Tuesday, December 10, 2013
to curb massive surveillance
Five Nobel prize winners are among many well-known writers who are pushing for governments to cease and desist peeking over the shoulders of citizens, arguing that the basic right of individual privacy is being subverted.
The "fundamental right" to live free of perpetual surveillance "has been rendered null and void through abuse of technological developments by states and corporations," according to Authorsforpeace, which has organized a global petition drive against for mass surveillance.
"A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy," the writers say. "To maintain any validity, our democratic rights must apply in virtual as in real space."
The signatories, who come from 81 different countries, include Nobel laureates Orhan Pamuk (Turkey, 2006), J.M. Coetzee (South Africa, 2003), Elfriede Jelinek (Austra, 2004), Günter Grass (Germany, 1999) and Tomas Tranströmer (Sweden, 2011).
A STAND FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE DIGITAL AGE
In recent months, the extent of mass surveillance has become common knowledge. With a few clicks of the mouse the state can access your mobile device, your e-mail, your social networking and Internet searches. It can follow your political leanings and activities and, in partnership with Internet corporations, it collects and stores your data, and thus can predict your consumption and behaviour.
The basic pillar of democracy is the inviolable integrity of the individual. Human integrity extends beyond the physical body. In their thoughts and in their personal environments and communications, all humans have the right to remain unobserved and unmolested.
This fundamental human right has been rendered null and void through abuse of technological developments by states and corporations for mass surveillance purposes.
A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy. To maintain any validity, our democratic rights must apply in virtual as in real space.
* Surveillance violates the private sphere and compromises freedom of thought and opinion.
* Mass surveillance treats every citizen as a potential suspect. It overturns one of our historical triumphs, the presumption of innocence.
* Surveillance makes the individual transparent, while the state and the corporation operate in secret. As we have seen, this power is being systemically abused.
* Surveillance is theft. This data is not public property: it belongs to us. When it is used to predict our behaviour, we are robbed of something else: the principle of free will crucial to democratic liberty.
WE DEMAND THE RIGHT for all people to determine, as democratic citizens, to what extent their personal data may be legally collected, stored and processed, and by whom; to obtain information on where their data is stored and how it is being used; to obtain the deletion of their data if it has been illegally collected and stored.
WE CALL ON ALL STATES AND CORPORATIONS to respect these rights
WE CALL ON ALL CITIZENS to stand up and defend these rights.
WE CALL ON THE UNITED NATIONS to acknowledge the central importance of protecting civil rights in the digital age, and to create an International Bill of Digital Rights.
WE CALL ON GOVERNMENTS to sign and adhere to such a convention.
Public Intervention: 560 authors from 83 countries have signed an appeal against mass surveillance.
There is hardly any issue more pressing than systematic mass surveillance and the dangers it poses to democracy and civil liberties.
Under the name "Writers Against Mass Surveillance", a small group of authors has formulated an international appeal, signed by more than 500 renowned authors from around the world, including five Nobel Prize Laureates. It calls for an "International Bill of Digital Rights,“ demands that the United Nations passes a binding convention to protect civil rights in the digital age and calls upon all citizens to stand up and defend these rights.
After organizing an open letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel asking her to take action with regard to the NSA-affair, Juli Zeh, Eva Menasse and Ilija Trojanow decided to broaden the protest to a global audience. They were joined by Janne Teller, Priya Basil, Isabel Cole and Josef Haslinger, and altogether they initiated the appeal "A Stand for Democracy in the Digital Age". They organized the global intervention independently, relying solely on personal contacts and private networks.
"Surveillance violates the private sphere and compromises freedom of thought and we no longer want to watch the inaction of decision makers,“ says German writern Juli Zeh. "We all have to stand up now, and we as writers do what we can do best: use the written word to intervene publicly."
First Signatories (by countries):
ALBANIA Anila Wilms
ALGERIA Boualem Sansal
ANGOLA José Eduardo Agualusa
ARGENTINIA Maria Teresa Andruetto, Edgardo Cozarinsky, María Sonia Cristoff, Marcelo Figueras, Carlos Gamerro, Alberto Manguel, Guillermo Martinez, Elsa Osorio, Claudia Piñeiro, Samanta Schweblin.
AUSTRALIA Debra Adelaide, Chris Andrews, Venero Armanno, Larissa Beherendt, James Bradley, Brian Castro, Nick Cave, Miriam Cosic, Michelle de Kretser, Nick Earls, Delia Falconer, Anna Funder, Helen Garner, Elisabeth Holdsworth, Linda Jaivin, Gail Jones, Evelyn Juers, Thomas Keneally, Nam Le, James Ley, Angelo Loukakis, David Malouf, Frank Moorhouse, Peter Rose, Rosie Scott, John Tranter, Kirsten Tranter, Arnold Zable
AUSTRALIA/USA Lily Brett, Geraldine Brooks.
