March 30, 1999
Web posted at: 3:10 p.m. EST (2010 GMT)

By San Francisco Bureau Chief Greg Lefevre

SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- The expulsion of Western reporters from Yugoslavia means much of the information is coming from individuals posting messages on the Internet.

Egroups.com RELATED VIDEO CNN's Greg Lefevre takes a look at the role the Internet is playing in the current Kosovo conflict -- March 31 Windows Media 28K 80K

"This is very early on in this crisis and Milosevic moved very quickly to try to silence those sources of information," said Alex Fowler of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Egroups.com is posting messages from the "front." An American reader can almost hear the accent in the broken English and misspellings: A woman writes, "Last night there were again about 50 missile targets ... Most people were in cellars and shelters ... In Pristina last night there was many bombings and our friends say that it was a frightening sound. ... the city is full of Serbian army tenks and jeeps and other vehicles."

A man tries to sound casual about it all: "Today we have sunny and warm weather in Belgrade ... Last night's raid was civilized and decent -- it all ended at midnight, so we could go to sleep in our beds, not in shelters ... But this very moment the sirens are going off ..."

Many so-called independent news organizations are supported outside their countries. The B92 radio station in Belgrade, shuttered by Yugoslavian authorities, continues to broadcast over the Internet. The station is being retransmitted over the Internet by XS4ALL, an Internet service provider in Amsterdam and by RealNetworks of Seattle, Washington.

"To see the mouse navigate the globe is astonishing. The Internet really has come into its own." Said Lucy Mhol of RealNetworks. In this case with some nudging by the company. Real donated the server B92 uses in Yugoslavia. This is at least the second time B92 has been forced off the air by the Yugoslavian government. Real says traffic on the B92 Web site is very heavy and has grown to about 40,000 Internet listeners, most of them in Europe.

Fowler of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the clampdown by the government of Slobodan Milosevic plays right into the hands of those who use the World Wide Web. "In the situation that we're seeing right now where Milosevic has expelled all foreign reporters the Internet becomes a very important tool for continuing to get independent sources of information about what's actually happening."

Those who do speak out over the Web should beware. The regimes they criticize are listening, too.

"While the criticism of tyranny is one of the most profound forms of democratic speech, it's also some of the most dangerous type of speech," Fowler warns. "People posting on line should take some very easy precautions."

B92 Web site

He suggests that users: