11-02-2014, the day we fight back

Today is the 11th of Februrari 2014,“The Day We Fight Back”. We fight against out-of-control spying on our privacy as free citizens. We fight against Orwellian espionage because we know where it leads to in the end.

The text below is inspired by the speeches of Winston Churchill in during may and june 1940. While the nature of the opponents of democracy and freedom is different today the consequences of losing the fight are just as dire. Our society and the planetary eco-system is a great trouble. We need our democracies to function and our internet to be free so we can adress the great challenges of out time.

“What Cory Doctorow and Aaron Schwartz called the fight against SOPA & ACTA is over. The battle against TTP and global surveillance continues to rage on. Upon this battle depends the survival of the internet and our democracies. Upon it depends our own way of life and the long continuity of our institutions and our culture. Once again the whole fury and might of the enemies of freedom will very soon be turned on us now.

Those working towards a police state know that they will have to break us or lose this conflict. If we can stand up to them, all of the Internet may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States and Europe, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new corporatist Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted technologies.

You ask, what is our policy? We can say: It is to hack, by server, laptop and phone, with all our might and with all the strength that Turing can give us; to wage lulz against a monstrous tyranny, rarely surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory, victory at all cost, victory in spite of all the terror, corruption and lies.

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our networked homes. To ride out the storm of surveilance, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of the hacktivists – every one of them. That is the will of free citizens, the technologists and the creatives, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend their native internet, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there will be no free culture and no culture of freedom.

Therefore we shall go on to the end:
we shall fight in Europe,
we shall fight on our browsers and our operating systems,
we shall fight with stronger encryption, and secure hardware,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength
we shall defend our networks, whatever the cost may be,

We shall never surrender.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the Internet and its hacker community last for a thousand years, they will still say, “This was their finest hour”.”

No go participate or organise a cryptoparty, support people developing better tools (mail, web, secure systems and all this Free-as-in-freedom Software) or ask other people if they value being able to read without being read at the same time. Privacy is a human right according to the UN Declaration of human rights and yes, you to have something to hide as well.