Open Rights Group is a wonderful, spontaneous creation of the people who most care about the information age.
Built on the enthusiasm and promise of people who live, work, play, socialise and create online, ORG is a celebration of the emerging possibilities that technology and the internet offer us. ORG exemplifies that social activism which brings out the very best people have to offer: expertise, creativity, energy, and professionalism – and none of this ever without humour.
Behind this lies an irrepressible motivation. The ORG community knows there are real abuses of our rights online, and real threats to our information society.
Thanks largely to ORG, we may have seen off, for now, the threat presented to our democracy by insecure and unreliable e-voting techniques in the UK. But we still have the rising threat of disconnection stirred up by lobbyists working for panicking rights-holders. Our civil liberties are eroded in an instinctive rush to surveillance. Powerful people are frightened, and don't understand the sort of information-age world we want to live in.
Against this, ORG deploys the expertise and enthusiasm of a community which has, just this month, passed 1000 signed-up and paid up subscribers, fronted by three professional staff, and served by wonderful teams of volunteers and advisers.
Under Becky's directorship, which I regret to say is nearly complete, ORG has developed a formidable media presence, a smooth-running machine, and made great strides towards financial sustainability based on no-nonsense business management. She leaves ORG in great shape, with our thanks and best wishes for the future.
What next? Society still needs legislators and the media to be better informed about information technology. ORG needs to be more ambitious still, under a new director, in its core work, its own development, governance and transparency.
Thank you to everyone who contributed in every way to what is described in this annual report. We're on the right track. We need to stick to our task and build on what we've achieved to date.
William Heath Chair, Open Rights Group
