Last night while browsing through some videos I downloaded (legally) I found two again that I would like to warmly recommend everyone for watching, two documentaries, freely available under Creative Commons licenses:

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014)

Nothing to Hide – The documentary about surveillance and you (2017)

The first describes the life and activism of Aaron Swartz, one of the founders of Reddit but also and probably most importantly an activist (and hacktivist) for digital rights and digital freedom. His ideals and his love for freedom of information brought him into focus of the US government and law enforcement which pounded down on him with no mercy and most importantly no understanding whatsoever of what Aaron’s goals were and if these could eventually be reasonable and just. The massive pressure built up on him and his environment in the end was too much for him to bear and he ended his own life on January 11, 2013, at the age of 26.

Aaron’s story is important to me in many different ways. First of all I would say that I belong to his peer group. I am a hacker, an activist and free software developer. I also think that freedom of information is essential as is freedom of communication. So I can relate, a lot, and I am incredibly sad but also immensely angry about what happened to Aaron.

What happened to Aaron was not only very likely injustice but it also shows something very frightening that should alert all of us. It shows us with which methods and with which immense power governments, not only in the US, can start to oppress freedom of information and restrict communication. It does not happen with bleak censorship laws, no no no, they hit in much more subtle but in no way less powerful ways.

The result of these ways is that more and more information of our communication gets centralized into large organizations, mostly corporations like Apple, Google or Facebook, and that these get controlled and regulated by these very states and governments. With these they gain control over how and what we communicate. With a few large actors it is much easier for a state to enforce control – and that’s what they do. First it was called the war on drugs, then the war on terror, if that does not work they pull the child protection card etc. All of that just has one goal and follows one pattern, more and more control over our information and communication.

And here the other documentary kicks in, Nothing to Hide. This is an excellent piece describing how dangerous any form of massive data collection is. There is no data collection that can not be exploited. The more data you have the more you can extrapolate from it. Sometimes it is said that so called metadata would not be harmful, like it is now discussed again within the EU. But even with metadata alone you can make a person’s life fully transparent. Once this happens misuse will happen – and if it’s not misuse then at least severe mistakes, like false accusations, limitations by false ’scoring‘,

And now think about it, who has the most user’s data and metadata? The very same companies that states and governments use to control their population.

So, take seat, make yourself comfortable and get ready to get unsettled. It is unsettling and should make us all very very careful.

Free software, decentralized and federated services, self hosted services, information hosting and communication developed, run and hosted by people for the people are the only ways to protect us from 1984 becoming a reality – if you think about, we are already much closer to it than we ever would have wanted.