LONDON: More than 500 authors, including J M Coetzee and Gunter Grass, have signed a petition to the United Nations published yesterday which claims mass state surveillance is violating basic freedoms.
The signatories called for a new international bill of digital rights to curb what they claimed was the abuse of democracy through widespread Internet snooping.
The letter comes the day after eight leading US-based technology companies called on Washington to overhaul its surveillance laws following the recent revelations of online eavesdropping from fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.
The Writers Against Mass Surveillance petition, signed by 562 authors from more than 80 countries, was published in around 30 newspapers worldwide, including The Guardian in Britain.
The signatories were led by five winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature: South African writer Coetzee, German novelist Grass, Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek, Swedish poet Tomas Transtroemer and Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.
It was also signed by Booker Prize winners Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, John Berger, Roddy Doyle, Kazuo Ishiguro, Thomas Keneally, Yann Martel, Ian McEwan, Michael Ondaatje and Arundhati Roy.
Others included Peter Hoeg, Colm Toibin, Martin Amis, Lionel Shriver, Louis de Bernieres and Irvine Welsh.
“A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy,” the petition said.
AFP
