{"id":12278,"date":"2013-12-10T14:39:24","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T14:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12278"},"modified":"2013-12-10T14:39:24","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T14:39:24","slug":"more-than-500-world-famous-authors-sign-anti-surveillance-petition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12278","title":{"rendered":"More than 500 world-famous authors sign anti-surveillance petition"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"jmcoetzee\"<\/a>
JM Coetzee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More than 500 renowned authors \u2013 including five Nobel laureates \u2013 from across the globe have signed a petition demanding to end \u2018mass surveillance\u2019. It follows the revelations over the last few months of US\u2019 and other countries\u2019 spying.<\/p>\n

Their open appeal is called \u2018A Stand for Democracy in the Digital Age\u2019. Among the signatories are Nobel laureates Orhan Pamuk, JM Coetzee, Elfriede Jelinek, G\u00fcnter Grass and Tomas Transtr\u00f6mer.<\/p>\n

Others who signed the letter include Bjork, Umberto Eco, Yann Martel, Ian McEwan and many others.<\/p>\n

\u201cWE DEMAND THE RIGHT for all people, as democratic citizens, to determine to what extent their personal data may be collected, stored and processed, and by whom; to obtain information on where their data is stored and how it is being used; to obtain the deletion of their data if it has been illegally collected and stored. WE CALL ON ALL STATES AND CORPORATIONS to respect these rights,\u201d the open appeal read.<\/p>\n

It adds that \u201ca person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy. To maintain any validity, our democratic rights must apply in virtual as in real space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter also calls for the creation by the UN an International Bill of Digital Rights.<\/p>\n

Everyone is invited to sign the open appeal at www.change.org\/surveillance<\/p>\n

The petition comes in the wake of massive revelations by Edward Snowden that disclosed surveillance all over the globe carried out by NSA.<\/p>\n

In the latest incident, it has been revealed that the NSA and the UK\u2019s GCHQ spying agencies collected players\u2019 charts and deployed real-life agents into online games World of Warcraft and Second Life.<\/p>\n

The move was organized by group of independent authors who made it possible through personal contacts and private networks.<\/p>\n

Danish writer Janne Teller, one of the organizers, told the Daily Mail that the authors\u2019 community is \u201creally very worried about mass surveillance\u201d which is \u201cundermining democracy totally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s quite significant when you have 560 or so of the greatest contemporary writers, from all across the world, expressing a very serious concern, because these are people who always work on the big philosophical questions of life. Hopefully their concern matters to politicians,\u201d Teller added.<\/p>\n

The concern listed by the appeal\u2019s organizers is reflected in statistics.<\/p>\n

A recent survey by the writers\u2019 rights group PEN discovered that 85 percent of its US members are worried about government surveillance, according to the organization\u2019s report.<\/p>\n

Twenty-eight percent had also curbed their social media use, while 24 percent are avoiding certain topics in phone and email conversations. – RT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 500 renowned authors \u2013 including five Nobel laureates \u2013 from across the globe have signed a petition demanding to end \u2018mass surveillance\u2019. It follows the revelations over the last few months of US\u2019 and other countries\u2019 spying. Their open appeal is called \u2018A Stand for Democracy in the Digital Age\u2019. Among the signatories … Continue reading “More than 500 world-famous authors sign anti-surveillance petition”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[422,3],"tags":[3030,2956,3355,7777],"class_list":["post-12278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-news","tag-nsa","tag-spying","tag-surveillance","tag-writers"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/jmcoetzee.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12280,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12278\/revisions\/12280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}