[sword-devel] Sanctions and CrossWire

[Michael Johnson]

On 3/10/22 10:33, Peter von Kaehne wrote:
> A fair number of our contributors are Russian and might have now difficulties accessing usual resources including possibly email and else or might get into that place soon enough.
>
> Can I propose that all regular CW programmer and those of sub projects from within Russia are offered CrossWire email addresses? I do not think this undermines the sanction regime , which I fully support, but keeps those who are brothers and sisters together and involved in something which had the greatest power to create peace.
>
> Thoughts?

That is a nice thought, Peter. However, I discovered years ago that while it is theoretically simple to set up any number of email addresses on a server I operate, keeping them operating through server failures and upgrades plus fighting the increasingly complex spam wars is hard. In almost every case, I found it better to refer people to one of the many free email providers <https://clean.email/best-free-email-service-providers>. Of course, that might require use of a VPN, right now, to work from Russia, 
which Russia is likely to make more difficult, just like their neighbor, China, does. Another issue is the reduction in bandwidth in and out of Russia due to 2 backbone providers pulling out, which actually makes it harder to use any email.

That said, there are some people in Russia that I wouldn't hesitate to provide emails for on crosswire.org or one of my domains, if I thought it would help. I'm just not sure, right now, if it really would. Russia may regard use of a crosswire.org email address as undermining their government or something strange like that. In hostile government environments, it is often better to use generic email domains, and not to stand out in any way just based on the address. My address would be particularly bad for 
an anti-Christian government, for example. I'm all for punishing the aggressive rulers of Russia for their sins against Ukraine. I just don't want to see this hinder any Bible translation or publication work in Russia. If anything, totalitarian governments tend to be scared of the Holy Bible. We may need to shift communication with some of these brothers and sisters to rely more heavily on secure messaging services.

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