptome’s safe for now, what happened to them emphasises that the need for data havens is becoming ever more pressing to preserve free political speech.
