Seminar on 'Freedom and Surveillance in the Digital Age'- Inspiring and Thought Provoking

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2013-07-16 03:41
Venue
Swecha

Swecha and FSMI have jointly organized a seminar, titled ‘Freedom and Surveillance in the Digital Age’ on 13th July, 2013. The seminar was well attended by over 150 participants,comprising primarily of engineering college students, IT professionals, academicians, intellectuals, progressive and democratic minded citizens, activists and netizens.

Mr. Neville Roy Singham, Founder and Chairman of ThoughtWorks, a Global IT Consultancy company and Mr. Y. Kiran Chandra, General Secretary, FSMI addressed the gathering. Roy Singham, in his address, was critical of the US’ spying. He elaborated the manner and extent of undemocratic snooping carried out by the US. He reiterated that the Free Software community has since long been hinting at the inherent characteristic of Microsoft conforming to the whims and fancies of the US Government and that the only reason for the world to know of this act this late was because of source code of Microsoft products’ being closed. He lauded the sacrifice made by Edward Snowden, who had forsaken his otherwise luxurious living to let the world know of the truth. He had also recollected his association with Aaron Swartz, who had been victimized for trying to make open the enormous research information that was kept in closed doors.

Mr. Y. Kiran Chandra urged all the participants to create awareness amongst more people so that the issue of internet freedom and democracy could be taken up on a larger scale. He reminded the gathering of the fact that FSMI has, in its recently concluded General Council Meeting, unanimously decided to mark this calendar year as ‘The Year for Internet Freedom’ and informed the participants about the various campaigns Swecha and FSMI have taken up in that direction.

Posters designed by some of the volunteers were put up all around the campus and they depicting a wide range of issues concerning the internet- the history of internet, intricately woven with the politics underlying it, the more recent issues of censorship and monitoring and the alternatives available in the form of various Free Software technologies.

All the participants later paid their tributes to Aaron Swartz and the entire premises reverberated with slogans ‘Johar Aaron Swartz’, ‘Down with CISPA’, ‘Down with SOPA’, ‘Down with 66(A)’, ‘Long Live Freedom’ etc.