Vancouver programmer protecting Nazi propaganda website

Nick Lim, a 20-year-old Asian-American from Vancouver, Wash., created his company, BitMitigate, to protect websites from attack.

One of those sites is The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website.

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“I definitely don’t support the content at all,” Lim told KIRO Radio’s Rantz and Burns Show. “I’m a target of such hate speech, but when it comes down to the fundamental principles, it’s really important that we look at what history has shown to be valuable and that’s freedom of speech and making sure that there’s no censorship.”

Lim, who said he’s been programming since he was 7 years old, explained that BitMitigate protects websites from online or DDoS attacks, but doesn’t host any content or operate them on their servers.

“Essentially the (attacks) simulate a lot of web traffic to overload the web servers. So if you have a pipe and the traffic is the water, they basically try to flood it with a bunch of their own traffic and, consequently, no real users can get to the website because the website is fulfilling all the fake traffic.”

Lim isn’t paid by the likes of the Stormer. He says he makes his money from other servers, like those used for gaming. In fact, he says the Stormer is less than 1 percent of his user base.

So what about other sites, like those supporting ISIS?

“It has to be illegal,” Lim said. “I’m not going to take anything down just based on my own emotional or personal convictions.”

And yes, Lim has received countless threats.

Maybe those at The Daily Stormer will turn away from racism once they realize the company protecting their content from attack and defending the First Amendment is run by an Asian-American man?

Unlikely.