A question to the 3 Amigo's.

There is always talk of ATS being watched by goverment agencies, as are many internet sites these days. Not unusual in this day and age i guess but quite often we hear of conspiracy websites and radio stations going down due to "unknown" circumstances, and quickly those in the conspiracy world point thier finger at the goverment once again. I don't know if security agencies are to blame but this does happen time to time. I recall the Art Bell radio phone-in where the guy was running cross country, sounded very scared and was talking about Area 51 and then the radio station went dead. Anyway, my question......

Should God forbid anything ever happen to ATS like this, what action would the management here take? I'm not talking of just "off air for a few minutes", i'm talking about a totaly closure of this site?

Do you have plans to deal with this sort of thing? I understand if you'd rather keep that to yourselves, but i was just curious thats all. Would you send a mass email out to members letting us know or would we find out the hard way?

I wonder what the members here would do? A lot seem to be in contact with each other personally, but many are'nt. Would we see mass panic in the conspiracy world, or would it just be another Truman Show ending and people would just get on with something else?

Thanks in advance,

CX.

Why would the government shut down ATS when they run it as a counter-intel site? Kidding

Seriously though, shutting down ATS would be more trouble than it's worth. Firstly, shutting it down would, by inference, suggest that the contents of the site in some way are true. It is more likely that if something that would truly impact on national security ended up on here, the government would contact the administrators, and ask to have it removed. This has certainly happened at other sites. But it would have to be pretty bad for them to do this, as the policy is not to confirm or deny speculation on the accuracy of certain information.

Secondly, shutting down ATS doesn't mean the end of the road for the members. A new web site would start up. Controlling the internet is pretty hard to do. Ask China about the headaches internet access is causing for them. Pesky democratic web sites. The backlash would be huge. The negative publicity ("We demand free speech"), especially with an election around the corner, wouldn't be appreciated.

Finally, there is so much info on here, some good, some...well...not so good, that picking the wheat from the chaff is difficult. This in a number of ways works in the Governments favour more than anything.

So, in summary, I think you'll find that ATS is safe, unless they specifically break any laws, in which case it becomes a legal issue. And the Three Amigos have already proven that they can more than look after themselves in this regard.

Will.

Yes but HAVE they had to prove themselves in this area yet? Sorry i mean have they had to deal with a closure incident yet?

CX.

[edit on 29/6/06 by CX]

Originally posted by CX
Should God forbid anything ever happen to ATS like this, what action would the management here take? I'm not talking of just "off air for a few minutes", i'm talking about a totaly closure of this site?

ATS and we "Amigos" receive a lot of criticism from time to time. Some of that is directed at what a few see to be an overtly commercial effort because of our increasingly massive size and reach (inching close to 100,000 users a day). But I feel strongly that our size and popularity is our greatest defense against any type of crack-down action (short of wholesale Internet control like the Chinese).

Also, there are multiple locations of backups at this point.

Never fear... we're here to stay. (at least until 2012 when our domain registration runs out... seemed like a fun year to make sure we're paid up to)