For those of you who havent already seen it - A panel discussion held prior to the elections at New Zealand. The panel consists of Kim Dotcom, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and Robert Amsterdam. Most of the discussion is centered around topics affecting New Zealand. However, they bring up a lot of points which can be applied across the globe. I have summarized a few key points in this description - 1. Consent has to be informed to be meaningful - the decision to perform mass surveillance has to be open to public debate and must be enforced if and only if it is agreed upon by the citizens of the country. 2. Even the harshest critics of Edward Snowden cannot deny the accuracy of the statements that he has made with regard to the abuse of power across the world 3. The five eyes alliance is an alliance of the intelligence agencies of Canada, The US, The UK, Australia and New Zealand. The functioning of these agencies itself is undemocratic as their practices are never made clear to the public. 4. A strong intelligence agency in one country can influence governments of other countries. For instance, big corporations in one country can force other countries to change their IP laws or refuse to trade with them. You can force the police force to arrest those who pose a threat to you (and I ma not talking abut terrorist threats) and have them extradited to your country. A lot of these trade agreements are performed in secret and the documents are never released. Thus, people do not understand that their own country might be selling them out. This is a moral annexation of countries and is the most effective as it doesnt require guns and the lives of soldiers to influence a countrys policy. 5. Even if people trust the government not to misuse laws which enable mass surveillance, history shows us that when a government is empowered and is no longer accountable to its people it will betray its people. 6. There are two ways to fight laws of this nature - either politically (voting for the right people and fighting to change/remove laws which affect you) or with technology (encryption, etc.). Personally, I believe that humanity deserves a society where we do not have to hide our data even when it is morally correct. 7. This is a personal comment - Most people do not have an issue with mass surveillance as they believe that they do not have any incriminating data. However, there are people (like whistleblowers) who will no longer be able to function because their data cannot be kept secret from those they are fighting. There might be a point when the government decides that critiquing it is no longer acceptable. This puts most of humanity in danger as its something we all do. The idea is that with the infrastructure for mass surveillance in place, governments of the world can empower themselves to be above the law and also force other nations to comply with them. And this is something that affects every human being, https://youtube/watch?v=Pbps1EwAW-0#t=1300
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 10:44:37 +0000