We’re looking forward to our next event scheduled for Tuesday May 13 at 7:30pm at The Highlander.
THE POLITICS OF PRIVACY
How Snowden, the NSA and Wikileaks have redrawn the line between government confidentiality, public information and personal privacy in the digital age
Edward Snowden pulled back the veil on the NSA as Big Brother, revealing how far it goes to gather information from both public citizens and foreign governments, in pursuit of both terrorists and America’s international agenda.
Julian Assange created Wikileaks as a safe-haven for whistleblowers like Snowden to help uncover how governments operate in unprecedented secrecy and unrestrained power, issues he feels have been woefully covered by the press.
Are Snowden and Assange truly heroes of our day, Robin Hoods stealing from the all powerful to inform the powerless? Or are they fighting a desperate battle against the unstoppable and at times even proper role of government to gather information and maintain secrets? Can we still support the motives of government (whether pursuing terrorists or geopolitical interests) while attacking the method (whether hoarding our phone and internet data or listening in on foreign leaders’ phone calls)?
Ironically, the same digital age that makes it so easy for people like Snowden and Assange to reveal secrets and bring confidential information public also allows the NSA to mine and analyse information like never before. Each is trying to stay one step ahead of the other on the digital highway, and this tension may well define the future of the debate about privacy and confidentiality. But what happens if personal privacy no longer exists? And if all things stamped confidential are revealed? With a nod to Jack Nicholson as Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men, can we handle the truth?
Unfortunately, neither Snowden nor Assange will be able to join us. However, that shouldn’t stop us from asking ourselves how we feel about privacy and confidentially in the digital age, at both a personal and a geopolitical level.
We look forward to seeing you there!
the political pub 
Privacy, of course, is a very big deal. It’s about the Constitution, it’s about individual sense of security and identity, it’s also about our social identities, roles and practices. However, there is another big issue at play here which is the future of America’s place in the world in the coming years. It’s worth thinking about why a New York Times editorial proclaimed Snowden a whistle blower (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/opinion/edward-snowden-whistle-blower.html?ref=editorials) and then kept the story alive with this
And then they broke the story that heroic theft from the FBI’s offices just outside of Phila way back when
I mean, here is the most influential US paper stating that Snowden is not a spy, traitor and all the rest but, actually, someone who has defended our privacy. That’s a big deal.
You could interpret that the Times making is a strong stand for privacy. Rather, I think it’s more about defending Left/West coast capitalism, which seems to be the last great hope for the empire, let alone a major profit center, against the tendencies of the East/Right Coast’s security state apparatus. The West Coast is peddling soft, but very profitable and innovative, movements into the future with everything ICT; the East Coast security only knows from the hard old ways.
It’s about 2 different views of ensuring America’s role in the world. Softies on the Left Coast with their Hollywood movies and computer games and programs and tricks and everything else linked to having fun and getting on with it. Versus hard types on the Right Coast who only know from hard power and fear. Privacy is clearly better protected by the softies who, paradoxically, are those who are best able to violate it — especially when they link up with the hard types. But now they begin to see the huge costs of that (thanks to Snowden).
There is a conflict brewing here between Silicon Valley interests and those of the security state. The NSA-Snowden revelations have hurt the former who depend not only on their technology but also on their reputational capital. Here in Europe, we’re even reading about the need to set up (with public financing) the infrastructure necessary to avoid US servers and e-mail programs — Google and the like.
See this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/us/politics/white-house-shifts-surveillance-debate-to-private-sector.html?hp
At some point this will morph into an industrial issue. The clue to that in this article is at the end where we read “…considerable resistance in the country’s most innovative companies….” Those companies are the future of US business and of the US influence in the world.