Indymedia is under repression,its happened twice before.The first shut down Seattle and the Ohio server is no longer with us.See the main board at FBI/legal updates.lower left. On sept 11 the police are charging a mentally disabled man with threats to kill them.One was a comment to a post made here on May 8 and another on june 1 of 01. The Ohio legal situation arose after some local LEO's decided to set up grand juries and issue subpoena's before actually writing to the address provided on the offending post. Vic.Police followed precedent by not seeking to write the address provided.They did use a ph no on one of the posts to 'sting' the MD man by pretending to be from his ISP and offering a 'special deal.' The 'deal' turned into an ordeal for Matt Taylor of Kyneton. He was rousted for two hours,had things stolen and was later threatened at the police station.Taylor was charged with some petty public order offence's committed at M1 last year.The good behavior bond issued for those expire in Oct. Apart from that there is no criminal history.The police kept a computer seized from Taylor and finally examined it. The computer policeman who examined it,(actually a 'ghost' copy of the hard drive.)said he found 21 items of interest on the computer. Two have been put forward as supposed evedence of the crime of 'threats to kill.'1 is a copy of an e-mail sent sometime after the May 8 post.It's datestamped and it differs from the posts timestamp. The second item is a copy of a post that went up on June 1. It is not timestamped apart from the time on the Indy site that it was made. The Police are seriously putting forth the proposition that a few Kbs of data out of Gigabytes that someone stored and/or sent from the laptop prove >beyond reasonable doubt < that Taylor is their man. That no one else had the means motive and opportunity? Give us a fucking break. When Ashley Gardiner of the Hun wrote to Declan Mc Cullogh he wrote,"we got your man!" Note the 'we'. The Hun provided the police with a small mountain of their surveillance tapes and photo's of M1. 25,000$ reward was offered for Taylor's arrest in mid May by the La Raza Nazi organization.Many Threats were directed at Taylor by various different sounding anonymous cowards.The nom de Guerre allegedly used by Taylor appears to have been used by other(s) and in a way as to discredit him. 250$ was regularly offered to punch Taylor in the face hard enough to knock him down.All this on IMC's If you search yourself you will find many posts under the name 'proffr' and 'profrv.'Do they all appear to be from the same man? We have all put up with the long standing Hatfield-McCoy fued of Mayne and Hoser.Thats not the only disputed ID war on Indymedia. The police themselves say in court,"this(indy)site is one where anyone can download." Therefore ANYONE online at the time those "threats," were made could have made them by the Police's own admission. So why delay a trial,bring frivolous charges and harass the defendant and even try and nobble him? FOI has already exposed much about this,no doubt much more will come out. Like who was the mysterious 'observer' at Taylors arrest? Who was in charge,State or Feds? or the (ASIO?) 'Observer.'? Why was a US SS agent overseeing the arrest? Does the US want to extradite Taylor as has been alleged by Taylors case worker,Julian Jamieson of Kyneton? What will happen to Indymedia when someone alleged to be a regular contributor is found guilty of offences carrying a 20 year penalty? If anyone can be found guilty of such an 'offence' in this way then is anyone contributing here safe? Is the ultimate aim of this prosecution to chill Indy comment? Where else is this occurring? This is from EFA.and FBI/legal link... http://www.sjgames.com/SS/ August 31. -- Closure of the outspoken Internet forum Baiyun Huanghe after students posted messages about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. DFN and other NGOs reported about the closure on September 6. The Baiyun Huanghe bulletin board service (BBS - formerly hosted at http://bbs.whnet.edu.cn) belonged to the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (Wuhan, Hubei province). University officials announced that they were temporarily shutting down the BBS, which had 30,000 registered users, "due to technical problems." A school official told Reuters that the university's party committee would manage the BBS after the shutdown. Users would be required to register with their real names and identification numbers. DFN said "online discussion of the closure continues on other sites". "For example, an Internet forum for Huazhong University alumni (http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/~cai/hust/) has been active since Baiyun Huanghe was shut down. The alumni forum is run by a nonprofit alumni organization based in the U.S." Last March, DFN added, the Sina.com Web site "erased hundreds of messages from its chat rooms which expressed outrage about an explosion that destroyed an elementary school ... killing 38 children. Government officials had claimed that the explosion was the result of a mad bomber, but parents said cash-strapped teachers forced children to assemble fireworks inside the school." "And last June, authorities closed online forums at the Southern Weekend weekly newspaper and the Xici Hutong Web site's Democracy and Human Rights Forum after people expressed concern about recent newspaper closures and firings." + Main source: DFN, Sept. 6 + An updated list of online forums closed in China (DFN) "...This approach is taken in Australian Commonwealth law (although it has not been enforced in this manner to date) and also in, for example, China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. Some countries require Internet access providers to block material while others only allow restricted access to the Internet through a government controlled access point. http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/cens3.html "...In contrast to Australia, governments in comparable countries including Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and various European countries have chosen to legislate to give citizens a right in domestic law to freedom of expression similar to that contained in the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Such a right is by no means absolute and does not prevent governments from enacting or enforcing laws restricting freedom of expression. However, to the best of EFA's knowledge, governments in these countries have not enacted or indicated any intent to enact, Internet censorship legislation as restrictive of adults' freedom of expression, as that existing and proposed in Australia. "..."China has issued its most intrusive Internet controls to date, ordering service providers to screen private e-mail for political content and holding them responsible for subversive postings on their Web sites. ... Under the new rules, general portal sites must install security programs to screen and copy all e-mail messages sent or received by users. Those containing 'sensitive materials' must be turned over to authorities. Providers are also responsible for erasing all prohibited content posted on their Web sites, including online chatrooms and bulletin boards. "...In Saudi Arabia, public access to and from the Internet has been funnelled through a single government controlled centre since February 1999 when Internet access was first made available. From this centre, the government blocks access to Internet content deemed unsuitable for the country's citizens..." "...In May 1998, the Swedish Parliament enacted the "Act (1998:112) on Responsibility for Electronic Bulletin Boards". Electronic bulletin board is defined so as to include storage of data on the Internet, such as web pages, etc (thereby excluding personal e-mail that is only stored in individuals' mailboxes). The law places an obligation on service providers who store information (not those who only provide connections to the Internet) to remove or make inaccessible content that is obviously illegal (they do not have to decide in doubtful cases) according to the penal code, that is: instigation of rebellion (section 16 article 5) racial agitation (section 16 article 8) child pornography (section 16 article 10) illegal description of violence (section 16 article 10) or when it obvious that the user has infringed copyright law. According to explanations of the law made by the government, in computer areas where illegal messages often occur, the service providers must check what is stored, but in other areas, it is enough compliance for service providers to check when someone complains that something illegal has been stored. The above information is a very brief summary of information available (as at March 2002) on the web site of Jacob Palme of the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University/KTH. For more detailed information see Jacob Palme's pages: Swedish Attempts to regulate the Internet - BBS Act http://dsv.su.se/jpalme/society/swedish-attempts.html#Heading12 Swedish BBS Act http://dsv.su.se/jpalme/society/swedish-bbs-act.html