A letter from Felipe Rodriqeuz, chairman of XS4ALL internet. Forwarded message:
From felipe@xs1.xs4all.nl Sat Sep 14 22:34:56 1996 From: Felipe Rodriquez <felipe@xs4all.nl> Message-Id: <199609142034.WAA29923@xs1.xs4all.nl> X-Length: 00001286 Subject: I could get arrested by German authorities (German censorship) To: declan@well.com, hkunzru@wired.co.uk Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 22:34:52 +0200 (MET DST) Cc: barlow@eff.com, lr@wired.com, rena@bionic.zer.de, geert@xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink), patrice@xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens), boom@xs4all.nl (Marianne van den Boomen), fvjole@xs4all.nl (Francisco van Jole) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Hi,
I got a message from Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer, Editor DER SPIEGEL online. He spoke to the German Authorities and got some shocking news. It seems that there is a possibility that I, as CEO of Dutch internetprovider Xs4all, could get arrested by German authorities.
This seems a bit far-off, but he is not the only person that warned me about this possibility. People in the left-wing movement in Holland have informed me about the agressive behaviour of the German government against the Radikal publications. Subscribers have been violently arrested in the past. It was also predicted by them that the German Authorities would not easily stop their censorship of radikal. There seems to be a lot of old pain.
Contemplating a bit further about the risk of being arrested, I thought about these developments on a larger scale. The first thing that popped to mind is that all the owners of the Radikal mirror-sites may also be arrested if they ever visit Germany. These are over 30 people and organisations. One of the sites Radikal was mirrored on is EFF. The Board-members of EFF could, in theory, be held responsible by the German Authorities. John Perry Barlow could be arrested next time he comes to give a lecture in a German city, because the EFF has illegal German documents on it's website. Declan McCullagh has put the Radikal information in the Well. He and the managers of the Well might be questioned when they enter Germany. Et cetera. It would be an outrage if anything like this happens, but friends and this journalist told me that it could happen to me anytime I travel to Germany.
I'm tempted to disconnect the Radikal pages from Xs4all, because of this intense intimidation. But if Xs4all would bend to this kind of intimidation, we would create a precedent. The Germans might see it as a 'reward' for their acts. They'd be stimulated to continue on this road, and may become an example for other countries. Imagine if every country would have these standards. Any country can order their own ISP's to block a certain foreign site. Imagine the authorities of those countries have the powers to prosecute against foreign ISP's when they visit their country, or when they are extradited. These acts of agression against ISP's and internetusers will profoundly change the Internet if they'd be tolerated.
The possibility of being arrested in our neighbour country is almost too surreal to think about. But now people start telling me to seriously prepare for it, in case it may happen. It would not be the first time a foreign citizen was arrested and put in jail by the Germans for dissiminating information. Just a couple of weeks ago a US citizen was arrested by the Germans because he sent nazi documentation to Germany through the mail, i think his name was Koch, but i'm not sure.
Here is the message lorenz sent me:
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 13:13:52 +0200 To: felipe@xs4all.nl From: Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer <lorenzl@well.com> Subject: third attempt
Hi Felipe,
I just had an extensive and controversial talk via phone with Mr. Hannich, spokesman of the german Generalbundesanwalt, about the legal action taken against the distributors of "radikal". As is the nature of talks with official spokespersons it was not utterly satisfying. But anyway. Just one question:
The possible targets of german public prosecution are not only german ISPs. There are 'preliminary proceedings' of the Bundesanwaltschaft against 'unknown' - i.e. the persons responsible for making "radikal" accessible in Germany over the Internet, _even if they are in foreign countries_. I'm afraid that this already includes you. Have you been notified of this fact? And do you have plans to guard/defend yourself?
Regards,
Lorenz.