Christian Fuchs

Conference Freedom of Information under Pressure: Control – Crisis – Culture
In June 2013, Edward Snowden, with the collaboration of The Guardian, The Washington Post and Der Spiegel, revealed – and most importantly attested – the extent of the American and British intelligence agencies surveillance activities. These activities include mass online surveillance but also mass mobile and landline telephone surveillance, covering nearly all-possible communicative transactions. Such efforts of individual whistle-blowers and organisations towards transparency and public accountability have been met with vigorous oppression; Chelsea Manning (previously known as Bradley Manning) was recently sentenced to 35 years of imprisonment for leaking US classified information, while others, such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald have been chased and prosecuted by the US and British governments, in an effort to curtail disclosures and prevent others from proceeding to similar activities. Moreover, in a concerted intimidation effort, the British government recently asked the Guardian newspaper to appear before a parliamentary committee under the accusation that the newspaper has threatened national security.