From Ken Montenegro, Melanie Bush, Alfredo Lopez and Hamid Khan:
In discussions about weaponized surveillance, people will sometimes raise questions such as:
We support an abolitionist approach precisely because spying software has not prevented terror attacks. Moreover, the focus of avoiding imaginary terror attacks avoids responsibility for the settler colonialist origins of what the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition called the “stalker state.” The relationship between anti-Blackness and the national security police state is made evident here: https://stoplapdspying.medium.com/anti-blackness-and-the-national-security-police-state-that-civil-liberties-advocacy-built-f8d1d5418c42) If we take an historical perspective and aspire to undo the harm these tools cause, then abolition is the only reasonable conclusion.
Abolition is the only reasonable conclusion precisely because attempts at reform or regulation end up as spectacular failures. In what is currently called the United States, brave folks have always fought to reign in police and state violence. Those efforts have largely failed because they preserve institutions and practices that are racist and violent to their core and from their very foundation. Folks who uphold specious arguments like, “you have nothing to hide” or “vigilance is the price of liberty” fail to acknowledge how Indigenous and Black folks in the United States have always borne the brunt of state surveillance and its ensuing violence. It is part and parcel of the very system itself as a means of control and management. Abolition removes the “price” from “liberty”; it makes it free.
We are committed to a long-term struggle toward that freedom. While it might seem that a world without rampant digital surveillance is impossible, we are dedicated to visions of change where technology is about improving life and not controlling others. We know there is a possible alternative because rampant corporate & governance surveillance is new. Twenty years ago, such a dystopia was unimaginable.
Finally, we don’t see questions like the ones above being rooted in affirming life. Often these questions above are used facetiously to discredit or seem “right” about the issue of surveillance and to defend an indefensible system of colonial, capitalist, white supremacist, and patriarchy. May First Movement Technology is committed to learning and collaboration in our journeys towards the abolition of state violence of all sorts, and welcome dialogue that moves us in that direction.
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"Among the most glaring omissions in our arsenal as a movement is the absence of a simple statement: we oppose government and corporate surveillance of all kinds, we will never support it, and we will not work with anyone who does. "Friends,A new article, "We thought it was fiction", has been uploaded to the Radical Ecological Democracy website. Alfredo Lopez, Melanie Bush, Hamid Khan and Ken Montenegro, our colleagues from "May First Movement Technology", discuss the threat posed by Pegasus, the malicious hacking software, and how the progressive and “alternatives” communities should organize to push back against this steady erosion of people’s rights, and work to end tech dominance and intrusion into our lives. Please share the article with your networks and join the discussion on REDlistserv. The authors are copied here in case you would like to contact them directly.Best,PallavRead more