Standing up to Surveillance Conference, 17 Apr

A Con­fer­ence host­ed by the Net­work for Police Mon­i­tor­ing.
Sun­day 17th April. 10.30am – 5pm.
Venue : Rich Mix 35 – 47 Beth­nal Green Road, Lon­don, E1 6LA

Entry: £5 (unwaged) £10 (waged) dona­tion. This includes tea, cof­fee and a light lunch.
Pri­or reg­is­tra­tion is essen­tial.

A Con­fer­ence host­ed by the Net­work for Police Mon­i­tor­ing.
Sun­day 17th April. 10.30am – 5pm.
Venue : Rich Mix 35 – 47 Beth­nal Green Road, Lon­don, E1 6LA

Entry: £5 (unwaged) £10 (waged) dona­tion. This includes tea, cof­fee and a light lunch.
Pri­or reg­is­tra­tion is essen­tial.

Speak­ers include: Tom Fowler (activist and edi­tor of Rad­i­cal Wales), Marc Vallee (pho­to­jour­nal­ist and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist), Jason Parkin­son (video­jour­nal­ist), Kevin Blowe (Com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre work­er, writer and com­men­ta­tor), Sam Wal­ton, (activist with green and black cross and cli­mate camp legal teams), Emi­ly Apple (Fit­watch activist) and oth­ers to be con­firmed.

The gath­er­ing of ‘intel­li­gence’ by police on polit­i­cal pro­test­ers and minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties is now a com­mon­place activ­i­ty. Some ini­tia­tives hit the press – the use of under­cov­er police offi­cers to infil­trate paci­fist and envi­ron­men­tal cam­paigns, for exam­ple, or installing ’covert’ cam­eras with counter ter­ror­ism mon­ey to watch the move­ments of Birmingham’s Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion.

Oth­ers have become rou­tine and sys­tem­at­ic; pho­tograph­ing peo­ple attend­ing demon­stra­tions; demand­ing names and address­es; ’map­ping’ com­mu­ni­ties; gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion from uni­ver­si­ties, Mosques and com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions; build­ing up a data­base of pro­test­ers and their activ­i­ties. Intel­li­gence gath­er­ing is big busi­ness, and there are huge sums to be made by the com­pa­nies that pro­duce and sup­ply the lat­est sur­veil­lance equip­ment or ana­lyt­i­cal soft­ware.

What is dri­ving this rapid and seem­ing­ly unstop­pable descent into a sur­veil­lance state? Why are so many of us poten­tial tar­gets for state scruti­ny? Is an increas­ing demand for intel­li­gence dri­ven by a fear of ‘extrem­ism’? Or by the avail­abil­i­ty of tech­nol­o­gy and the mil­lions that can be made from it? And what can be done to stop it?

Many of the speak­ers at the Stand­ing up to Sur­veil­lance con­fer­ence have first-hand expe­ri­ence of the per­son­al and polit­i­cal con­se­quences of intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing by police or secu­ri­ty ser­vices. The aim is to pro­vide a space to share expe­ri­ences, pool knowl­edge, and devel­op a deep­er under­stand­ing of how our soci­ety as a whole is affect­ed.

Every­one is wel­come.

The Net­work for Police Mon­i­tor­ing includes cam­paign groups Fit­watch, CAMPACC, Newham Mon­i­tor­ing Project, Cli­mate Camp Legal Team and The Alder­mas­ton Women’s Peace Camp.