{"id":2350,"date":"2011-03-04T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/the-citizenry-has-a-right-to-scrutinise-the-state-julian-assange.html"},"modified":"2011-03-04T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T22:00:00","slug":"the-citizenry-has-a-right-to-scrutinise-the-state-julian-assange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/the-citizenry-has-a-right-to-scrutinise-the-state-julian-assange.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state.&#8221; &#8211;Julian Assange"},"content":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zL6433U87HU\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/i3.ytimg.com\/vi\/zL6433U87HU\/default.jpg\"><\/a>\nSome people compare LAKE to Wikileaks, so let&#8217;s go there.\nJulian Assange, like\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/02\/the-mentality-that-exploits-and-destroys-the-natural-environment-wendell-berry.html\">\nWendell Berry<\/a>,\nlinks the civil rights movement and the environmental movement.\nHe\n<a href=\"http:\/\/news.smh.com.au\/breaking-news-national\/our-time-has-come-assange-tells-rally-20110204-1agoy.html\">\nthen says:<\/a>\n<blockquote>\n&#8220;For the Internet generation this is our challenge and this is our time.\nWe support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than that the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state.\nThe state has asserted its authority by surveilling, monitoring and regimenting all of us, all the while hiding behind cloaks of security and opaqueness.\nSurely it was only a matter of time before citizens pushed back and we asserted our rights.&#8221;\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"640\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zL6433U87HU\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>\nLAKE&#8217;s\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/\">\nmotto is:<\/a>\n<blockquote>\nCitizen dialog for transparent process\n<\/blockquote>\nThat makes Assange&#8217;s proposition\n<blockquote>\n&#8220;the citizenry has a right to scrutinise the state&#8221;\n<\/blockquote>\nsound very familiar to us.\n<p>\nLocally it&#8217;s more a matter of elected and appointed bodies ignoring\ntheir chartered responsibilities to\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/02\/why-jobs-jobs-jobs-isnt-good-enough.html\">\nthe public good and the general welfare.<\/a>\nWell, many people are also tired of the permit inspection brigade,\nbut that&#8217;s another story.\n<p>\nAssange\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zL6433U87HU\">\nalso adds:<\/a>\n\n<!--more-->\n<blockquote>\n&#8220;Individuals, not governments, have a right to privacy.\nStrong powers must be held to account, while the weak must be protected.\nWe believe in transparent power, not in transparent people.\nWe publish material that is in the public interest.\nFor us as the European Court of Human Rights and the British Court of Appeals has held,\nthe decisive factor in balancing the protection of private life against\nfreedom of expression should like in the\ncontribution the material has make to the debate of general interest.&#8221;\n<\/blockquote>\nIn the U.S. I think the relevant law is called the First Amendment,\nas was re-confirmed in the Pentagon Papers case.\nI am not a lawyer, so let&#8217;s let\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=eL-fpqZhhzM\">\nJudge Napolitano<\/a> handle it:\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"640\" height=\"390\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eL-fpqZhhzM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<blockquote>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/learning\/general\/onthisday\/big\/0511.html\">\n<img style=\"float:right;border:none;\"\nwidth=\"234\" height=\"355\"\nsrc=\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/section\/learning\/general\/onthisday\/big\/0511_big.gif\"><\/a>\n&#8220;And so the Court ruled, that\nwhenever members of the media come upon government documents of\npublic interest, no matter how secret, no matter how they got them,\nthere can be no liability, civil or criminal, for publishing them.&#8221;\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nTopics clearly in the general interest locally include but are not\nlimited to\n<a href=\"\/blog\/category\/water\">\nwater<\/a>,\nthe\n<a href=\"\/blog\/category\/environment\">\nenvironment<\/a> in general,\n<a href=\"\/blog\/category\/incarceration\">\nincarceration,<\/a>\nand especially\n<a href=\"\/blog\/category\/planning\">\nplanning<\/a>,\nor, as we put it,\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/01\/covering-the-planners-to-connect-the-dots.html\">\ncovering the planners to connect the dots.<\/a>\nIn a word: transparency.\n<p>\nAssange continued:\n<blockquote>\n&#8220;I find it interesting that some politicians who have no intention\nof applying the\nprecautionary principle when it comes to the environment,\nbut assert it when it comes to our reporting.\nThey conjure up hypothetical scenarios\nand claim that somehow someday our stories might somehow harm someone somewhere.&#8221;\n<\/blockquote>\nWe have not seen much of that explicitly locally.\nNow of course LAKE isn&#8217;t a sizeable professional news organization like Wikileaks.\nAlthough LAKE does qualify as a news medium according to the\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.citmedialaw.org\/blog\/2007\/congress-passes-foia-reform-bill-expands-definition-news-media\">\nOPEN Government Act of 2007<\/a> (more on that in a later post),\nLAKE is just curious citizens; a small core group and a larger loosely\nconnected group of associates. You can be LAKE, too!\n<p>\nWe certainly have seen local elected and appointed officials\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/02\/why-jobs-jobs-jobs-isnt-good-enough.html\">\nrefusing to take risk into account regarding the environment.<\/a>\n<p>\nWe did get a request from a prominent local university to delete\nalready-published videos and pictures.\nNaturally LAKE refused.\n<p>\nWe have seen\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/02\/we-can-limit-them-to-one-area-joe-pritchard.html\">\nhints of<\/a>\n<blockquote>\nSafety concerns about the citizens-to-be-heard section of commission meetings&#8230;\n<\/blockquote>\nand\n<blockquote>\n&#8220;We cannot stop anybody from taking video of a session; but we can\nlimit them to one area; it&#8217;s distracting to us and to citizens to have\nsomebody running around the session trying to get different angles,&#8221;\nsaid Joe Pritchard, county manager.\n<\/blockquote>\nMaybe they&#8217;ll get more used to working in the daylight as\ntime goes by and perhaps they&#8217;ll even realize that the\ncitizenry is not their enemy.\n<p>\n-jsq for\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/\">\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border:none;\"  width=\"23\" height=\"29\" src=\"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/images\/owlsmall.jpg\">\nLAKE<\/a>, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some people compare LAKE to Wikileaks, so let&#8217;s go there. Julian Assange, like Wendell Berry, links the civil rights movement and the environmental movement. He then says: &#8220;For the Internet generation this is our challenge and this is our time. We support a cause that is no more radical a proposition than that the citizenry [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,16,19,11,88,733,1867,3,54,178,134],"tags":[1870,1272,1872,1875,8706,1877,10,507,548,1868,8702,12,8734,1873,1882,1883,730,1879,1881,1878,1876,1880,1874,8700,8726,1175,180,8743,1871,1869],"class_list":["post-2350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-environment","category-history","category-lake","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-media","category-mlk","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","category-vlcia","category-vsu","tag-carolyn-selby","tag-citizen","tag-civil-rights","tag-dialog","tag-environment","tag-general-welfare","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-internet","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-julian-assange","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-martin-luther-king","tag-news-media","tag-open-government","tag-open-records","tag-power","tag-precautionary-principle","tag-privacy","tag-public-good","tag-public-interest","tag-state","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta-city-council","tag-valdosta-state-university","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vsu","tag-wendell-berry","tag-wikileaks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-BU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}