Two years ago, Radio Clash along with many other sites blacked out in opposition to SOPA and similar European laws such as ACTA. The former was stopped fairly quickly, and the latter fizzled out as European politicians realised how unpopular it was amongst their electorates as it was quite rightly perceived as a US attempt at hegemony.
Two years later, what do we have? Well we’ve lost Aaron Schwartz sadly, like many was hounded to his death (in similar fashion to Dr. David Kelly I might add, another man with very high principles in a dirty dirty world). We’ve gained the revelations of Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald and colleagues, and some real ammunition in the fight against mass spying and uncontrolled intelligence programmes. Chelsea Manning has been jailed, but the response to Snowden shows that no matter how careful you are, let the cat out of the bag and the Big Bad is after you.
What amazes me is that a world where the likes of Aaron and many others talked about such programmes and were treated like truthers and tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy geeks, we’ve now had a 180 degree reality check that most of the programs like PRISM and Project Tempora who were whispers in the shadows are now full picture in the spotlght. Never before has there been an ability to create big data databases and surf mass surveillance on an unprecedented scale. And the scary thing? Presidents and heads of state equivocate, people shrug and say ‘well it keeps us safe? What can we do?’.
The crazy thing is we now have proof of the fact that governments are lying to their people, are monitoring their own citizens, and are capable of some pretty awful Big Brother dictator moves if they want (some they do already – see the hounding of certain people, No Fly, the hassling of Glenn Greenwald’s partner, etc.). It is time to fight back, like Aaron did and show that no, we’re not happy being monitored 24/7, no it doesn’t make anyone safer, and yes it can and is being abused as I write this.
So you’ll see a banner below today (11th Feb) with some actions to take, information etc.
In a weird way, with the austerity excuses and what we know the cause is more bleak, more desperate because it’s like a hydra, as soon as you kill SOPA or PIPA or ACTA, a TPP pops up in it’s stead. They expect people to get bored and start getting more upset about giraffes than NSA, drones, Syria or any of that. Don’t let them think you’re more interested in your Angry Flappy Tweety Birds (which like many apps is spying on you, btw). But you have nothing to hide? Well until your metadata falsely implies you do and a drone comes a calling. No judge, no jury, nowhere to hide.
[photo ‘Grumpy Cat Builds a Gnu Internet’ by Frerk Meyer, Creative Commons Share-a-like]
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