Comcast and AfterDowningStreet (from Phil)

Here's a disturbing follow-up to the post I made yesterday describing how China limits content that its citizens can access via the Internet. Today, activists at www.afterdowningstreet.org allege that Comcast Cable company was preventing anyone using its email services from receiving an email with "www.afterdowningstreet.org" in the body of the email.

In an article posted at www.commondreams.org, David Swanson says that only after extensive testing were he and his colleagues able to locate the source of the problem, notify Comcast and its filtering company, threaten Comcast with bad publicity when they did not move fast enough, and finally move ahead with the political organizing that is the reason for being of this website (which seeks to draw attention to the Downing Street Minutes and to lobby Congress to open an investigation into whether the President has committed impeachable offenses).

According to Mr. Swanson:

Comcast effectively censors discussion of particular political topics, and impedes the ability of people to associate with each other, with absolutely no compulsion to explain itself. There is no due process. A phrase or web address is tried and convicted in absentia and without the knowledge of those involved.

This state of affairs means that anyone who wants to stifle public and quasi-private discussion of a topic can quite easily do so by generating numerous spam complaints [against a website such as www.afterdowningstreet.org]. The victims of the complaints will not be notified, made aware of the accusations against them, or provided an opportunity to defend themselves. And if the complaints prove bogus, there will be absolutely no penalty for having made them.

And this won't affect only small-time information sources. If the New York Times or CNN attempts to send people Email with a forbidden phrase, it won't reach Comcast customers or customers of any ISP using the same or similar filtering program.

As People-link.org, the company hosting the AfterDowningstreet.org website said in a public statement:

Perhaps the worst part of this development is that Comcast has been reportedly doing this without the knowledge of the managers of this website or anyone affiliated with this campaign. In fact, no Comcast customer has received any indication that email to him or her containing this url was blocked.