Show Parliament the Big Picture

Big Ben being watchedI’m pleased to announce that I can now reveal the location for our live collage of the hundreds of surveillance state photos you’ve been taking this week for the Freedom Not Fear, Big Picture event.

On 11 October, we’ll gather underneath the statue of Winston Churchill on Parliament Square in London to build an image showing where the incremental invasions of our privacy you’ve been documenting will eventually lead British society. We need ten or so people to help, so if you’d like to offer a hand, email info [AT] openrightsgroup.org and let us know.

On Monday, ORG and No2ID put out a call for people to take photos of stuff that embodies the database state, and the UK’s world-famous surveillance society. Since then, hundreds of photos of surveillance cameras and other database state ephemera from all over the country have been uploaded to Flickr or emailed to FreedomNotFear@no2id.net. There’s still time to get snapping, so if you fancy getting involved, here are the easy-to-follow instructions:

  1. Spot something that embodies the UK’s wholesale transformation into the surveillance society/database state. Subjects might include your local CCTV camera(s), or fingerprinting equipment in your child’s school library
  2. Snap it
  3. Upload it to Flickr and tag it “FNFBigPicture” – please use an Attribution Creative Commons license* (alternatively, email your picture to FreedomNotFear@no2id.net)
  4. That’s it!

*We need you to license it this way because we want to give the image to newspapers to run on the day.

Freedom not Fear is an international day of action for democracy, free speech, human rights and civil liberties, and events to celebrate these central tenets of a just society will be taking place all over the world.

Thanks to stephenjjohnson@flickr for the image.