Remember, Remember: Reflections On This Fifth Of November

As this Fifth of November gathered more people than ever, demanding an end to surveillance and censorship and calling for civil liberties such as freedom of speech to be restored, it is adequate to reflect a bit, just as V originally did.

Unfortunately, most people still haven’t woken up to what’s happening in the world at this point. Our guaranteed privacy has been erased, our civil liberties abolished in all but name. And yet, most people haven’t taken notice because their days drudge on. Ominously, Berlin families in the winter of 1932 were still going skating in the park as they always had – all the rumors of bad things happening were elsewhere, not in the here and now, not interrupting the familiar.

Good evening, London. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of everyday routine—the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition.

The recipe for a complacent populace has remained constant since Roman times: distract the majority of people with bread and games, and you will happily have anything awful ignored. Who cares about the foundations of democracy being jackhammered to pebbles, when you can read about Kim Kardashian’s latest marriages? Or even worse, how much do you really read about police officers in Ferguson, USA murdering civilians in cold blood on the open street, if you’re not turning to alternative media who aren’t obedient mouthpieces?

There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. … While the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.

And for those who would speak anyway, the public arena is now censored. It used to be that we spoke freely on the city square. These days, we converse on social media in the hands of private companies, who get to enforce their rules on their servers. This is not without a lot of problems as that effectively gives private companies the right to define free speech.

If I pasted a link to The Pirate Bay to somebody in a message on Facebook, I got a popup saying that I had posted disallowed content, and asked me to refrain from doing so in the future.

When you spoke on the phone to somebody, could you imagine a third voice suddenly interrupting the conversation with “You have mentioned a disallowed subject. The sentence was automatically muted. Please refrain from discussing disallowed subjects in the future”? That’s where we are. Already. Right now. While most people were looking the other way.

And as if that’s not enough, all of it is recorded with the express purpose of using our own conversations against us at some indeterminate point in the future, possibly under a different set of rules altogether. So even under the illusion of free speech, people are strongly encouraged to hold their tongue.

And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen?

It’s enormously easy to scare a populace into submission in the face of an external threat. The name of the threat has varied through the ages – communists in the 1950s, jazz musicians in the 1930s, comic books in the 1960s, witches in the late medievals – but the mechanisms have remained the same. The government tells us to be afraid of something. Mouthpiece media obediently repeats the message. And then, to be protected from the fabricated threat, to have order, to have peace, the powers weaken a few more liberties and strengthen their grip on which ideas are allowed.

He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

It is in this environment that people are increasingly choosing to not be obedient, but instead speak out about injustices. Entrepreneurs building technology that circumvents and subverts governmental command-and-control, people who penetrate the government and extract scathing evidence of wrongdoing, people who would rather take up arms as a last resort to defend themselves against assault from a repressive regime than sit down silently in obedience. These people used to be called industrialists, journalists, and freedom fighters. Today, they are called criminals, hackers (in a bad sense), and terrorists, scandalized by the mouthpiece media. For Your Protection.

But of course, your own regime could never be repressive, as long as democratic elections are held on schedule. The bad things are always happening elsewhere.

Fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words—they are perspectives. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest that you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you’ve seen what I’ve seen; if you feel as I feel…

This year on November the Fifth, a Million Mask March was held under the banner of Anonymous. People gathered in the big cities like Paris, London, and Madrid, and in the smallest nooks like, well, Nuuk (Greenland). While public displays of opinion do absolutely nothing to sway and convince other people, they do demonstrate that people who are no longer prepared to respect the obedient consent that they are not alone, and so, it can set the ball rolling.

Civil liberties have been abolished in all but name.

Political peaceful protests are now classified as terrorism.

People exposing governmental corruption and lies are going to jail for doing so.

Every move you make, every breath you take, the government agencies is listening in.

It’s not funny anymore. Where is your line in the sand?

Until that line is reached, you can (and should) use tools to safeguard your own liberties. Nobody’s doing it for you anymore.

Privacy remains your own responsibility.