AUSTRIA Olga Flor, Karl-Markus Gauß, Thomas Glavinic, Josef Haslinger, Monika Helfer, Klaus Hoffer, Alois Hotschnig, Elfriede Jelinek, Michael Köhlmeier, Eva Menasse, Robert Menasse, Robert Pfaller, Doron Rabinovici, Kathrin Röggla, David Schalko, Robert Schindel, Clemens J Setz, Marlene Streeruwitz, Peter Weibel, Josef Winkler
AUSTRIA/GERMANY Daniel Kehlmann
BANGLADESH Ahmad Mostofa Kamal
BANGLADESH/UK Tahmima Anam
BELARUS Svetlana Alexievich
BELARUS/USA Valzhyna Mort
BELGIUM Gie Bogaert, Saskia De Coster, Patrick De Rynck, Jozef Deleu, Laurent Demoulin, Charles Ducal, Joris Gerits, Jos Geysels, Luuk Gruwez, Thomas Gunzig, Peter Holvoet-Hanssen, Elisabeth Marain, Pierre Mertens, Bart Moeyaert, Elvis Peeters, Erik Spinoy, Rik Torfs, Koen Van Bockstal, Walter van den Broeck, Miriam Van hee, David van Reybrouck, Annelies Verbeke, Paul Verhaeghe, Roel Verschueren, Erik Vlaminck, Georges Wildemeersch
BELGIUM/FRANCE Carl Norac
BELGIUM/NETHERLANDS Joke van Leeuwen
BOSNIA Miljenko Jergovic
BRAZIL Marçal Aquino, Rafael Cardoso, Bernardo Carvalho, João Paulo Cuenca, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Luiz Ruffato, Paulo Scott
BULGARIA Georgi Gospodinov
BULGARIA/UK Kapka Kassabova
CAMEROON Patrice Nganang
CANADA Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Cory Doctorow, Yann Martel, Colin McAdam, Michael Ondaatje, John Ralston Saul, Madeleine Thien
CHILE Carla Guelfenbein, Arturo Fontaine Talavera
CHILE/ARGENTINA/USA Ariel Dorfman
CHILE/USA Lina Meruane
CHINA Liao Yiwu
COLOMBIA Antonio Ungar, Héctor Abad, Oscar Collazos, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Juan Gabriel Vásquez
CROATIA Slavenka Drakulic, Nenad Popovic, Dubravka Ugrešic
CUBA Leonardo Padura Fuentes
CUBA/SPAIN Iván de la Nuez
CZECH REP Jaroslav Rudi
DENMARK Niels Barfoed, Suzanne Brøgger, Tom Buk-Swienty, Peter H Fogtdal, Katrine Marie Guldager, Iselin C Hermann, Peter Høeg, Sven Holm, Hanne Vibeke Holst, Carsten Jensen, Pia Juul, Peter Øvig Knudsen, Morten Kringelbach, Jørgen Leth, Ib Michael, Morten Ramsland, Morten Sabroe, Pia Tafdrup, Janne Teller
DJIBOUTI Abdourahman Waberi
ECUADOR Francisco Proaño Arandi
EGYPT Alaa al-Aswany, Nawal El Saadawi, Ahdaf Soueif
EGYPT/USA Mona Eltahawy
EL SALVADOR Horacio Castellanos Moya
FINLAND Monika Fagerholm, Jarkko Tontti, Kjell Westö
FRANCE Jean-Jacques Beineix, Céline Curiol, Marie Darrieussecq, Philippe Djian, Lionel Duroy, Mathias Énard, Jérôme Ferrari, Anne-Marie Garat, Laurent Gaudé, Pascale Hugues, Alban Lefranc , Roger Lenglet , Virginie Lou-Nony , Jean Mattern , Betty Mialet , Catherine Millet , Frédéric Mitterrand , Hélène Neveu Kringelbach , Philippe Pozzo di Borgo , Flore Vasseur
FRANCE/CANADA Martin Winckler
France/USA Jonathan Littell
GERMANY Friedrich Ani, Michael Augustin, Anke Bastrop, Ulrich Beck, Artur Becker, Josef Bierbichler, Marica Bodroži´c, Mirko Bonné, Ralf Bönt, Nora Bossong, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Daniela Dahn, Liane Dirks, Doris Dörrie, Ulrike Draesner, Kurt Drawert, Tanja Dückers, Carolin Emcke, Sherko Fatah, David Finck, Julia Franck, Franziska Gerstenberg, Christoph Giesa, Roman Graf, Günter Grass, Kerstin Grether, Annett Gröschner, Gert Heidenreich, Christoph Hein, Thomas Hettche, Paul Ingendaay, Steffen Kopetzky, Mareike Krügel, Michael Krüger, Michael Kumpfmüller, Antje Kunstmann, Katja Lange-Müller, Benjamin Lauterbach, Jo Lendle, Michael Lentz, Ulli Lust, Angelina Maccarone, Kristof Magnusson, Sten Nadolny, Christiane Neudecker, Norbert Niemann, Ingo Niermann, Markus Orths, Georg M Oswald, Inka Parei, Annette Pehnt, Antje Rávic Strubel, Annika Reich, Moritz Rinke, Charlotte Roos, Eugen Ruge, Peter Schneider, Erasmus Schöfer, Ingo Schulze, Hilal Sezgin, Peter Sloterdijk, Tilman Spengler, Burkhard Spinnen, Ulrike Steglich, Hans-Ulrich Treichel, Ilija Trojanow, Regula Venske, Marius von Mayenburg, Thomas von Steinaecker, Gisela von Wysocki, Jan Wagner, Alissa Walser, Theresia Walser, Florian Werner, Roger Willemsen, Ron Winkler, Juli Zeh, Jan Christophersen
