How to fix it?
After the revelations of Edward Snowden, one has to agree that the Internet is broken. But there is so much more to consider. It might be broken on so many levels. It was not the first time we went campaigning, but in 2014 we had more reasons to do so than ever before.
The Dutch Public transport chip card that turns into a bank card/mobile phone that allows you to pay afterwards (and collects all your travel data along the way), or the data of UK patients being uploaded to the servers of Google… Not a single day passes or there are topics in the field of technology that touch our privacy. And every time the question arises: you can still decide yourself what happens with your personal information?
It is because of these ongoing privacy concerns that Waag Society researched the state of the social and public Internet. Our campaign composed of Cryptokids events where we taught children about online privacy, hacking the free wifi to generate awareness at festivals and organized lectures and debates.With partners like Bits of Freedom, Greenhost, Isoc, the University of Applied Sciences Amsterdam and University of Amsterdam we looked at the current state of the Internet: is it still public? And what about the networks, the soft- and hardware? Are they fixable?
Let us recapture the Internet!