London, June 7, 2014
The actor/performer Stephen Fry condemned the government’s failure to act over
the Snowden revelations at the start of the Don’t Spy on Us Day of
Action in London today.
On a pre-recorded video, Fry said that using the fear of terrorism, "is a
duplicitous and deeply wrong means of excusing something as base as
spying on the citizens of your own country”.
Marking the anniversary of the start of the Snowden revelations, the Day of Action is the biggest privacy event of 2014, with over 500 people attending the conference at Shoreditch Town Hall. Speaking at the event are high profile experts in technology, security and human rights, from all over the world. They include Wikipedia
founder Jimmy Wales who said: "The tide is beginning to turn as the
public comes to understand just how broken the surveillance state is.”
Author and co-founder of the Open Rights Group, Cory Doctorow said: “Freedom
from surveillance is essential to freedom itself. The freedom to think,
to speak and to have discourse without fear of reprisal or judgement is
at the core of democracy itself.”
Security technologist and author, Bruce Schneier said: “We have to choose
between surveillance or security: an internet that is vulnerable to all
attackers or an internet that is secure for all users. In our
interconnected world, security is more important.
The day of action was organised by the Don’t Spy on Us Campaign, a
coalition of privacy, free expression and digital rights organisations,
that is calling for the government to put an end to mass surveillance by
GCHQ.
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