Clare Birchall: Shareveillance: The Dangers of Openly Sharing and Covertly Collecting Data (2017)
Filed under book | Tags: · data, dataveillance, filesharing, open data, protocol, secrecy, sharing, transparency
“In an era of open data and ubiquitous dataveillance, what does it mean to “share”? This book argues that we are all ‘shareveillant’ subjects, called upon to be transparent and render data open at the same time as the security state invests in practices to keep data closed. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s ‘distribution of the sensible’, Clare Birchall reimagines sharing in terms of a collective political relationality beyond the veillant expectations of the state.”
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2017
Forerunners: Ideas First series, 20
Creative Commons BY 4.0 License
ISBN 1517904250, 9781517904258
xii+72 pages
Reviews: Kevin Walby (Surveillance & Society, 2018), Clare Southerton (Media Theory, 2018).
Interview with author (Francien Broekhuizen et al., MeCCSA, 2016).
Giovanni Ziccardi: Resistance, Liberation Technology and Human Rights in the Digital Age (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, censorship, crowdsourcing, cyberwar, facebook, hacking, hacktivism, human rights, internet, internet activism, liberation technologies, open data, politics, resistance, social media, surveillance, technology, transparency, twitter, wikileaks
This book explains strategies, techniques, legal issues and the relationships between digital resistance activities, information warfare actions, liberation technology and human rights. It studies the concept of authority in the digital era and focuses in particular on the actions of so-called digital dissidents. Moving from the difference between hacking and computer crimes, the book explains concepts of hacktivism, the information war between states, a new form of politics (such as open data movements, radical transparency, crowd sourcing and “Twitter Revolutions”), and the hacking of political systems and of state technologies. The book focuses on the protection of human rights in countries with oppressive regimes.
– Deals with digital resistance activities all over the world
– First book to describe political and human rights issues in Egypt, Tunisia, Cuba and Yemen
– A critical analysis of the WikiLeaks case
Publisher Springer, 2013
Volume 7 van Law, Governance and Technology series
ISBN 9400752768, 9789400752764
328 pages
via Marcell Mars via Jaromil
Julian Assange, et al.: Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, anonymity, censorship, code, cryptography, cypherpunk, encryption, free software, hacking, internet, internet activism, politics, privacy, software, surveillance, transparency, wikileaks
Cypherpunks are activists who advocate the widespread use of strong cryptography (writing in code) as a route to progressive change. Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of and visionary behind WikiLeaks, has been a leading voice in the cypherpunk movement since its inception in the 1980s.
Now, in what is sure to be a wave-making new book, Assange brings together a small group of cutting-edge thinkers and activists from the front line of the battle for cyber-space to discuss whether electronic communications will emancipate or enslave us. Among the topics addressed are: Do Facebook and Google constitute “the greatest surveillance machine that ever existed,” perpetually tracking our location, our contacts and our lives? Far from being victims of that surveillance, are most of us willing collaborators? Are there legitimate forms of surveillance, for instance in relation to the “Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse” (money laundering, drugs, terrorism and pornography)? And do we have the ability, through conscious action and technological savvy, to resist this tide and secure a world where freedom is something which the Internet helps bring about?
The harassment of WikiLeaks and other Internet activists, together with attempts to introduce anti-file sharing legislation such as SOPA and ACTA, indicate that the politics of the Internet have reached a crossroads. In one direction lies a future that guarantees, in the watchwords of the cypherpunks, “privacy for the weak and transparency for the powerful”; in the other lies an Internet that allows government and large corporations to discover ever more about internet users while hiding their own activities. Assange and his co-discussants unpick the complex issues surrounding this crucial choice with clarity and engaging enthusiasm.
With Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn, and Jérémie Zimmermann
Publisher OR Books, New York/London, November 2012
ISBN 9781939293008
192 pages
Interview with Assange where he also speaks about the book (video, DemocracyNow!, 29 November 2012)
Commentary (The Guardian)
Review (Cryptome.org)
PDF (PDF)
PDF (EPUB)
PDF (MOBI)
PDF (torrent, all 3 formats)
Video of Assange’s TV show The World Tomorrow interview the book is based on, Part 1, Part 2 (Youtube.com)