A snapshot this week from the surveillance beat:
Writers of the world call for end to mass online surveillance
Five Nobel literature laureates are among 560 international writers who today have put their names to an appeal, “A stand for democracy in the digital age”, against widespread “mass surveillance” by governments and corporations.
It is, they argue, an attack on “a basic pillar of democracy . . . the inviolable integrity of the individual.”
Dog waste-scooping business takes page from ‘CSI’
“… using dog DNA to track down owners who break property rules.”
— Chicago Tribune story in Seattle Times, widely republished
Further reading:
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. ”It is far more likely that the Western democracies will dance and dream themselves into oblivion than march into it, single file and manacled.”
UK Guardian story: World’s leading authors: state surveillance of personal data is theft
— Deborah Jones