The Information Revolutionary War

By Peter Kappesser, Peter_Kappesser@promail.com.

Freedom means not being scared about what you say or write.

A lot of people are scared now, thanks to the Communications Decency Act. I suppose by the legal definition, they've been "indecent" all along, but they're just being themselves. On the Net, no longer do they feel comfortable chatting with people, playing online games, or speaking their mind in a newsgroup posting, for fear that some zealous U.S. attorney may prosecute them.

In the next few months, technologies will be introduced that integrate data, voice, fax, and pager communications into one digital service. You'll deal with voice mail and faxes as documents on your computer -- scanning, sorting, filing, filtering. Before the end of the century, all communications will be based on digital networking -- your phone calls, the movies you watch at home, news services, business data.

And under the Communications Decency Act, Momma Government will be able to prosecute you if the content of anything you send is "indecent," by their vague, undefined, and probably situationally-changing standards. The President in 2001 is anti-abortion? Abortion discussion becomes indecent. If your news clipping archive is accessible via Web (or its successor), things that were written or said years before become prohibited. You can't "make available" this "indecent" material. Online libraries will restrict their material to that which is politically acceptable.

Does this scenario sound familiar? Have you ever read "1984" by George Orwell? That was written at the dawn of the computer age. The power of the computer is being turned against freedom in the name of security -- precisely the sort of doublethink Orwell warned about in his book. "Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

This is being written on George Washington's birthday, and I think Mr. Washington would disapprove of the recent actions by his successors. As citizens of the United States, we deserve better. Our ancestors died fighting enemies home and abroad who wanted to deprive us of our freedoms. Now our enemies are in Washington, D.C. and we must do whatever is necessary to defeat them.

We must organize, as the Patriots organized against the British oppressors when the United States was founded, and mobilize our own "armed forces" to protect our freedoms. I hope that 200+ years of civilization has taught us to be wiser than to fight with gunpowder and bombs; armed with ideas and basic truths, delivered by electronic and other means, we must fight our modern oppressors just as aggressively.

What can we do? The "24 Hours of Democracy" project is a start -- a "Declaration of Independence." This will not be settled quickly; our enemies are powerful. It took the Revolutionary Patriots 13 years after their Declaration to win their freedom and form the United States.

The Information Revolutionary War has already begun.

P.S., on February 26: Since writing this, I've learned about the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, available from http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/barlow_0296.declaration.

Keywords: "Syracuse", "New York", "Freedom", "Independence", "Revolution".

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