Freedom of speech on the net

The Athens electronic crime units gets a hot tip in the Blogme case

It seems that the Blogme case has lit up the Greek blogosphere like a Christmas tree on steroids. The news the Antonis Tsiropoulos, the site administrator was arrested and charged with God knows what law for linking to a site that satirising the ultra - nationalist nutcase, Dimothenes Liakopulos has deeply angered the blogging community here. Coming at the same time as the Internet Governance Forum in Greeece, it graphically shows that despite words to the contrary, The Greek authorities are ready to use authoritarian tactics to deal with what they either cannot understand or find suspicious.

While looking at other blogs talking about the Blogme case I've come across a whole series of cases of the police raiding internet user's home and confiscating their equipment on the flimsiest of excuses. Take for example the case of Dimitis Fotiou, an Athenian sculptor, who set up a mock site which supposedly allowed people to find "help" i.e. get in contact with those in power who could pull strings ("rousfeti", in Greek) so that they could get a place in the civil service.

His sense of irony was apparently lost on the police who arrested him, confiscated his equipment and held him in custody for three days. Read here and here what another bloggers say about the case. Unfortunately, as the court case is pending, Dimtrios cannot speak on his own behalf. Given such attitudes it's hardly surprising that Reporter without Borders ranked Greece 32 (out of 168) in terms of freedom of the press.

Or there is the case of Rick Downes, a Swedish programmer arrested in Hania, Crete charged with illegally selling pharmaceuticals on the net and spamming (see here).

"Downes strongly denies the accusations and maintains there is nothing to link him with the spam messages. He said his knowledge of computers was taken as suspicious by investigators who knew nothing about technology.

We tried to explain to the police that what most likely happened is that the travel agent's computer is compromised and that her address book (including the addresses of her two friends who've met Rick) has been harvested for use by spammers, but they did not understand this. They were very unsophisticated in terms of computers and seemed to believe spammers met people and collected email addresses one by one," Phillips said."

Time and time the police's answer is to arrest and intimidate, irrespective of whether or not they have the slightest clue what it is the "offending" internet user has done.

Protest email (2)

Taking Asteris's advice I wrote out a protest email that you may want to copy and paste when contacting the IVG.

"To the Internet Governance Forum,

It seems that the Greek state has joined that illustrious list of enlightened regimes that feels that it can use the full force of the law to gag bloggers who have unpopular opinions. The owner of a Greek blog aggregating service www.blogme.gr is currently being sued for hosting a blog with some satirical material about a famous person. Antonis Tsiropoulos, Blogme's administrator was arrested and hauled off to the spend the night in jail and later to taken in handcuffs to the District Attorney. This is akin to arresting the owners of Technorati or Google in a midnight raid as they hosted something I disagree with.

It is a shame that the country charged with holding a conference on internet issues such as access and freedom of expression should permit the kind of draconian police action seen in the case of Antonis Tsiropoulos.

On behalf on the blogging community, both in Greece and abroad, I call upon the IGF to condemn this action in the strongest terms possible and exert all possible pressure on the Greek authorities to look into the matter."

(name)

Here is the IGF's general contact address

Here is the the IGF Greek helpline address

Protest emails

In response to the previous post I sent off an protest email to the IGF (internet Governance Forum), which is being hosted this week in Athens. The more people do this, the greater then effect will be on getting the Greek government to look into the Tsiropoulos case.

Here is the IGF's general contact address

Here is the the IGF Greek helpline address

Irony of ironies, one of the workshops scheduled is on Access to knowledge and Freedom of Expression. Now that's a debate I'd love to take part in.

See Cnet's take on this.

Blogging in Greece: The dark side

It seems that the Greek state has joined that illustrious list on enlightened regimes that feels that it can use the full force of the law to gag bloggers who have unpopular opinions. It seems that the the owner of a Greek blog aggregating service BLOGME is being sued for hosting a blog with some satirical material about a famous person. Antonis Tsiropoulos, Blogme's administrator was arrested and hauled off to the spend the night in jail and later to taken in handcuffs to the District Attorney. This is akin to arresting the owners of Technorati or Google as they hosted something you disagree with.

As the Greek blogger, Xpsilikatzoy says;

"In Greece of 2006 we have the first sue against a site that (through rss) published some satirical posts (from a blog) about a famous person. You see, in my country WE ARE NOT FREE. The owner of the site was handcuffed and driven to prison for one night and now he is free until the day he testifies in court. His computer with all his work was taken away from the police and now we are all waiting for the court to decide.The site I am referring to : BLOGME

Excuse my bad English but this was the only way to inform all foreign bloggers that my country is not free anymore.

Please tell everyone you know."

According to kierenmccarthy.co.uk, the person behind all this is none other than Dimitris Liakopoulos, one of the most hateful and racists figures to disgrace Greek TV. A man whose national chauvanism and anti - semitism are on view every night of the week on the local TV channels here in Thessaloniki. I too have talked about him in less than glowing terms and have linked to videos from YouTube (see here) that make fun of his racist rants. So, I guess that I, too I'm guilty of slandering a man whose views are so foul that they would make most far right thinkers blush.


"Update: The man arrested was Antonis Tsipropoulos and the target of the satire was Dimosthenis Liakopoulos - a controversial Greek tele-evangelist. The satire site that mocks Mr Liakopoulos can be found at funel.blogspot.com, but since it is hosted in the US, neither the Greek authorities nor even Mr Liakopoulos can get at it.
What Mr Tsipropoulos has been charged with, god only knows. But this is a spectacular own goal by the Greek authorities on the eve of the IGF. (Internet Governance Forum) Particularly since making a crime of linking to someone else’s content is pure, and legally foolhardy, censorship."

kierenmccarthy.co.uk

For more information in Greek click here.
For more information in English click here, here and here.