Jillian York (EFF) In the Guardian today : “We are living amidst a crisis of conscience, politics and action. We must approach surveillance from all angles, taking care not to shame or dismiss people in the process”
She describes the harm reduction approach applied to the epidemic of surveillance she and jacob Appelbaum talked about last week at re:publica 14.
Read her article HERE
SARAH HARRISON, who, on top of her great work with Wikileaks as an investigative journalist and legal researcher, has provided whistleblower Edward Snowden with some ultimate form of care last year, from Hong-Kong to his asylum in Russia,
and ALEXA O’BRIEN, the journalist to whom the world owes an extensive searchable archive of the only available transcripts of WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning’s closed trial,
together put a few facts straight about Wikileaks, Manning and Snowden in their conversation @ re:publica 14.
Watch it HERE.
Like people didn’t give up on sex because of STDs, they are not going to give up using the Internet or today’s communication devices because they are bugged. There are however (transitive) risks in exposing our lives to constant capture / monitoring by third parties, and these could be minimized if the variety of us become better informed and start to adopt know-better behaviors, like in safer sex. Could we then learn how to use crypto tools like we learnt how to place condoms on bananas ? Drawing analogies with public health campaigns, environmental education for children and other social movements, Jacob Appelbaum (TOR) and Jillian York (EFF) lay out the principles of what could be a harm reduction campaign against the epidemic of mass surveillance and erosion of privacy, in their talk @ re:publica 14. Note that in a salutary queering of the debate, Appelbaum and York also point to the fact that opting out of the problem today saying “I have nothing to hide” is pretty much equivalent to (dominant white male) hetero saying AIDS is a gays thing and doesn’t concern them : false of course, and irresponsible. True, not everyone exposed to mass surveillance in their countries is exposed to the same risks (as of now white westerners might not risk to be put in jail or drone striked overnight for expressing their thoughts or gathering together on a regular basis), but understanding the interconnectedness is a vital key for all across the globe.
Watch the talk here : LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX BABY, LET’S TALK ABOUT PGP
It’s raining cats and unicorns on the Internet and we hope this will positively influence the climate and conditions for life there.
Some salutary raindrops come in the shape of signatures to OUR!NETmundial’s message to the governments of the world.
A global response to the successful failures of Internet Governance Meetings, the letter calls for strong principles and actions in order to End Global Surveillance and Protect a Free Internet, Internet being envisioned here as a common good.
This is also stated by Jérémie Zimmerman’s in a publication presenting the campaign “The Internet Governance’s Farce and its Multi-Stakeholder Illusion”
Those interested to learn/reflect more about “the commons” can search the Digital Library of the Commons, which “provides free and open access to full-text articles, papers, and dissertations (…) relevant to the study of the commons.”
“There are some things in our nation and in our world to which I’m proud to be maladjusted… I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, and leave millions of people perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of prosperity. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, and to the self-defeating effects of physical violence… And I call upon you to be maladjusted to these things until the good society is realized…Yes, I must confess that I believe firmly that our world is in dire need of a new organization – the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment…Through such maladjustment we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice”
Martin Luther King “Don’t Sleep Through The Revolution,” speech delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly in Hollywood, Florida (May 18, 1966).
Transcript from “Taking Martin Luther King’s for creative maladjustment seriously”, on Mad in America
