Help us rekindle the night, support La Quadrature du Net

Surveillance has invaded all the spaces in our lifes.

Our connected computers are rife with advertising trackers, our phones are pocket spying devices, street cameras are starting to observe and analyse our faces and how we walk.

Today’s lights have nothing left to do with the search for truth or freedom: they have been coopted by neon advertising signs and police search lights. Consume and control, these are our lives under the harsh light, under lights so strong they have changed the colour of the sky. Those behind the disaster even dream of turning the sky into a watchful eye, remote controlled drones like so many spying watchtowers.

Where did the restful night go? What happened to the haven of darkness? Who remembers the shadows? Where are the spaces free from surveillance where we can still talk, create, try, challenge, refuse to conform, be the minority, be free, and, simply, live? Too rare, too sparse, too isolated, like pockets of resistance that some want to see as the last islands in a chain soon to be engulfed by the seas.

The cold and hostile technocity automates policing and denial of justice, dehumanises social relationships and renders systematic the hunt for any shadows: cameras pointed on silhouettes painting a mural, spotlight on those bringing solace and food to the souls for whom the streets is their last refuge.

The belligerent security-crazed attack on our shared spaces transforms city not into public spaces, but into impersonal spaces. This enforced order worsens discrimination, silences social movements, depoliticises our streets. Or rather, forces one and only possible political horizon and idea: security through ever-increasing policing.

More and more cities, streets, town squares are surveilled by the same software tools, sold by the same cynical companies. Everywhere, our cities are reshaped by the same logic of control, distrust and confinement.

We can not hide behind hoods and encrypted messages forever. The moment has come to take back the streets, to free the networks, to claim surveillance for what it is: obsolete.

For over ten years, La Quadrature has worked to stop the Internet from becoming a shopping mall placed under the surveillance of an arbitrary censor. The Technopolice campaign, launched two years ago, is another attempt to document and beat back the generalised eavesdropping of cities and public spaces.

Against the dystopia that our present has become, we weave together fragments of night, recreating spaces without surveillance.

Help us rekindle the night, support La Quadrature du Net