Last year, ProtestWarrior—the counter-protester group known for mocking anti-war protesters with clever signs and strong spines—had their website hacked. Thousands of credit card numbers were stolen by the hacker, apparently a left-wing activist named Jeremy Alexander Hammond, who targeted ProtestWarrior because of the political views of the site’s operators. (Does that make it a hate crime?)

After the FBI started looking into Hammond, he claimed that the investigation was politically motivated. (Would the FBI not typically investigate the theft of thousands of credit card numbers?) Now Hammond’s looking at hard time: an indictment was handed down last week for a crime that could carry a jail term of up to five years.

I suspect you’ll see more attempts to use technology to stifle political opponents. Until now, the Internet has been used primarily to enable speech. But it can also being used to suppress it. A number of other prominent websites have also been taken offline by hackers, and that’s just one incident in one day.

Throughout history, people have been executed and books have been burned in attempts to stamp out ideas. Humans always seem to have an urge to muzzle people who disagree with them. As more speech moves online, so will the attempts to stop it.

P.S. While I was over at ProtestWarrior, I ran across this link to a description of how The San Francisco Chronicle cropped a photograph at an anti-war rally to remove the more extreme visual elements. It’s a perfect example of how the establishment media sanitizes reporting of the protest movement, scrubbing away any hint of the more radical left-wing elements behind the protests.