Peer2Politics

"We do not conceive our structure as an answer to state control, but more in general as the only decent thing coming to our mind that could guarantee freedom of expression and avoid uncontrolled profiling by companies and governments". These are the first words typed to us by one of the Autistici/Inventati fellows in a chat room of their network. A necessary clarification, especially after the fallout of the Snowden bombshell started to be felt also in Italy. In the early days of August,Lavabit and Silent Mail - two privacy-oriented US webmail providers - were forced to shut down because of NSA threats. Hundreds of thousands of users were suddenly left without tools for safe communication and many of them resorted to A/I looking for an alternative solution. Within a little while, the collective wasflooded with subscription requests for its services. An event that marked a moment of difficulties for our local hacker crew, to a point when the opening of new accounts had to be temporarily suspended. This fueled a heated debate among those participating in the project on what next steps to undertake. It is difficult, for now, to say how datagate will change the self-managed communication projects. Autistici only knows that it will be able to face the new challenges on the horizon with a certainty maintained for more than 10 years: that of being not a mere webmail service but a community. A community that now needs the support of anyone feeling to become part of it