Forced Exposure

The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too.  There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum.  What to do?

What to do? I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure it out. And the conclusion I've reached is that there is no way to continue doing Groklaw, not long term, which is incredibly sad.  But it's good to be realistic.  And the simple truth is, no matter how good the motives might be for collecting and screening everything we say to one another, and no matter how "clean" we all are ourselves from the standpoint of the screeners, I don't know how to function in such an atmosphere.  I don't know how to do Groklaw like this. ...

My personal decision is to get off of the Internet to the degree it's possible.  I'm just an ordinary person.  But I really know, after all my research and some serious thinking things through, that I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know that ensuring privacy online is impossible.  I find myself unable to write.  I've always been a private person.  That's why I never wanted to be a celebrity and why I fought hard to maintain both my privacy and yours.

Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose.  I can't really hope for that.  But for me, the Internet is over.

So this is the last Groklaw article.  I won't turn on comments.  Thank you for all you've done.  I will never forget you and our work together.  I hope you'll remember me too.  I'm sorry I can't overcome these feelings, but I yam what I yam, and I tried, but I can't.

-- pj of Groklaw in a blog post announcing the closing of the site, "Forced Exposure" 20 August 2013