Personal Democracy Forum, in partnership with New York University’s Interactive Technology Program, is pleased to present our second symposium on WikiLeaks and Internet Freedom this coming Monday, January 24, from 6-8pm. Tickets are $15 and only available in advance; don’t delay, they’re selling quickly.
We’ll be joined by a terrific array of speakers:
Birgitta Jonsdottir, a leading member of the Icelandic Parliament, who was an active volunteer with WikiLeaks for part of last year, and who is currently challenging the U.S. Justice Department’s request for her personal records from Twitter;
Clay Shirky, noted author, NYU lecturer, social theorist and long-time friend of PdF, who has written some of the most widely-discussed and nuanced analyses of the WikiLeaks controversy (see “WikiLeaks and the Long Haul” and “Half-formed Thought on WikiLeaks and Global Action”);
Floyd Abrams, veteran First Amendment lawyer, who represented the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, and who recently offered his critique of WikiLeaks in this article in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Why WikiLeaks is Unlike the Pentagon Papers”;
John Hockenberry, Host of “The Takeaway,” a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, who has been closely covering the WikiLeaks story, and who wrote a prescient essay in 2008 for MIT’s Technology Review on how technology was changing the media business; and
Gabriella Coleman, assistant professor of media, culture and communication at NYU, and an expert on Anonymous (see her recent article in The Atlantic on “What It’s Like to Participate in Anonymous’ Actions.”
Again, to get your tickets, go here. It’s being held January 24, 6-8pm, NYU Kimmel Center in the E&L Auditorium – 4th Floor at 60 Washington Square South.
Why are we continuing these symposiums? First, our December 11 event clearly touched a nerve. Not only did we have a sell-out audience, thousands of people tuned in to watch live on the net, and the archive of the livestream has been viewed about 75,000 times in all.
Second, the questions keep coming. How does the push for more openness and transparency conflict with legitimate security concerns? What are the responsibilities of online organizations who distribute information from leakers and whistleblowers? What are the responsibilities of Internet service providers to protect their users privacy? Are distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) by organizations like Anonymous a new force for social justice or something more destructive?
We’ll be discussing these topics, as well as the others that keep bubbling up. As with PdFLeaks I, the event will proceed in two halves–the first hour will taken up with short (10 minute) remarks from each of our speakers, and the second hour will be an open forum with lots of audience participation.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg of OpenLeaks, who was originally scheduled to join us, has regrettably dropped off the panel, but we’re hoping we’ll be able to get him to join us for a future event. We’re very happy that both Birgitta Jonsdottir and John Hockenberry are joining in and look forward to their contributions. Jonsdottir spoke at PdF Europe this past fall, by the way. Here’s the video of that talk, which was focused on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, which was inspired in part by WikiLeaks.