Dave Winer at Harvard Law School
Dave Winer spoke with me the other day about freedom of the Internet,
encouraging the Dean campaign to take this up as a cause. I
agree.
I also agree with Dave that the Bush administration and John Ashcroft’s
use of the Attorney General’s office is restricting our rights of
citizenship in profound ways–and I can’t understand why more Americans
don’t seem to care about this.
The restriction of rights, whether in “meat space” or cyberspace, is a
very very fundamental issue. It is in “rights space” that
citizens act, that positive social change and innovation happen, and
that we live out our daily lives.
If you don’t think that the new regime is affecting the daily lives of
citizens, ask almost any friend of yours who is of either of Muslim
extraction–any generation of citizenship–or friends of yours who are
of African extraction (for example, Somalis) who are of first
generation US citizens.
If you don’t think the restriction of rights will affect you
personally, consider the surveillance capabilities being established by
the federal government for tracking actions in cyberspace,
citizen-to-citizen telephone calls, and for monitoring personal
movement via cell phones locator services.
Freedom matters. Freedom is fundamental to blogging.
Freedom is fundamental to a grassroots-empowered society.
Grassroots empowerment, entrepreneurship, citizen initiative–these are
the real sources of vitality in our country. These fruits of
freedom are the true sources of our contribution to the world at large.
Jim Moore at Dean for America