GHANA/USA Kwame Dawes
GREECE Kostas Akrivos , Petros Markaris, Amanda Michalopoulos, Michailis Modinos, Nina Rapi, Thanassis Valtinos
HAITI/USA Edwidge Danticat
HONG KONG/USA Xu Xi Hong
HUNGARY Tibor Babiczky, Zsófia Balla, Zsófia Bán, Báthori Csaba, György Dragomán, Peter Esterhazy, Krisztián Grecsó, Noémi Kiss, László Krasznahorkai, Lajos Parti Nagy, Anna T. Szabó
ICELAND Björk, Oddný Eir, Einar Már Guðmundsson, Hallgrímur Helgason, Bjarni Jónsson, Andri Snær Magnason, Steinnun Sigurðardóttir, Sjón, Jón Kalman Stefánsson
INDIA Shahid Amin, Amit Chaudhuri, Tishani Doshi, Naresh Fernandes, Amitav Ghosh, Ramchandra Guha, Anjum Hassan, Ranjit Hoskoté, Raj Kamal Jha, Ruchir Joshi, Girish Karnad, Mukul Kesavan, Amitava Kumar, Pankaj Mishra, Kiran Nagarkar, Jerry Pinto, Arundhati Roy, Arundhati Subramaniam, Jeet Thayil, Altaf Tyrewala
INDIA/UK Salil Tripathi, Suketu Mehta
IRAQ Jabbar Yassin Hussin
IRAQ/FINLAND Hassan Blasim
IRAQ/GERMANY Najem Wali
IRELAND Roddy Doyle, Colum McCann, Colm Tóibín
ISRAEL Assaf Gavron, David Grossman, Etgar Keret, Yitzhak Laor, Sami Michael, Amos Oz, Zeruya Shalev
ITALY Andrea Bajani Italy, Massimo Carlotto, Umberto Eco, Erri de Luca, Paolo Giordano, Dacia Mariani
ITALY/AUSTRIA Sabine Gruber
JAPAN Tosihiko Uji, Jordan Elias Farkouh
LEBANON Dominique Eddé
LEBANON/CANADA Rawi Hage
LIBYA/EGYPT Ahmed Fagih
LUXEMBOURG Ranga Yogeshwar
MACEDONIA Nikola Madzirov
MALAWI Samson Kambalu
MALAYSIA Tan Twan Eng
MALTA Pierre Mejlak
MEXICO Rosa Beltrán, Sabina Berman, Carmen Boullosa, Ana Clavel, Alma Guillermoprieto, Angeles Mastretta
NETHERLANDS René Appel, Abdelkader Benali, Ronald Bos, Ian Buruma, Gerrit Bussink, Saskia de Jong, Job Degenaar, Renate Dorrestein, Rudolf Geel, Arnon Grünberg, Joke J Hermsen, Marjolin Hof, Tjitske Jansen, Liesbeth Lagemaat, Thomas Lieske, Geert Mak, Nelleke Noordervliet, Ester Naomi Perquin, Aleid Truijens, Manon Uphoff, Jan van Mersbergen, Anne Vegter
NEW ZEALAND Pip Adam, Tim Corballis, Nicky Hager, Ingrid Horrocks, Lloyd Jones, Elizabeth Knox, Bill Manhire, Courtney Sina Meredith, Sarah Quigley, Anna Sanderson, C. K. Stead
NEW ZEALAND/UK Susan Pearce
NIGERIA Helon Habila, Chika Unigwe
NIGERIA/GERMANY Olumide Popoola
NORWAY Jostein Gaarder, Per Petterson
PAKISTAN Mohsin Hamid, Ahmed Rashid
PAKISTAN/UK Kamila Shamsie
PALESTINE Suad Amiry, Mourid Barghouti, Najwan Darwish, Nathalie Handal, Raja Shehadeh, Adania Shibli, Ghassan Zaqtan
PALESTINE/ISRAEL Ala Hlehel
PERU Santiago Roncagliolo
PHILIPPINES/CANADA Miguel Syjuco
POLAND Ignacy Karpowicz, Beata Stasi´cska, Witold Szab´cowski, Olga Tokarczuk
PORTUGAL Pedro Rosa Mendes
ROMANIA Mircea Cartarescu
RUSSIA Vladimir Aristov, Alan Cherchesov, Victor Erofeyev, Alisa Ganiyeva, Dmitri Golynko, Alexander Ilichevsky, Sergei Lebedev, Stanislav Lvovsky, Mikhail Shishkin, Alexander Skidan, Alexander Snegiryov
SAMOA Albert Wendt
SENEGAL Cheikh Hamidou Kane
SERBIA David Albahari
SERBIA/CROATIA Bora ´Cosic
SLOVAKIA Michal Hvorecký
SLOVENIA Gabriela Babnik, Aleš Car, Aleš Debeljak, Mojca Kumerdej, Miha Mazzini, Dušan Šarotar, Aleš Šteger
SOMALIA/SOUTH AFRICA Nuruddin Farah
SOUTH AFRICA Breyten Breytenbach, Antjie Krog, Zakes Mda, Margie Orford, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Gillian Slovo, Ivan Vladislavi, Zukiswa Wanner
SOUTH AFRICA/AUSTRALIA JM Coetzee
SOUTH KOREA Hwang Sok-Yong
SPAIN Ricardo Bada, Javier Cercas, Rafael Chirbes, Juan Goytisolo, Julio Llamazares, Javier Marías, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Rosa Montero, Javier Salinas.
SPAIN/GERMANY José F A Oliver
SUDAN Jamal Mahjoub
SWEDEN Arne Dahl, Per Olov Enquist, Aris Fioretos, Jan Guillou, Björn Larsson, Henning Mankell, Håkan Nesser, Tomas Tranströmer, Svante Weyler
SWITZERLAND Melinda Nadj Abonji, Sybille Berg, Peter Bieri, Irena Brežná, Melitta Breznik, Iso Camartin, Alex Capus, Martin Dean, Catalin Florescu, Christian Haller, Reto Hänny, Eveline Hasler, Franz Hohler, Pedro Lenz, Charles Lewinsky, Klaus Merz, Julian Schütt, Peter Stamm, Alain Sulzer, Urs Widmer, Syria Hala Mohammed
TANZANIA/UK Abdulrazak Gurnah
THAILAND/US Rattawut Lapcharoensap
TUNISIA/FRANCE Tahar Bekri
TURKEY Yasar Kemal, Murathan Mungun, Orhan Pamuk, Buket Uzuner
UK Akkas Al-Ali, Tariq Ali, David Almond, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Priya Basil, John Berger, Jane Borodale, John Burnside, Louis de Bernières, Isobel Dixon, Joanne Harris, Kazuo Ishiguro, Pico Iyer, Stephen Kelman, Hari Kunzru, Ian McEwan, David Mitchell, Stella Newman, Martin Rowson, Manda Scott, Will Self, Owen Sheers, Philip Sington, Adam Thirwell, David Vann, Nigel Warbuton, Irvine Welsh, Jeanette Winterson
UK/INDIA Rana Dasgupta Anjali Joseph, Nikita Lalwani
UK/JORDAN Fadia Faqir
UK/PAKISTAN Hanif Kureishi
UK/US Lionel Shriver
UKRAINE Myroslav Marynovych, Oksana Zabuzhko
USA John Ashbery, Paul Auster, Elise Blackwell, TC Boyle, Alexander Chee, Isabel Fargo Cole, Billy Collins, Don DeLillo, Colin Dickey, Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, Elizabeth Eslami, Richard Ford, George Dawes Green, Joe Hurley, Elizabeth Kostova, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Jonathan Lethem, Barry Lopez, Ben Marcus, Tyler McMahon, Claire Messud, Josip Novakovich, George Packer, Tim Parrish, Richard Powers, James Salter, Sapphire, Richard Sennett, Jane Smiley, Anne Waldman, Alice Walker, Eliot Weinberger, Jeffrey Yang
USA/BOSNIA Aleksandar Hemon
USA/ROMANIA Domnica Radulescu
ZIMBABWE Brian Chikwava
Monday, December 9, 2013
chilled by NSA's pocket spies
The Electronic Frontier Foundation on your ever-present companion, the co-traveling NSA:
The CO-TRAVELER program is based on guilt by association, tracking location to determine our relationships and where we meet. The First Amendment protects our right to associate with individuals and groups without disclosing that information to the government. This is an essential right because it allows people to discuss their ideas, concerns, and feelings with others without the shadow of government surveillance. And this is not just a right recognized in the United States: the right to freely associate with individuals or groups has also been recognized in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and in countless other human rights charters.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/12/meet-co-traveler-nsas-cell-phone-location-tracking-program
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
with Guardian witch hunt
Conservatives in Parliament are jeopardizing the special relationship between Britain and the United States as U.S. media warn against involving the Guardian in a witch hunt aimed at stifling press freedom in the wake of the Snowden revelations.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and leading U.S. news organizations are urging parliamentarians to uphold Britain’s commitment to freedom of the press amid intense interest in a hearing at which the Guardian's editor testified. The editor, Alan Rusbridger, defended Guardian stories based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden as responsible and argued that intelligence agency oversight had been so weak that it was newspapers that had galvanized public officials into calling for review and reform of the massive snooping.
The Tories, however, are uninterested in doing much to effect change in the intelligence-surveillance system.
Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters to expose the Watergate scandal, said that David Cameron's government seemed more interested in shifting the focus away from questionable activities of government and onto the alleged wrongdoing of the press.
Prior to the hearing, the Reporters Committee said: “As news organizations, editors, and journalists who often report on government actions that officials seek to keep secret, we write to the Committee on the eve of the forthcoming appearance of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger to express our grave concern over pointed calls by those in authority for censorship of the Guardian and criminal prosecution of its journalists in the name of national security. Such sanctions, and the chilling impact created by even the threat to impose them, undermine the independence and integrity of the press that are essential for democracy to function.”
Co-signing the letter with the Reporters Committee are the American Society of News Editors; The Associated Press; The E.W. Scripps Company; The McClatchy Company; The New York Times Company; The New Yorker; Newspaper Association of America; ProPublica; The Seattle Times Company; Society of Professional Journalists; The Washington Post; and World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.
The disclosures published in the Guardian “may have embarrassed or angered political leaders, but they have educated the public on critically important matters and sparked a valuable global debate over the proper exercise of the vast surveillance powers that now exist,” the media letter continued. “It is the responsibility of journalists to provide the type of accurate and in-depth news reports published by the Guardian and others that have informed the public and framed important, unresolved issues concerning the balance between security and privacy. Vigorous news coverage and the debate it fosters advance the public interest.”
Further, the letter noted it is “unwise and counterproductive” to invoke security concerns or charge that a news organization has aided terrorists “simply by providing citizens with information they need to know,” particularly when editors have demonstrated care and sensitivity to the security concerns raised by government officials. “The reporting has been both responsible and, given the intense displeasure of those in power, courageous.”
British politicians have called for criminal prosecution of the Guardian, an investigation by Scotland Yard has been launched, and the newspaper has been threatened with “D notices” prohibiting publication of national security information.
“To the rest of the world, it appears that press freedom itself is under attack in Britain today,” the letter stated. “These aggressive actions intimidate journalists and their sources. They chill reporting on issues of national security and on the conduct of government more generally” and encourage repressive regimes around the world to undermine an independent press.
“We therefore urge the Committee to use the occasion of Mr. Rusbridger’s appearance to reaffirm Britain’s commitment to a vigorous, free, and independent press,” the letter concluded. “It is important to acknowledge that the Snowden revelations, filtered to the public through responsible journalists, have served the public interest. And it is equally important to respect the autonomy of the newsroom. Damage to democracy and to the credibility of elected governments inevitably is inflicted when disapproval of truthful reporting causes officials to intrude into the internal editorial decisions of news organizations.”
Thursday, November 28, 2013
A fractal that sheds light on the reals
http://uklidd.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-fractal-that-sheds-light-on-reals.html
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment