Cyberinsecurity: can it be fixed?


The third BIG PICTURE DAY will be at Limewharf at 6PM on Tuesday 20th of August

It's taken me two weeks to write this.

I knew, as soon as the Snowden thing popped, that nothing was going to be the same. I went to OHM2013, a big hacker camping festival in the Netherlands. 3000 people, five government whistleblowers who had attemted to stop illegal surveillance in the past. At least one scary-realistic Ed Snowden look alike. Even a hexayurt.

I am afraid. We had a week, and we failed to retell the story of our lives relative to what we actually know about the vast, secretive spying operations which are run against us. I hardly know a single friend that, at some point in their life, hasn't done something worthy of the attention of law enforcement: riding freight trains, for example, became a big "critical national infrastructure" deal after 9/11. All those messages, sitting in a pile, waiting for the State to decide they've had enough of freight train riders and mass prosecute.

So I wanted to host a conversation about what has happened, and about what we know now. There was an attempt a few years ago to rename the cell phone "the tracker." Now I wonder, given that everything you and I do on the internet is monitored, and much or all of it stored for posterity, is the internet still a valid concept? Or is there simply a single giant eye, the Palantir from Lord of the Rings, showing us the Eye of Sauron every time we go online?

So come to Limewharf at 6PM on Tuesday 20th of August (that's a week from when this blog post went live) to meet and discuss the issues together. We're putting together a few short talks to briefly frame some of the issues, but this event will mainly be small group conversations about the issues, and about what they mean for our lives and culture.

Do please come: it's our chance to reset the narrative about what is happening, and perhaps emerge with some new ideas about what to do next.

Confirmed speakers We are expecting a couple of additional high-profile speakers, watch for announcements. We'll have the Eventbrite up ASAP too.

Particular thanks to Thomas Ermacora for helping me get unstuck on this session. Invaluable assistance!

Cyberinsecurity is the third in the Big Picure Days event series at @Limewharf in London. The first event was Swarm Cooperatives on mass collaboration. The second was Stacktivism on politics and critical infrastructure.

I hope you can come. This one's going to be a doozy.