Freedom not Fear

Katrin, Jess, Jasch, Max, & Alexandra

"Freedom Not Fear -- Stop the Surveillance Mania!"

On October 12, along with a bunch of friends I have made, Jess and I created signs with Jasch to participate in a peaceful protest against surveillance specifically in Germany, but the protest tookplace Internationally. This was the greatest protest march for this purpose in German history. Apparently there was over 2 kilometers length of people including us and our wonderful signs. We were behind a truck with music causing us to carry signs and dance down the street. Although the march was about something important, it was still a gorgeous day with fun music. Leave it to the Berliners to prove a point while still partying.

We made signs that were arrows labeling people things that could be derived from over excessive surveillance. We used funny embarrassing sort of things such as the German word for bed-wetter, hippie, poor student, republican etc. Above is Jess & Jasch displaying our signs.

As we were leaving the protest, a guy came running behind us asking if he could please have our largest sign. It was the one that I drew of Wolfgang Schäuble, the Ministry of the Interior in Germany put into Uncle Sam's position. I told him that he could have the poster as long as I could take a photograph of him. Here it is immortalized!

According to Vorratsdatenspeicherung these are the demands:

1. Cutback on surveillance

• no blanket registration of all air travellers (PNR data)
• no information exchange with the US and other states lacking effective data protection
• no secret searches of private computer systems, neither online nor offline
• no blanket surveillance and filtering of internet communications (EU Telecoms-Package)
• abolish the blanket logging of our communications and locations (data retention)
• abolish the blanket collection of our biometric data as well as RFID passports
• abolish the blanket collection of genetic data
• abolish permanent CCTV camera surveillance and automatic detection techniques
• scrap funding for the development of new surveillance techniques

2. Evaluation of existing surveillance powers

We call for an independent review of all existing surveillance powers as to their effectiveness and harmful side-effects.

3. Moratorium for new surveillance powers

After the homeland armament of the past few years we demand an immediate hold to new homeland security laws that further restrict civil liberties.

4. Guaranteeing freedom of expression, dialogue and information on the Internet

• Ban the installation of filtering infrastructure on ISP networks.
• Only independent and impartial judges may request the removal of Internet content.
• Create a full right to quote multimedia, today indispensable to public debate in democracies.
• Protect common internet places of expression (participatory sites, forums, comments on blogs) today threatened by inadequate laws encouraging self-censorship (chilling effect)