[P2P-F] Fwd: [opennetcoalition] La Quadrature du Net leaves the state of emergency

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: La Quadrature du Net <contact at laquadrature.net>
Date: Wed, May 18, 2016 at 12:05 AM
Subject: [opennetcoalition] La Quadrature du Net leaves the state of
emergency
To: opennetcoalition at laquadrature.net



Press Release

*Tags:* LA QUADRATURE DU NET, STATE OF EMERGENCY, SURVEILLANCE, FRANCE,
MANUEL VALLS, FRANÇOIS HOLLANDE

La Quadrature du Net — For immediate release

Permanent link:
https://www.laquadrature.net/en/la-quadrature-leaves-the-state-of-emergency
<http://www.laquadrature.net/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=703&qid=59744>
La Quadrature du Net leaves the state of emergency

Paris, 17 May 2016 — *When faced with a wall, you need to know when to stop
banging your head against it. After years of legal violence, defeats and
steady erosion of fundamental rights, and confronted with an elected
political body whose only logic is to reinforce the security apparatus, La
Quadrature du Net has decided to stop wasting time trying to appeal to the
reason of those who won't listen, and is now taking a new direction for its
actions. *

Law after law, anti-terror measures after state of emergency and increased
surveillance, the institutional political space has petrified in the quest
of its own maintenance that the point that it now seems unrealistic make
the voice of the common interest heard in the coming months, any more than
human rights and social justice, or indeed simply the voice of wisdom.
Unless a surprise comes from social movements, the presidential campaign
will only promise us the depressing display of a variety of dead-ends. Even
on subjects outside the core interests of La Quadrature du Net, the
parliamentary and political news are a perfect illustration of this.

It is not the multiplication of consultation and other embryos of
participative processes that will change the course as the political logic
of former times will still prevail. For two years, civil society has been
heavily consulted and heavily ignored on digital issues. The participative
logic was constantly instrumentalised to hide the persistence of the grip
of the administrative machine and lobbies.

Day after day, at the same time, we witness a growing willingness from
citizens to appropriate digital tools. To better defend one's privacy, to
better protect one's fundamental rights against attacks or deficiencies of
governments, the whole of society is full of expectations and as soon as a
space opens, it dives into it. For several years, we have developed a core
discourse on free speech, right to information or the balance of the
infrastructures, whose effect and objective are to facilitate participation
by individuals and organisations, beyond rigged parliamentarian and
political debates.

The continuous urgency to answer irresponsible or precipitated propositions
coming from the government, political parties, or their spokespersons in
Parliament stands in the way of in-depth reviews and proposals, and hampers
our capacity to seize new social issues in the digital space.

For all these reasons, we have decided to take a step back from legislative
monitoring in France, at least until after the 2017 general
elections.Nonetheless, through Les Exégètes Amateurs
<http://www.laquadrature.net/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=704&qid=59744>
in particular, we will keep up attacking through legal means the dangerous
laws voted by the Parliament. However, we will not systematically respond
to populist or surrealistic speeches of politicians, we will not get into
fights in order to make those that govern us realise that they are slowing
killing our freedoms under the guise of ensuring our (illusory) security.

We will try instead to feed public debate through other means, without
exhausting ourselves in daily battles against bureaucratic closed circles
that give a deaf ear to experts and to the civil society. We remain hopeful
that this open exchange of ideas may nonetheless feed the political
programmes of those who still wish to reach the same objective as we do.

We will not knock on the doors of political parties ahead of the elections,
but we do hope that some will take inspiration from our work.

We will write, we will publish, we will share. We will help our fellow
citizens build a digital society that respects everyone's rights, whether
by instructing people on digital security, by creating spaces for debate,
by promoting Free software ideas and decentralised services, by
participating in the creation of new Commons, by fostering and protecting
freedom of speech, by feeding debates on copyright and the free circulation
of culture and knowledge - that and many other things.

We will strive even harder to create an engaged citizenship able to
anticipate and face the Internet's legal and political issues.

*Are we giving up? Not at all. Rather, we are refocusing, concentrating on
efficiency, refusing to legitimise a political game growing less and less
democratic, and need to act where we can still make a difference. *

This is why we have decided to reorganise our internal activity. We will
pay less attention to the French legal landscape and instead focus more on
the common action of the movements currently emerging in other countries
all through Europe. More thinking, open to external interventions and
external skills that we do not yet have in our teams. More writing, more
graphic production, more audio, more videos. Less work with the political
world and more with the individuals who are willing to come with us in this
new direction. We will spend more time doing meaningful awareness
campaigns, developing participation, decentralising our actions and
engaging our volunteers, all while being more independent from agendas that
are not set by us.

*We hope that by reorienting our action, we will convince even more people
to come work with us to build a digital world worthy of a democratic
society. We invite all the associations and groups with whom we work
already, or who share our goals and observations, to support us and work
with us to foster a richer public debate on these questions. So that we
will be stronger in the legal and political battles we will have to fight
tomorrow. *
About La Quadrature du Net

La Quadrature du Net is an advocacy group that defends the rights and
freedoms of citizens on the Internet. More specifically, it advocates for
the adaptation of French and European legislations to respect the founding
principles of the Internet, most notably the free circulation of knowledge.

>In addition to its advocacy work, the group also aims to foster a better
understanding of legislative processes among citizens. Through specific and
pertinent information and tools, La Quadrature du Net hopes to encourage
citizens' participation in the public debate on rights and freedoms in the
digital age.

La Quadrature du Net is supported by French, European and international
NGOs including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Open Society
Institute and Privacy International.

List of supporting organisations:
https://www.laquadrature.net/en/they-support-la-quadrature-du-net
<http://www.laquadrature.net/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=705&qid=59744>
Press contact and press room

contact at laquadrature.net – +33 (0)972 294 426

https://www.laquadrature.net/en/press-room
<http://www.laquadrature.net/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=706&qid=59744>
*To unsubscribe, click here
<http://www.laquadrature.net/civicrm/mailing/optout?reset=1&jid=176&qid=59744&h=e2e42f62919e22e2>*



*La Quadrature du Net60, rue des OrteauxParis, 75020*

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