Internet activists are becoming better organised and financed. They have an ideology too, a kind of libertarian anti-politics. For many of them, the internet’s ability to bypass scrutiny by public bodies is its greatest virtue. Predictably, the debate early in 2000 about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill, which sought to codify the powers of the police in relation to the internet and data encryption, became a rallying point for this freemasonry of the net.
The Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), one of the main bodies to draw together internet activists, was at the centre of the campaign against the bill. In a major part of its activities, briefing the media, the FIPR succeeded brilliantly, persuading many journalists to parrot its libertarian anti-RIP line.
The FIPR, with an advisory council boasting many of the most prominent internet cheerleaders and the leading lawyers in the field, was ready and waiting when the RIP debate began. So who funded the FIPR in that first year of its existence? Microsoft, 100 per cent. Who sits on the FIPR’s governing council and is one of its trustees? Roger Needham, managing director of Microsoft Research.
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