Greetings From EFF – Electronic Frontier Foundation to ALCEI / EF-Italy August 1994

In July you contacted me about starting an EFF-like organization in Italy.

I’ve seen the core group that was soon formed pull themselves together into an organization with amazing speed – I can only presume you’ve all been driven by the same sense of urgency and potential that keeps us all going at EFF as well.

I’ve offered some pointers (which I hope were applicable to Italian socio-political realities, and of use to you), and others from organzations more closely analogous to your own, such as Michael Baker from EF-Australia or Simona Nass from SEA, can probably be of more assistance as well in coming months and years.

I look forward to the forming of a loose coalition of “EF-organizations” in the future to help reign in some of the wild and unpredictable problems and opportunities facing all of us on a global, rather than just national, scale. This goal, though, depends on the solidity of local, regional and national groups like yours, and it’s good to see EF-Italy coming together to speak up for your part of the world.

People often ask why there are no local chapters or sub-groups of EFF, and the reason has most to do with problems of centralization and distance. An organization like EFF cannot hope to represent Italians adequately, coming as we do from a different culture with different language, politics, law, etc. ALCEI is a necessary and timely tool for the future of networking, freedom and privacy, for Italy and of Italy.

Keep up the good work, and à¬ll see you online!

Stanton McCandlish – Electronic Frontier Foundation

[1] http://www.eff.org