Dan Gillmor posting on Terrorism and Internet

The Infrastructure of Democracy - Strengthening the Open Internet for a Safer World (Madrid, Spain. March 11, 2005).
I. The Internet is a foundation of democratic society in the 21st century, because the core values of the Internet and democracy are so closely aligned.
II. Decentralized systems -- the power of many -- can combat decentralized foes.
III. The best response to abuses of openness is more openness.
IV. Well-meaning regulation of the Internet in established democracies could threaten the development of emerging democracies.
V. In conclusion we urge those gathered here in Madrid to:
1. Embrace the open Internet as a foundation of 21st Century democracy, and a critical tool in the fight against terrorism.
2. Recognizing the Internet's value as a critical communications infrastructure, invest to strengthen it against attacks and recover quickly from damage.
3. Work to spread access more evenly, aggressively addressing the Digital Divide, and to provide Internet access for all.
4. To protect free speech and association, endorse the availability of anonymous communications for all.
5. Resist attempts at international governance of the Internet: It can introduce processes that have unintended effects and violate the bottom-up democratic nature of the Net.

There was a conversation on the comment on point 2:
3. As we saw in the aftermath of the March 11 bombing, response was spontaneous and rapid because the citizens were able to use the Internet to organize themselves.

People from the right of the Spanish political spectrum are against the word "spontaneous".
Some think that powerful Spanish media organized demonstrations in front of the building of the Popular Party and forced citizens to vote the leftist PSOE.

My comments were:
I agree with the word "spontaneous" because people decided to attend to the demonstration, resend SMS, blog about it...

From my point of view, it is not credible that some groups forced hundreds or even thousands to do what they did. They did what they did because they wanted it to do it.
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PSOE didn't have that power then, so PP won't have it in the future.

This is a free society, and free people do whatever they want.
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Stressing the point that media are bad and open source journalism is good, is a dangerous simplification.

There are biased blogs and free media.

People have sources to choose, for me this is the key.
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Spain is not a dictatorship and wasn't neither during the 8 years of PP government.

Some media are biased and so dozens of blogs, but there are both media and blogs which are truly free and independent, sources that people can trust and relay on.

Maybe I am too naive, but think that people could be manipulated some times but not all the time and specially not everybody could be manipulated all the time. This free voices will talk and people will listen.

En español, gracias a Mangas Verdes.