[Air-L] Groklaw shutting down

[Richard Forno]

The tinfoil-hat part of me (a little part, admittedly) wonders if we're well along the slippery slope of "if the government can't know or have access, then nobody can, and/or it'll be deemed illegal."   We faced similar arguments in the early '90s but they're back with a vengence now, it seems.

To wit:  USG surveillance stuff aside, last week, Lavabit shut down & destroyed its data rather than fork over info to the USG -- and now its owner purportedly may be held in contempt of FISA court orders.  Add to that Silent Circle discontinuing secure mail services rather than deal with government problems, etc .....and last evening I read that the DOJ is pushing SCOTUS to allow warrantless searching by police of mobile devices, too[1]. I suspect more such outcomes will follow in the coming weeks and months. 

We are living in interesting and troubling (depressing?) times.   So while perhaps a bit extreme of a reaction, I sympathise with Jones' position and concerns in shutting down Groklaw, and will miss that site greatly.

But life is not w/o a sense of irony:  The USG loves to espouse the concept of  "Internet freedom" in the world ... to whcih I am forced to ask: freedom from what?

 ---rick, grumpy and decaffinated

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/19/obama-administration-asks-supreme-court-to-allow-warrantless-cellphone-searches/?print=1

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Richard F. Forno, Ph.D.
Director, Graduate Cybersecurity Program
A/Director, UMBC Center for Cybersecurity
cybersecurity.umbc.edu



Surveillance concerns bring an end to crusading site Groklaw

A legally informed Web site critical of lawsuits from the SCO Group, Apple, Oracle, and patent trolls shuts down because its founder says e-mail can't be protected from government scrutiny.

by Stephen Shankland
August 20, 2013 4:11 AM PDT

Citing concerns about privacy and government surveillance, Pamela Jones is shutting down her site Groklaw, which for years took on what she and vocal fans saw as wrongheaded legal action in the tech domain.

"There is now no shield from forced exposure," Jones said in final blog post Tuesday. Groklaw depended on collaboration over e-mail, "and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate."

Jones, a paralegal, started her site a decade ago taking on the SCO Group's legal attack on IBM and others involving Linux and Unix intellectual property. She rebutted the company's position, detailed the arcana of the lawsuit proceedings, and shared legal filings on which the case rested. Volunteers attended some hearings in person, and collaborative efforts found just any hole that could be poked in SCO's case. The site archives show hundreds of posts since its start in May 2003.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57599288-38/surveillance-concerns-bring-an-end-to-crusading-site-groklaw/

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Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.