Re: publica 2012: freedom and security, technology and future

Freedom of thought Requires free media and free media Requires free technology. (Freedom of thought requires free media and free media technologies require open)-Eben Moglan

Facebook is the largest database ever made. (Facebook is the database ever created)-Jacob Appelbaum

More than 48 hours it's over, still in my head I heard many things in this issue of re: publica 2012 in Berlin, where they were in addition to the above (Eben Moglan, General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation and Jacob Appelbaum, Tor project creator) Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party, Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice President for the digital agenda, bloggers like Isaac Mao (China), Abadpour Arash (Iran), Tarek Amr (Egypt) and activists such as Shahidul Alam (Bangladesh), developers and media and more.

Eben Moglen: "We are at a time to be decided"

Moglen wondered what if right now, for convenience, simplicity, or simply because we are unaware of the historical moment in which we are, we fight for our freedom. He recalled that many have fallen for the freedom we have, and surely we can bequeath to the next generation a freer world, but what if we do not?

What shall we say when, after hundreds of years fighting for freedom of thought, let him go (...) Because we believe that it was not our problem, because we thought it was over, because we thought we were already free.

Free thought needs free media. Free media need open technologies.

Moglen said that all that we need to keep what we have achieved and to ensure that all the Einsteins in the streets there to learn, that all may become Stravinskys composers.

For all mankind may be connected, and each brain is allowed to learn and no brain is crushed for being wrong. This is a time where we all must choose whether to continue with this revolution we've been doing a bloody pieces for hundreds of years or if we left everything for convenience or simplicity.

I said in 2004 when I was here and I say now: we can win. We can be the generation that completed the work to achieve freedom of thought. What I said then and I say now is that we are also the generation that can potentially lose. We return to a worse position than any inquiry ever. You may not use torture or is not bloody, but will be more effective. And we must not let it happen.

Moglen named some projects "extraordinarily important for the protection of human dignity and prevent surveillance", including the task that makes the Free Software Foundation in all countries, Wikipedia and the task of some universities that put the knowledge openly available to all Internet.

"The cost of higher education must come down"

Moglen explained that of the hundred most visited websites in the United States, there is only one that does not monitor its users and where you can get anything you want: Wikipedia.

Universities must realize that the cost of higher education must come down.

He said programs at the Open University of Catalonia and the MIT project to provide higher technical education on the Internet and said not only that we should support such initiatives, but all the European national Ministries of Education should be working on it.

Jacob Appelbaum in defense of privacy and dignity

The creator of Tor spoke of the control and the amount of surveillance that exists about us, and advocated the need to reduce it.

The secrecy of the vote in a democracy is really important. It makes our dignity, we can keep our jobs. The scanners are unworthy, even if we do not generate cancer.

He explained that the dignity and privacy are important to society because they make you express yourself differently. But he said the history of Germany, the United States does not seem to have learned, because they make an incredible amount of surveillance, and most of it is illegal. "It is used against us, for political reasons and is against our dignity."

Appelbaum spoke of the need we all think that if this is inevitable if this is the model that works for everyone and if we want, because Facebook and other private companies have already decided it's their business model and is what they are imposing.

"Facebook is the database ever created: what you like, what you did, where you studied, who the hell cares about your business model?" He said, and heard a loud applause.

The Facebook business model makes sense for investors. It was the same model that had the television when it began, then was decentralized and centralized.

The revolution on hold

There was also talk of the control and monitoring of social networks, but in this case by the political regimes of China, Iran and Russia on the table "pending revolution." There bloggers in these countries analyzed the reasons why social networks and new technologies that enabled the Arab spring are not so powerful in their countries.

The reply was given by Isaac Mao China, known blogger and activist who said that China has a long history of censorship but censorship system also is modernizing and becoming more intelligent, because it uses new keywords to filter. There are many monitors that monitor and your IP address is recorded continuously but censorship is not only technical: too much noise is created, and it distracts people from the important issues.

In Iran the situation is to cut the Internet by the government and also decreases the speed intentional in certain situations. But the vision of Arash Abadpour, one of the most widely read political bloggers in Iran, is optimistic in the long run because he believes that "although we do not have Gmail, all this has a political cost to the government."

Russia's official position is that there is censorship and Putin always says that the media are free. But the real problem is that not reached the critical mass of audience with political issues. The people involved are a minority "avant-garde," while the majority receive their state pension and support Putin. Mathis Winkler, Deutsche Welle journalist, expert on Russia, said no change unless the current economic situation changes.