around a dozen local people joined organiser thomas cooper and 38degrees representative, sondhya gupta, to hand in a petition to jeremy corbyn MP against proposed government snooping legislation which is currently in committee stage at westminster.
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38degrees is a UK organisation with more than a million members utilising the internet to create a powerful voice able to influence government or big business with people-powered campaigns.
they decide on campaigns through an open system of proposals and polls and are funded by donations from their members.
their most notable success to date was the campaign against the selling off of vast tracts of public forest land. the ensuing campaign included a petition of half a million people, and thousands of emails to MPs, as well as an advertising and poster campaign. the result was a huge government climbdown over the privatisation plans.
among their current campaigns, 38degrees are working to publicise government plans for draconian legislation to access everyone's phone, email and internet use without scrutiny or warrant.
the campaign has already attracted more than 140,000 signatories, and in order to maximise and personalise the impact, 38degrees are asking people to organise local hand-ins to individual MPs. to date there have been dozens of these events.
in islington north, thomas cooper took up the baton and organised a meeting to hand in the uk petition and to represent the 926 local votes already registered against the bill.
despite last-minute diary clashes delaying mr corbyn, around a dozen local people joined in the event this morning at his constiuency office near finsbury park. when he arrived, jeremy assured the group that he was firmly against the legislation, and listened to a range of comments and observations from the group.
these included basic concerns of privacy, the right to freedom from intrusion into personal life, the dangers of databases, and the power of corporations, as well as the effect such legislation would have on the UK's right to pressure oppressive states.
after about half an hour of lively discussion, the MP officially accepted the petition and agreed to keep in touch as the bill progresses through parliament.
after mr corbyn left, people continued to share information and ideas about privacy, including alternative search engines such as startpage, the 'trackmenot' (TMN) plug-in for firefox browsers, the use of VPNs such as btguard, and the 'tor' anonymiser system.
Original article on IMC London:
