[NCUC-DISCUSS] Digital Rights

[DeeDee Halleck]

In case you missed this....I know this isn't about "assignment of names and
numbers" but an international "digital bill of rights" might include
something pertinent.
xx
DeeDee

World's Leading Authors: State Surveillance of Personal Data is Theft
<https://portside.org/2013-12-10/worlds-leading-authors-state-surveillance-personal-data-theft>


Matthew Taylor and Nick Hopkins
December 9, 2013
The Guardian (UK)<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/surveillance-theft-worlds-leading-authors>


*• 500 signatories include five Nobel prize winners• Writers demand
'digital bill of rights' to curb abuses*


Clockwise from top left, eight of the people who have signed the petition:
Hanif Kureishi, Björk, Arundhati Roy, Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan, Tom
Stoppard, Margaret Atwood and Martin Amis,  <https://portside.org/>,


More than 500 of the world's leading authors, including five Nobel prize
winners, have condemned the scale of state surveillance revealed by the
whistleblower Edward Snowden and warned that spy agencies are undermining
democracy and must be curbed by a new international charter.

The signatories, who come from 81 different countries and include Margaret
Atwood, Don DeLillo, Orhan Pamuk, Günter Grass and Arundhati Roy, say the
capacity of intelligence agencies to spy on millions of people's digital
communications is turning everyone into potential suspects, with worrying
implications for the way societies work.

They have urged the United Nations to create an international bill of
digital rights that would enshrine the protection of civil rights in the
internet age.

Their call comes a day after the heads of the world's leading technology
companies demanded sweeping changes to surveillance laws to help preserve
the public's trust in the internet – reflecting the growing global momentum
for a proper review of mass snooping capabilities in countries such as the
US and UK, which have been the pioneers in the field.

The open letter to the US president, Barack Obama, from firms including
Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, will be followed by the petition,
which has drawn together a remarkable list of the world's most respected
and widely-read authors, who have accused states of systematically abusing
their powers by conducting intrusive mass surveillance.

Julian Barnes, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Irvine Welsh, Hari Kunzru, Jeanette
Winterson and Kazuo Ishiguro are among the British authors on the list.

It also includes JM Coetzee, Yann Martel, Ariel Dorfman, Amit Chaudhuri,
Roddy Doyle, Amos Oz, David Grossman, and the Russian Mikhail Shishkin.

Henning Mankell, Lionel Shriver, Hanif Kureishi and the antipodean writers
CK Stead, Thomas Keneally and Anna Funder are other globally renowned
signatories.

The Guardian has published a series of stories about the mass surveillance
techniques of GCHQ and its US counterpart, the NSA, over the past six
months; two of the most significant programmes uncovered in the Snowden
files were Prism, run by the NSA, and Tempora, which was set up by GCHQ.
Between them, they allow the agencies to harvest, store and analyse data
about millions of phone calls, emails and search-engine queries.

Though Tuesday's statement does not mention these programmes by name, it
says the extent of surveillance revealed by Snowden has challenged and
undermined the right of all humans to "remain unobserved and unmolested" in
their thoughts, personal environments and communications. "This fundamental
human right has been rendered null and void through abuse of technological
developments by states and corporations for mass surveillance purposes,"
the statement adds.

"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."

Demanding the right "for all people to determine to what extent their
personal data may be legally collected, stored and processed", the writers
call for a digital rights convention that states will sign up to and adhere
to. "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."

McEwan told the Guardian: "Where Leviathan can, it will. The state, by its
nature, always prefers security to liberty. Lately, technology has offered
it means it can't resist, means of mass surveillance that Orwell would have
been amazed by. The process is inexorable – unless it's resisted.
Obviously, we need protection from terrorism, but not at any cost."

The intervention comes after the Guardian and some of the world's other
major media organisations, including the New York Times, the Washington
Post and Der Spiegel, began disclosing details of the extent and reach of
secret surveillance programmes run by Britain's eavesdropping centre, GCHQ,
and the National Security Agency.

The revelations have sparked a huge debate on the legal framework and
oversight governing western spy agencies. Obama has launched a review of US
intelligence operations, and earlier this month the UN's senior
counter-terrorism official, Ben Emmerson, announced an investigation into
the techniques used by both US and British intelligence agencies.

Civil liberties groups have criticised the UK government for putting
intense political pressure on the Guardian and other media groups covering
the leaks rather than addressing the implications of the mass surveillance
programmes that have been uncovered. But campaigners hope Tuesday's
statement will increase the pressure on governments to address the
implications of the Snowden revelations.

"International moral pressure is what's needed to ensure politicians
address the mass invasion of our privacy by the intelligence services in
the UK and US," said Jo Glanville, from English Pen, which along with its
sister organisations around the world has supported the Writers Against
Mass Surveillance campaign. "The signatories to the appeal are a measure of
the level of outrage and concern."

Tuesday's statement is being launched simultaneously in 27 countries, and
organisers hope members of the public will now sign up through the
change.orgwebsite.

Eva Menasse, one of the small group of international writers who initiated
the project, said it began with an open letter from a group of authors to
the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, when the first Snowden revelations
came to light. "When we started, we did not know how far we would get. But
more and more colleagues joined us and within the last weeks we were
sitting at our computers day and night, using our networks as more people
came forward. This started as an entirely private initiative, but now has
worldwide support."

Another author who helped set up the campaign, Juli Zeh, said writers
around the world had felt compelled to act: "We all have to stand up now,
and we as writers do what we can do best: use the written word to intervene
publicly."

Winterson told the Guardian she regarded Snowden as a "brave and selfless
human being"."We should be supporting him in trying to determine the extent
of the state in our lives. We have had no debate, no vote, no say, hardly
any information about how our data is used and for what purpose. Our mobile
phones have become tracking devices. Social networking is data profiling.
We can't shop, spend, browse, email, without being monitored. We might as
well be tagged prisoners. Privacy is an illusion. Do you mind about that? I
do."

-- 
http://www.deepdishwavesofchange.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ncuc.org/pipermail/ncuc-discuss/attachments/20131211/050fac80/attachment.html>