Mass Surveillance and Internet Democracy

Last night’s ‘Waatea 5th Estate’ with Bomber Bradbury featured three Open Source Open Society speakers on a panel discussing Mass Surveillance and Internet Democracy.

International speakers in New Zealand for OS//OS on 22/23 August—Evan Henshaw-Plath, Ele Munjeli and Audrey Tang joined local commentators Green Mp Keith Locke, Political and Media Commentator from AUT School of Communication Dr Wayne Hope.

This conversation covered our new Mass-Surveillance laws, the DNC Email Leaks, the Australian Census Debacle and Post Snowden Internet Democracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUgtkQ8LdN8&authuser=0

The Dangers and Opportunities of Technology
Citizens Trust in democracy and governments ability to manage online projects has been damaged by recent situations such as the DNC email leaks the Australian Census debacle and the Snowden Revelations.

These three speakers added a great tone of hopefulness to this discussion which shows that there are many thinkers outside New Zealand dealing with the same issues we are facing here. The general message is that the Internet can either be used as a tool for totalitarian control and surveillance or as a democratising and playing field levelling enabler for amore participatory and open society. Taking a more open source and horizontal approach to our digital technology, media and our interaction with institutions is the only way to ensure that we take advantage of these possibilities for greater representation and participation in democracy in the future.

Closed Source Technology = Less Security
According to Munjali, closed source technology is the cause of such problems and that if the Australian Census had been done in Open Source it would have been less like to fail and at least would have guaranteed the public has transparency about what went on.

Cyber Rights and a Healthy Democracy
Munjali believes there is a growing lack of faith in political parties digital literacy and poor technology means people no longer trust their information with government.

Henshaw-Plath states that the Snowden revelations show the shocking extent of the level of spying going on but also the deliberate breaking of encryption by the government is an issue. This is an issue he believes as it highlights potential for abuse of power for political means which is a problem for many activists.

Privacy and Surveillance
Audrey brings an interesting perspective to this conversation on privacy and surveillance as she grew up in Taiwan under the shadow of the great ‘Firewall of China’.

This forced them to move to a new way of democracy ‘post-representative democracy’ which allows for wider numbers of citizens to engage in democracy through technology.

Potential of the Internet and Digital Democracy
Ele sees Digital Democracy as providing the only real opportunity for authentic demcracy in today’s society.

Evan believes we see the hints of the possibility for a radical increase of democracy using the internet—he refers to exciting opportunities such as the Iceland Pirate Party seeking to use the internet to redraft the constitution.

Audrey—sees the Internet as a hope for more integration and innovative and sees potential for the bottom up and horizontal processes.

Audrey Tang is a Civic Hacker and part of Taiwan’s g0v (“gov-zero”), a vibrant community focusing on creating tools for the civil society, with the call to “fork the government”.

Evan Henshaw-Plath is a Civic Tech activist and was the lead developer and architect in building Odeo’s Ruby on Rails web application platform and lead developer on the team that created Twitter

Ele Munjeli has a computer science degree from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, USA and speaks, codes, and consults on infrastructure features and requirements for virtual democracies, both for extending existing governments with digital services, and creating sovereign clouds for emerging democracies in hostile territory.

Tickets Available
There are still Tickets Available to hear these three plus many more amazing speakers at OS//OS 2016 on Monday 22/23 August at Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington.
Grab your ticket now to join us there.

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