Re: [projectvrm] Writers in 'Free' Countries Now Share Surveillance Concerns With 'Not-Free' Brethren

[William Dyson < >]

For many the violence of surveillance and not new.

 

The U.S. and many " liberal democracies” have always been places where organizing and speaking out against violence and inhumanity are life threatening activities,

For civil rights activist and community leaders that organize and speak out only the technology has changed. 

Cointelpro was a pre curser for what we have today in the form of state sanctioned surveillance and murder. A point to be noted here is that the technology that is developed in the U.S. and other "liberal democracies” is exported to some less than " liberal democracies” for use against their civil rights activist and community leaders.

Fred Hampton was surveilled by the Cointelpro program and his murder was state sanctioned 

Martin Luther King was surveilled by the Cointelpro program

William 

On January 6, 2015 at 5:35:57 PM, T.Rob ( "> ) wrote:

Thought this is on-topic for VRM based on the recent discussions of privacy and the lack thereof.  Whether or not privacy is dead, we do at least have mounting evidence of the damage caused by the growing lack of it and, at least for me, justification to not only continue but double down on projects that will provide better privacy protection and tools for individuals such as Personal Clouds.

 

Some pull quotes…

 

Writers living in liberal democracies are now nearly as worried about the government watching them as their colleagues in countries that have long histories of internal spying, according to an international survey conducted by PEN, a literary and human rights organization.

 

Stored and analyzed data today that does not have any immediate consequences on the life of a minority-language author like me, can later become extremely dangerous, following a change towards a much more totalitarian government.

 

But PEN’s greater point is considerably more unassailable: That “Writers’ accounts of the impact of mass surveillance sound a loud alarm bell about the pervasive damage that intrusive surveillance is wreaking on privacy and unfettered _expression_ worldwide.”

 

And while PEN’s survey was of fiction and non-fiction writers of all sorts, it dovetails with a report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union based on a survey of journalists and lawyers working in the areas of national security and intelligence that I wrote about last summer.

 

In that survey, the journalists and lawyers said government surveillance has impaired if not eliminated their ability of to communicate confidentially with their sources and their clients.

 

http://iopt.us/1w0Tp4W

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/05/writers-free-countries-now-share-surveillance-concerns-free-brethren/

 

Kind regards,

-- T.Rob

 

T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner

IoPT Consulting, LLC

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