----- Forwarded message from Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl> ----- Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2013 11:19:11 +0200 From: Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl> To: nettime-l@kein.org Subject: <nettime> John Lanchester on the Snowden files (Guardian) Reply-To: a moderated mailing list for net criticism <nettime-l@mail.kein.org> original to: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/03/edward-snowden-files-john-lanch... The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ When the Guardian offered John Lanchester access to the GCHQ files, the journalist and novelist was initially unconvinced. But what the papers told him was alarming: that Britain is sliding towards an entirely new kind of surveillance society John Lanchester The Guardian, Thursday 3 October 2013 In August, the editor of the Guardian rang me up and asked if I would spend a week in New York, reading the GCHQ files whose UK copy the Guardian was forced to destroy. His suggestion was that it might be worthwhile to look at the material not from a perspective of making news but from that of a novelist with an interest in the way we live now. I took Alan Rusbridger up on his invitation, after an initial reluctance that was based on two main reasons. The first of them was that I don't share the instinctive sense felt by many on the left that it is always wrong for states to have secrets. I'd put it more strongly than that: democratic states need spies. (...) (Read on on the Guardian site, as the illustrations are essential for comprehension) # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5