ICATA 1989 declaration

ICATA ’89 declaration

We, planetary citizens and participants in person or in electronic spirit to the fora and activities of the GALACTIC HACKER PARTY and ICATA’89 in Amsterdam, having confronted during three days our ideas, experciences, hopes and aims for the future, and deeply disturbed by the prospects of an information technology let loose by economic and political actors without democratic control and effective popular participation, HAVE RESOLVED THAT:

  • *The free and infuttered flow of information is an essential part of our fundamental liberties and shall be upheld in all circumstances. Information technology shall be open to all, no political, economic, or technical consideration shall be allowed to impede this right.
  • *Government shall be fully accessible to all people at all time. Information technology shall enhance the scope of this right, and not reduce it.
  • *Information belongs to the people and is made by the people. Computer scientists and developers are in the service of the people and shall not be allowed to develop into a caste of priviliged and unaccountable technocrats.
  • *The right to information goes together with the right to choose the carrier of that information. No model or format of information shall be imposed upon any individual, community or nation. Especially, the pressure to adopt unapporpriate “advanced” technology shall be resisted. Instead, user-friendly, low-cost & low-demand methods and equipments shall be evolved.
  • *The protection of individual liberties being our paramount concern, we demand that no private information shall be stored and retrieved by electronic means. AVAIL PUBLIC DATA FREELY, PROTECT PRIVATE DATA STRONGLY is our motto.
  • *Once private information is banned from the realm of informatics, all data therin and all networks shall be freely accessible. Repression and prosecution of hacking shall become devoid of sense. Meanwhile, we demand that all legislation wether already in force or under preparation directed against hacking by individuals without criminal commercial purpose to be withdrawn forthwith.
  • *Computer technology shall not be used by governments and corporate bodies to control and oppress the people, but shall on the contrary be used as an instrument of emancipation, advancement, learning and leisure. Likewise, computer technology, and science in general, shall be removed from the hands of the military establishments.
  • *All information is also deformation. The right to information is inseverably connected to the right to deformation which belongs to the people. The more information is produced, the more informationintrinsic chaos is created and the more noise comes into existence. Destruction of information is, just as production of information, the inlalienable right of the people.
  • *Computers and information technology shall become a tool to evolutionlize our living planet. The creation of Artificial Intelligent Communication shall safeguard Nature against the evil of commercial Human over-population.
  • *All regular and conventional information channels shall be subverted by means of the meta-realistical twist and shift of the factual reality in order to produce chaos, waste and noise which in their turn are deemed to be carriers of information.
  • *The freedom of the press applies unarbitridged to such techno- anarchistic publications as appear from time to time to liberate the people from the tyranny of man and machine and system.

Source: http://www.lucsala.nl/myster/school/icata89.html

ICATA 1989 declaration