The Right to Know and the Freedom to Report on Crime (at the Higher Echelons)
I grew up in the 80s. I heard about "corruption", but was unable to comprehend, let alone do something about it. By the late 90s I felt greater passion about the matter because of injustices I saw and experienced. Again, I wanted to do something about it. But I felt helpless. I made my first Web site around 1998 and I wrote my first computer program some time around 1995 (I had done scripting before that). At one point I saw the potential of the Web - not just the Net - as a mass communication tool.
Around that same time, John L. Young, a man aged ~60 at the time, created a site called Cryptome. Many people never heard of that site and when Mr. Young died earlier this year [1, 2] many people still asked, "what is Cryptome anyway?"
"Never heard of it..."
As the EFF put it a month ago: "John and architect Deborah Natsios, his wife, in 1996 founded Cryptome, an online library which collects and publishes data about freedom of expression, privacy, cryptography, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and government secrecy. Its slogan: “The greatest threat to democracy is official secrecy which favors a few over the many.” And its invitation: “We welcome documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide.”"
Mr. Young's site inspired many other sites. Some of them are famous, some are "well-known", some are "notorious", and some are even combative. But all of them share a simple goal: bring suppressed information to a wider audience, in the hope or the desire to improve the world.
My personal site (as it stands today) is about 24 years old. It peaked in terms of activity when I was in university. Then I started devoting more time to this site. Over time, capitalising on growing trust from both readers and sources, we were able to bring out more exclusive stories which challenged systematic lies and phony narratives.
I'd like to do the same thing for the next 20 years. I think I can do the same thing for the next 20 years.
John L. Young started doing Cryptome when he was about 60. Richard Stallman started the GNU/Linux operating system (powering billions of computers now) when he was 30. I started my activism when I was about 20 and it seems like it has attracted powerful foes - to me that a sign of affirmation, more so than a sign of trouble. That too shall pass. █