Swarthmore Crackdown on Protesting Students Reaches New Low

According to the Why War? website, Swarthmore's crackdown on students engaging in Electronic Civil Disobedience has reached a new low (Targeting Diebold with Electronic Civil Disobedience). Now, Swarthmore is allegedly terminating the internet connection of any student who links to the Why War? website, which links to sites hosting the Diebold internal company memos. They are not only terminating the accounts of students who host the files, or the accounts of students who link to the files, but terminating the accounts of students who link to a political protest site that links to the files.

If the allegations are true, this is a tremendous violation of freedom of expression and academic freedom. Swarthmore should be deeply, deeply ashamed.

Previous stories:

Swarthmore Actively Opposes E-Civil Disobedience Campaign
(Electronic) Civil Disobedience at Swarthmore

UPDATE 1745 PT

EFF responds to one of Diebold's notice-and-takedown letters (Re: Diebold’s Copyright Infringement Claim). via Copyfight

UPDATE 2 1840 PT

It Gets Weirder

I have spoken with the student whose website was shutdown. According to the student, his website was redirecting to the Why War? website before it was taken offline. After it was taken offline, he was informed by a member of the Swarthmore IT department that it was the new policy of Swarthmore that students were no longer permitted to link to the Why War? website using HTML anchor tags. However, they could point to the Why War? with plain text, as so: http://www.why-war.com/

See the current page of the student here.

UPDATE 3 1900 PT

I have spoken with a member of Swartmore's IT department and can confirm that two student pages have been shutdown for linking to a page on Why War?'s website that linked to the Diebold files. Swarthmore is currently re-evaluating its linking policy, but until they are satisfied that they cannot be held liable, students are asked to only post plain text that points to the Why War? website.