Surveillance is developing in more and more domains and at an extremely rapid pace. Surveillance cameras are obviously involved, as are miniaturized cards, portable telephones, the growing numbers of recording devices of all kinds (some of which are commercially available), the Internet and electronic "cookies." This is the era of Big Brother!
Our private lives are no longer our own, others have access to it. Democracy now uses against its own people means that dictatorships do not use (control of people in public places, networked databases and/or cameras). If today we let things stay as they are, this phenomenon will become much worse. How much worse?
The pretext of "security" is fallacious: surveilling the entire population will not cut down on criminal behavior. On the contrary, the ordinary person can't linger five minutes in a single public place before being asked to move on by the police, whose powerful logic interprets every movement and gesture. For what purpose? To force behavior to become normalized; all movements other than normal become suspicious.
We reclaim the right to possess "disguises." We reclaim the right to a private life. We reclaim individual freedom, not simply the freedom to exist, but all freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of movement, et al.
Is it necessary to live disguised if you want to live free? On Thursday, 14 December 2000, at 6 pm (sharp), come to la Maison des Ensembles, 5 rue d'Aligre, Paris 11e, and find out.
CLIFTI: Collective for Individual Freedom in the Age of Information Technologies (le Collectif pour les libertes individuelles face aux techniques de l'information) c/o 44, rue Montcalm, 75018 Paris. Telephone 06 07 72 22 75. Signatories to this text: Souriez vous etes filmes, Droits devant, G10-Paris, SUD-telecom 92, CNT-informatique, Federation anarchiste.
[Translated from the French by Art Toad.]
Contact the Surveillance Camera Players
By e-mail e-mail:notbored@NOSPAMoptonline.net
By snail mail: SCP c/o NOT BORED! POB 1115, Stuyvesant Station, New York City 10009-9998
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