Constitutional Law

Right to Anonymity Under Attack

By Benjamin Melançon

Anonymous communication online is becoming quite a theme here on Idea Lab.

The web site WikiLeaks.org (if you're in the United States, right now you'll have to access it through their IP address) reports that it has been censored by U.S. court injunction (it is also banned in China).

The point of the web site is to allow people to post anonymously information - in large quantities - that governments and corporations don't want people to know.

This is bad. Taking down a domain name is a drastic measure for suppressing information on the Internet. If this is not pushed back against strongly by everyone who believes in journalism and the right to an informed public, it will have a chilling effect on all media that operates online. Which is to say, almost all media - from the largest corporation to the smallest local forum.

Full post as published by MediaShift Idea Lab on February 18, 2008 (boomark / email).