ISP "Censored" Anti-War E-Mail

July 29, 2005

Comcast, in addition to Internet services, consequently offers frequent nightmare experiences for its customers. Here’s one that is theoretically more significant than a poor customer-support phone call. How about freedom of speech?�This is reminiscent of Microsoft's dealings in China.

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Broadband provider Comcast and security-services company Symantec have been accused of blocking e-mail relating to an anti-Iraq war protest, reported the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this week.�

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David Swanson, an online activist and founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, says Comcast and Symantec blocked e-mail drawing attention to the “Downing Street memo” --�a leaked memo first published in Britan’s The Times -- which activists have used to focus upon as further proof that the Iraq war was planned well in advance.�

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The AfterDowningStreet.org Web site “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 a message posted by Swanson to his site. Swanson claims e-mail sent to and from his subscribers were blocked for a week as he tried to coordinate events around the U.S. He said the events “would have had a far bigger turnout had the block not been in place.”

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“We didn’t know it, but for the past week, anyone using Comcast has been unable to receive any e-mail with ‘www.afterdowningstreet.org’ in the body of the e-mail,” Swanson wrote on his Web site.

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“Comcast said that ... Symantec refused to lift the block, because they had supposedly received 46,000 complaints about e-mails with our URL in them. Forty-six thousand! ... Could we see two or three, or even one, of those 46,000 complaints? No...”

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Swanson said he was trying to raise awareness about the memo and get Americans to lobby U.S. Congress to inquire into whether President Bush had lied about the reasons for the Iraq war. He said that once one of the activists involved in the campaign posted Symantec’s phone numbers on his site, and Symantec’s communications department received complaints, the block was removed.

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According to the Australian paper: Antoinette Trovato, a Symantec spokeswoman in Australia, said the company’s U.S. office had advised that a spam rule was created due to an increase in e-mail traffic identified by the Symantec Probe Network.

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“The rule was determined to be too broad and has since been turned off,” she said.