September dance card: Full
Summer has been busy, as I’ve continued working on the special issue of Surveillance & Society that I’m co-editing with Colin Bennett and Andrew Clement. The theme of the issue is cyber-surveillance, and will comprise a selection of papers presented at Cyber-Surveillance in Everyday Life, the international workshop we hosted at the University of Toronto last May. I am also putting the final touches on a journal article, co-authored with Clement, about surveillance techniques and technologies deployed during last summer’s G20. Then of course there was the beach, and other summery distractions, that Vancouver + no rain make appealing…
But September’s shaping up to be even busier. I head to Kingston to present the G20 paper September 8 at Queens University as part of the workshop Expanding the Surveillance Net: Ten Years After 9/11. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the associated public event in Ottawa, Liberties Lost? Surveillance since 9/11, where Maher Arar and Maureen Webb (author of Illusions of Security, a fascinating and frightening look at the scope of government surveillance. See her Democracy Now! interview here).
Then on September 15, I’ll take part in a panel discussion after the screening of the critically acclaimed documentary Article 12, “a thought-provoking exposé on our current obsession with voyeurism, surveillance technologies, power and control.” The event runs from 7:30-10:30pm at W2 and you can purchase tickets online (no one turned away) here.
Photo: Kris Krug
On September 24, I’ll give the keynote speech at another screening, this time for the premiere of With Glowing Hearts, a documentary about the use of social media in the Downtown Eastside. The premiere will be preceded by an unconference that will explore potential that social media and citizen journalism have to strengthen communities. Tickets for that are here.
Finally, we are planning the launch of our Lawful Access video, which features Canadian experts on privacy and surveillance discussing why this legislation is such a bad idea, and encouraging concerned citizens and internet users to get involved. This will be for the end of September – I’ll keep you posted!
September 7th, 2011 at 10:14 pm
I agree that the Harper government’s Lawful Access legislation is a really bad idea.
But governments all over the world are moving in the direction of increased net surveillance on their citizens. So I think that in addition to opposing these kinds of measures that we as citizens and activists should also get behind counter measures against government and corporate spying.
I’m a big fan of the “Freedom Box Project”, an effort to combine the power of free software with small low cost hardware to create small portable web servers so that people can store their personal data there instead of on corporate controlled social networks.
See https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/ for more info!