Help ORG stop the snoopers' charter

The Open Rights Group needs your help to fight the Communications Data Bill. The announcement on the Bill was slipped out on Thursday when David Cameron was giving evidence before the Leveson inquiry. At least £1.8 billion is to be spent on mass surveillance technology at the same time as sacking police officers and military personnel.



As ORG say,

"Your communications via Google, Facebook or Skype will now be open to what may be a large number of government officials. We want to see the powers to collect and access communications data tightened up, not extended ever further."

And they're offering training sessions to help you get involved in educating people and MPs about these dangerous proposals -

"a series of events to get the campaigning going at the grassroots, and help people working with their MPs.

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/events/2012/censorship-and-surveillance-campaign-training

• London, Wednesday, 20 June 2012
• Edinburgh, Saturday, 23 June 2012
• Manchester, Wednesday, 27 June 2012
• Sheffield, Thursday, 28 June 2012
• Birmingham, Wednesday, 4 July 2012
• Bristol, Saturday, 7 July 2012"

You don't need any previous knowledge of the issues or experience talking with your MP. 

Each training event will last for around four hours. They will cover a background briefing on the issues and an overview of the campaigns followed by some practical training on how to speak to your MP. 

The sessions will be sociable and entertaining as well as extremely informative.  And if you wonder whether it is worth an evening of your time just remember that you cannot protect democracy by building state infrastructure of mass surveillance. Bruce Schneier put it more accessibly, "technology shouldn't give big brother a head start... it's bad civic hygiene to build technologies that could someday be used to facilitate a police state."