Andreas Broeckmann on Thu, 4 Oct 2001 23:57:32 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> the architecture of survival


dear jon,

with all due respect for you and for the work done by drazen, veran matic,
sasa mirkovic, gordan paunovic and many others at b92 in belgrade, but -
unless i gravely misunderstand - what you say is highly exaggerated. in
fact, b92 was broadcasting from a highrise in the centre of belgrade, most
of the time with a government license, and always with the strict attempt
to stay within the terrain of legality. sure, there was political
pressure, let alone a lot of vicious stuff happening under the milosevic
government. yet they always kept up appearances and only switched b92 off
within their own counter-legality, but tolerated the dissident radio and
its wide-ranging activities right in front of their eyes. from all i know,
pgp encryption was only used hesitantly since the kosovo war in 1999. and
the anti-milosevic message certainly - and bravely - went out on the air,
in serbia, without encryption.

to equate the situation in serbia pre-5oct00 with that in afghanistan is
nonsense and certainly does not help anybody to understand anything. don't
fall into the media trap of putting all totalitarian fundamentalist
terrorist-sponsors in one camp - that camp is too big and would, on many
counts, certainly include some people in nato-land.

regards,
-a


>The Architecture of Survival
>Jon Ippolito

>The irony is that any U.S. crackdown on personal telecommunications
>privacy may unwittingly hamper foreign resistance to the sort of
>totalitarian regimes that tend to sponsor terrorism in the first place.
>Had Drazen Pantic of B92 radio in Belgrade broadcast his anti-Milosevic
>commentary from some permanently accessible brick-and-mortar tower, he
>might not be alive today. It is only the ability to operate via an
>anonymous Internet presence that saved him and other nomadic resistance
>leaders from the fate of the Taliban's unlucky dissidents. We do not yet
>know whether e-mail encryption helped bin Laden hide his plans from the
>CIA, but we do know for sure that Pantic and his peers have used such
>privacy safeguards to help liberate their people.
>





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