--- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/25/opinion/25GIBS.html June 25, 2003 The Road to Oceania By WILLIAM GIBSON VANCOUVER, British Columbia Walking along Henrietta Street recently, by London's Covent Garden, looking for a restaurant, I found myself thinking of George Orwell. Victor Gollancz Ltd., publisher of Orwell's early work, had its offices there in 1984, when the company published my first novel, a novel of an imagined future. At the time, I felt I had lived most of my life under the looming shadow of that mythic year ? Orwell having found his title by inverting the final digits of the year of his book's completion. It seemed very strange to actually be alive in 1984. In retrospect, I think it has seemed stranger even than living in the 21st century. I had a valuable secret in 1984, though, one I owed in large part to Orwell, who would have turned 100 today: I knew that the novel I had written wasn't really about the future, just as "1984" hadn't been about the future, but about 1948. I had relatively little anxiety about eventually finding myself in a society of the sort Orwell imagined. I had other fish to fry, in terms of history and anxiety, and indeed I still do. [...] --- From: Erich M <meat_private> To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Subject: Orwell 100: anonymous wlan hotspot opens in Vienna Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 01:49:55 +0000 Declan, Today quintessenz and friendz will open q/spot, Vienna's first anonymous wireless LAN hotspot in the central "Museumsquartier" honouring George Orwell's 100th birthday. The service is free, there is no billing - so all traffic data are being destroyed asap, according to the words of the European Data Protection directive. Public security [against spammers/networkjammers/etc] at q/spot is not being provided by state or city bureaucrats but by the hackers of annt and quintessenz. This service is meant as a draft model for a possible reurbanisation of the city. Anonymity, an essential quality of urban life is vanishing in cities everywhere. Instead the city per se seems to turn into a pseudo global village, everybody not communicating with but secretly watching each other We will not fall back to village life again, with all it's disadvantages for the individual. q/spot [intro page soon available also in English] http://www.quintessenz.at/teleweb/qspot/ Museumsquartier, an urban Viennese location http://www.mqw.at/fset.html?830.htm Related Story http://futurezone.orf.at/futurezone.orf?read=detail&id=166689 cu Erich -- //Taeglich 09.00 MET frische IT-Nachrichten subscribe newsletter http://futurezone.orf.at/fuzoflash.orf Rund um die Uhr http://futurezone.orf.at --- Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 01:59:04 +0100 To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> From: Simon Davies <s.g.daviesat_private> Subject: orwell Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="============_-1155619747==_ma============" Hi Declan, thought this may be of interest cheers Simon PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL MEDIA RELEASE ON GEORGE ORWELL'S HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY, PRIVACY ADVOCATES SOUND A SOLEMN WARNING OF UBIQUITOUS SURVEILLANCE AND MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE Human rights watchdogs will launch the 1st international "Big Brother Awards" at London birthday event 25th July 2003 For immediate release The Director of the human rights watchdog Privacy International today warned that current efforts world-wide to eliminate privacy will result in the growth of violence and civil disobedience. His warning was issued on the hundredth birthday (June 25th) of the influential author George Orwell. Mr Davies provided a solemn warning about the future prospects for privacy. "Privacy is being systematically engineered into extinction. Each day sees a new onslaught on this precious and delicate right". "Surveillance has become an epidemic. Led by the US and the UK, countries are encouraged and coerced into adopting a vast range of repressive measures designed to maximise all levels of surveillance." Simon Davies warned that the right to privacy was under such sustained threat that at some point in the near future "the right may collapse under the sheer weight of pressure from government measures"\ He signalled "within a short time anxious citizens will be reluctantly forced to take action through campaigns of civil disobedience, sabotage or subversion". "In the past year alone there has been a substantial growth in the number of on-line resources dedicated to the sabotage of surveillance technology". "I don't like the idea of such a confrontation between citizens, technology and authorities, but I can well imagine that it is inevitable. The history of embattled movements to protect rights is peppered with physical and behavioural confrontation. A "call to arms" will be a tactic of last resort, but there are already millions of angry and concerned citizens who would respond to such a call" To recognise the occasion of Orwell's centenary, an invited gathering of civil rights advocates from throughout the world will meet in London, Wednesday, to celebrate the man who gave the world a terrifying insight into the future possibility of a "Big Brother" society. Orwell is now the Patron Saint of the privacy movement. His momentous book "Nineteen Eighty Four" has been transformed in the space of fifty years from a fanciful work of fiction into a frighteningly realistic blueprint for the future of societies throughout the world. The London birthday event, organised by Privacy International, will be staged this evening at an undisclosed pub in central London. The pub was Orwell's favourite drinking establishment, where he regularly drank a mixture of Guiness and beer ("Black and Tan") and "smoked far too much for his own good". During the event Privacy International will unveil plans for the first global Big Brother Awards. The BBA's were established by PI in 1998, and are now an annual event in fifteen countries. This will be the first attempt to create an award that recognises the threat to privacy and rights posed by international organisations. The global award will be judged by a panel of sixty experts from thirty countries. The event will be staged later in 2003. In the past year alone governments throughout the world have harmoniously created hundreds of initiatives hostile to privacy and rights. These include: - The development of national and global systems of "biometric" projects (fingerprints and iris scans) designed to strengthen border controls. - The creation of a new generation of powerful identity cards - The expansion of DNA databases - Linkage of information systems between government and corporate organisations - Requirements placed on communications providers to store data on the activities of their customers - A massive growth in the use of electronic visual surveillance - The creation of dozens of national "Homeland Security" departments and divisions - An extraordinary extension of government powers to monitor the activities of citizens - The development of global information sharing agreements between nations - The dilution of traditional rights through the "revision" of national and international laws and agreements Notes to editors: - Privacy International (PI) is a human rights group formed in 1990 as a watchdog on surveillance by governments and corporations. PI is based in London, and has an office in Washington, D.C. Together with members in 40 countries, PI has conducted campaigns throughout the world on issues ranging from wiretapping and national security activities, to ID cards, video surveillance, data matching, police information systems, and medical privacy, and works with a wide range of parliamentary and inter-governmental organisations such as the European Parliament, the House of Lords and UNESCO. It's web site is www.privacyinternational.org - The Big Brother Awards www.bigbrotherawards.org are held each year in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Bulgaria Finland and Spain, with Japan and Australia holding their first awards ceremony this year. - Simon Davies can be reached at simonat_private and on 07958 466 552 (+44) 7958 466 552 from outside the UK. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Jun 25 2003 - 08:16:56 PDT