Virtually repressive: Met shuts down Fitwatch site

Last night the Met police shut down the Fitwatch blog, saying it was "being used to undertake criminal activities". It is widely believed that the post titled "Beating police repression after the student occupation" was the reason for the shut down. The article was advising protestors who were worried about being targeted by police repression following the Millbank protests. The article has in the meantime gone viral, rendering the censorship attempt futile. Fitwatch has been keeping twitter followers updated, and thanks the Met police for the publicity. Also see [NoBorders | Guardian [more] | ElReg | Article 19 | JonnyVoid | Fitwatch on Fitwatch] Updates: Tues 16th: Fitwatch Press Release | Wed 17th: Fitwatch website is back.

The takedown highlights the problematic tendency of activist groups to depend on corporate services (rather than politically-conscious service providers) for their communications infrastructure, and is likely to be only the first of many takedown and surveillance stories in coming weeks. For some background, see Their business and ours and Social Networking... how cool is that?

source: mylondondiary.co.uk

Have you ever had a facebook, twitter or gmail account suspended? Was your blog closed down? Who was making it happen and why? What did you do about it? Did you lose any emails, articles, pictures because of it? Post your stories here.