Privacy is not a fashionable trend

Approximately nine years have passed since the Autistici/Inventati project started. The most affectionate among our users will remember our many adventures, the technical relocations, the R* Plan, Noblogs, but also the Aruba crackdown, the Trenitalia case, and the censorship against Molleindustria.

And these are the cases directly connected with A/I's collective, but we could also mention the police raids in would-be Indymedia's headquarters, which took place just after Genoa 2001, the searching at SO36.net, the seizing of netstrike.it, etc.

In our glossy social networking age we tend to forget that technology is a tool, and as such we have to use it cautiously and with the right amount of paranoia, so that it won't backfire on us all.

Investici, the association which legally owns our servers, receives almost daily requests from lawyers, prosecutors and police detectives. Some of them claim compensation for copyright infringement or for what they see as slander on some of the site we host; some others wish to peruse a mailbox or would like to know the real identity of a certain user.

With the exception of the striking cases mentioned before, these requests mostly end up with a reply from us explaining that we don't keep any logs and cannot possibly know our users' names.
However, this is not the final solution to evil. We did not decide to launch this project in order to assume responsibility for your use of the tools we offer. We therefore wish to remind you once again the guidelines we have always considered crucial for the use of our services and of communication technology in general.

  1. Download your mail, don't leave it on our servers.
    This simple common sense rule could spare you several troubles in case of technical or legal catastrophes. We do our best, but as you have certainly seen, we are not new to bad luck and mistakes.
    Even if we hit a nerve, we wish to recall how in 2004 the police tapped 5,000 mailboxes with the excuse of investigating just on one of them.
  2. Use encryption and anonymity tools.
    There are some tools that make it possible to obtain a certain degree of security and anonymity. None of these is perfect, none of these will grant you absolutely that your privacy will be respected. We need to know how they work, we need to learn what tools are available, and we have to decide how and when to use them.
    Therefore, it is a good idea to read this introduction to the various measures one can adopt to protect one's privacy, as well as some howtos to the several tools we can use for:
  3. Use the Web as though you were sitting at the window talking with the neighbour in the opposite wing of your building.
    The fact that communication has become faster and easier doesn't mean that the world has changed. Your chat with friends is studied by marketing enquiries and also by police investigations. There is no such thing as a wonderful island where you can stop caring directly about your privacy.

Autistici/Inventati Network

The Autistici-Inventati collective is glad to introduce you to the Plan R*: a network of resistant communication.

Resistant because it has been conceived to prevent as much as possible (but without feeling almighty) possible interruptions in the digital communication offered by our facilities.

And resistant also because it is related to a dream, the dream of a real political and social conflict that lives on and needs communication instruments to spread and flourish.

We try to accomplish this offering internet services (web sites, e-mail, mailing lists, chats, instant messaging, anonymous remailer) to either individuals and collective projects, using our best skills and knowledges to defend users privacy.

Outside the commercial attitude of payed services and web spaces, we happily welcome those who feel unresting towards cultural and media censorship, towards the globalized imaginery they are preparing, packing and selling us every day.