FC: Happy 100th Birthday, George Orwell!

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

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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.

[...]

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From: Erich M <me@quintessenz.at>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
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

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Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 01:59:04 +0100
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
From: Simon Davies <s.g.davies@lse.ac.uk>
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 simon@privacy.org and on 07958 466 552 
(+44) 7958 466 552 from outside the UK.
--





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