Surveillance, Eleanor says, is an advantage for some, but harming to others. While there is something inherently bad about surveillance due to its invasiveness, its effect depends massively on issues such as class and race.

Eleanor has written about the topic of her Sigint talk here and put her slides online here. You may also have a look at the Deployable Camera Competition’s web site.

On a different note, the guys behind the “cognitive cities” talk I mention have announced a conference on the issue to take place in October in Cologne today.

Evgeny Morozov, the man who coined the term “Twitter revolution” and, despite that, has often been called a “cyper-pessimist” was one of the first speakers of the event. And while I often find Evgeny’s argumentation to be too polemic, sometimes even Andrew Keen’esque in it’s pessimism, the man has some very valid points.

In the times of the GDR, the Stasi supported a huge network of “inofficial contributors” who were coerced – through threats or monetary rewards – into spying on their peers. Nowadays, this is no longer necessary, says Morozov. Authoritarian regimes can instead discover activists’ networks by looking them up on Facebook. In my eyes, the grandchild of the Stasi is China’s “50 cent party”: An enormous horde of people paid for spreading propaganda on the ‘Net.

There has been a change in the role of access to information. Publishing information has become so cheap that it is the new default, even in environments where this would previously have been a “no-go”. And the regimes react – not by suppressing information, but by discrediting the sender. What does this mean for the importance of freedom of information?

Daniel Schmitt of Wikileaks seems to base his work on the conviction that transparency leads to a better world. It’s some kind of a journalistic determinism. Global Voices’ David Sasaki questions the role of investigative reporting: “Is it really true that traditional journalism minimizes corruption?”

For Jeff Jarvis, that’s not even a question. “We now must defend the public,” he says, “because what is public is owned by the public, and that’s us.” And “if you cut down from the public, you steal from all of us. [...] If you don’t share your knowledge, you’re being anti-social.”

The evening before, Christian Heller fought privacy at taz’ MediaTuesday event. Data security, he says, can be used against us. It “doesn’t necessary protect the weak from the powerful”. David Sasaki says that more and more raw data is put out on the ‘Net and it’s up to us to put it in context. Christian Heller wants to free information from its context. He calls this a plea in support of postmodernism.

Sokari Ekine, who talked about mobile activism in Africa, in an interview that we did said that revolutions are made by people, not by technology. Sami ben Gharbia wonders why media attention often focuses more on the technological development than on the issue, taking much-hyped crisis mapping tool Ushahidi as an example.

Iranian women right activist Farnaz Seifi tells me in an interview that the Iranian people “don’t need any other help rather than [free access to information]“. Evgeny Morozov explains to netzpolitik.org that the power of information is a myth stemming from America’s efforts during the cold war. Americans, he says, still believe that the US won that conflict – because of Radio Free Europe.

But he’s united again with Seifi when it comes to Western donors supporting projects in foreign countries. Their money disengages genuine activists, he claims. “I personally do not agree with lots of the projects inside the country with foreign countries’ budget”, says Seifi. “This is our internal fight. We have to do it ourselves.”

“The News of the World didn’t go far enough. [...]
Now in Britain, we see similar sanctimonious hand-wringing over the “privacy rights” of the British elite. These individuals, through active scheming and quiet acceptance, have turned the UK into what Privacy International now bills as an “Endemic Surveillance Society”. Barely a month goes by without the government and its supporters pushing another Orwellian state surveillance scheme. But now, like Berlusconi, these elites purport a sudden interest in protecting the privacy rights of the people, not by rolling back such schemes, but by gagging the press. [...]
The News of the World should have released the tapes made by its private investigators. The elite exposed are the usual paymasters of such private intelligence firms. The democratic process should not be denied the same high quality information that businessmen, celebrities and oligarchs acquire on a daily basis. [...]
The actions of major newspapers are “voted on” every day by their readers. Whatever their faults, popular newspapers remain the most visible and the most democratically accountable institutions in the country. Their mandate to inform the public vastly exceeds that granted to the unelected and the rarely elected at Westminister, who are nonetheless quick to grant themselves a blanket exemption from all censorship.”

I think Julian Assanges furious demands touch on a very difficult topic. For those who have, during the recent years, committed themselves to campaign for the right to privacy as well as against intransparent politics, two major moral concepts collide here.
First of all, there is nothing to say against the demand for less obscure politics. “Transparent politicians not transparent citizens”, has become the activists’ motto at this front.
But it is not everything as simple as this slogan may suggest. The “News of the World” has intruded the privacy of several thousand people. Without requirement of a judicial decree. Without informing the persons concerned in the aftermath. With nothing but the suspicion that their private talk will be worth a headline or two.
It is easy to demand all personal telecommunication of, let’s say, Germany’s hardly popular minister of the interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, ought to be made public. It is much harder to call for the publication of your neighbor’s calls to his wife, only because you have elected him to the city council. And there is certainly no way to argue for the wire-tapping of Gwyneth Paltrow and George Michael without giving up the whole concept of privacy.
I am not the only one to have taken to the streets over much less dangerous intents of our government. And I see no reason why a newspaper, Murdoch-owned or not, should be granted more rights than our elected representatives. Is is indeed important that more journalists do investigative research. It is true that politics, big and small, become more transparent. But it would be the worst mistake to give up our most basic rights over this.

(this is an altered translation of my article for gulli:news on the same subject).