Another Website Shuttered Over Government Surveillance Concerns [View all]

[NorthCarolina]

Groklaw Founder Shutters Respected Legal News Site Over Government Surveillance Concerns

In an emotional blog post published after midnight, Pamela Jones, the creator of Groklaw, wrote that she is unable to run her website and expect its community to contribute if the U.S. government's spies are looking over her shoulder and reading her correspondence.

"They tell us that if you send or receive an email from outside the US, it will be read," she wrote. "If it's encrypted, they keep it for five years, presumably in the hopes of tech advancing to be able to decrypt it against your will and without your knowledge. Groklaw has readers all over the world. I'm not a political person, by choice, and I must say, researching the latest developments convinced me of one thing -- I am right to avoid it."

Groklaw is just the latest site to shutter over concerns that government surveillance will interfere with its business. Lavabit and Silent Circle, two encrypted email services, closed two weeks ago, afraid that they could no longer protect people's private messages from the wide-reaching National Security Agency's online surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden in May. Jones cited the closure of Lavabit, thought to have been Snowden's preferred email, as a motivation behind her decision.

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/groklaw-shut-down_n_3784703.html

Remember when we led the fight against the worlds authoritarian powers? What caused us to lose our way, and to become that which we despised not so very long ago?