Legal Information Website Closes Over Government Surveillance Concerns

Chilling effect

Citing concerns about privacy and government surveillance, Pamela Jones is shutting down her site Groklaw, which for years took on what she and vocal fans saw as wrongheaded legal action in the tech domain.

"There is now no shield from forced exposure," Jones said in final blog post Tuesday. Groklaw depended on collaboration over e-mail, "and there is now no private way, evidently, to collaborate."

Jones, a paralegal, started her site a decade ago taking on the SCO Group's legal attack on IBM and others involving Linux and Unix intellectual property. She rebutted the company's position, detailed the arcana of the lawsuit proceedings, and shared legal filings on which the case rested. Volunteers attended some hearings in person, and collaborative efforts found just any hole that could be poked in SCO's case. The site archives show hundreds of posts since its start in May 2003.