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Privacy is a fundamental right
and is essential to any democratic society.
It is key to the effective protection of journalistic sources.
Without it, there is no free information
and no protection of medical or professional secrets.
We all have something to hide from someone.
An employer, colleagues, friends,
family, step-family, a wife or husband…
That doesn't mean it's something bad, just something…
private.
And even things we don't think are worth hiding today
might later be used against us.
An attack on our own privacy
also hurts the privacy of people we communicate with.
When we know we might be under surveillance,
our behaviour changes.
We might decide not to go to a political meeting,
to censor what we tell friends, family and colleagues,
thinking it might fall in the wrong hands
or simply be made public.
Under surveillance we may decide not to become a whistleblower.
Privacy is the necessary condition
for thinking and expressing oneself freely.
Edward Snowden is courageously risking his life
to show us the extent to which our privacy is already being invaded.
The USA engages in massive surveillance of everyone on a global scale,
and does so with the active support of European countries.
Online and offline,
all our messages, phone calls, location,
travels, browsing history and behaviour
are potentially being recorded
and aggregated in profiles by the NSA
and its public and private partners.
We can see a global surveillance state emerging,
used not only to spy on individuals,
but also on companies and political leaders.
This could radically alter the political and economic relationship between countries,
and be used to suppress dissent and political opposition.
Such surveillance wouldn't be possible
without the collaboration of tech giants
such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft.
Their business models, based on collecting everything about everyone,
have been key to enabling this global surveillance state.
We need to rethink our relationship to technology,
because we cannot trust these companies anymore.
Big data, in fact,
turns out to be Big Brother.
We need a world where technology is at our service,
protects privacy and brings more freedom.
We can act now and make a difference,
for ourselves and everyone we know,
by using free and open source software
that belongs to everyone
and that we can always control,
switching to decentralised services
that make it possible to know where our data is
and what happens to it
and using end-to-end encryption
to guarantee that our private communications are,
well..., private.
Let's raise awareness
about the impact of global surveillance.
Let's ensure that our political leaders
protect our privacy
and promote technologies
that, instead of controlling people,
liberate them.