Topic database
Panopticon
721 views
Using the metaphor of a Panopticon, this film looks at how technology and the convergence of vast data stores together are fuelling one of the most comprehensive attacks on privacy ever before seen. How is modern society being defined by such rapid changes? Where are we heading? By travelling to Germany to show how such attacks have been the basis for past dictatorships, Panopticon asks: Even if you have nothing to hide, do you have nothing to fear? What does privacy mean for you? When precisely does the surveillance state begin? What is your threshold? With a focus on the Netherlands, Panopticon offers a comprehensive analysis challenging the current herd-mentality and apathy about privacy in the modern world.
Erasing David
884 views
Film maker David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world -- Britain. When David receives a letter stating that both he and his daughter are amongst the 25 million residents whose details have been lost by the government in a massive data breach, David sets out to investigate some potential impacts of such data being lost in a society of mass surveillance. Erasing David documents the test where David hires two private detectives to track him down as he chooses to 'disappear' for 30 days to see if he can avoid being caught amongst the vast data trails generated by modern society...
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
41.42K views
All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace is a series about how humans have been colonised by the machines they have built -- "Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers."
The Trap
21.41K views
If one steps back and looks at what freedom actually means for us today, it's a strange and limited kind of freedom. The West apparently fought the Cold War for "individual freedom", yet it is still something our leaders continually promise to give us. Abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the attempt to force "freedom" on to other people has led to bloody mayhem. This, in turn, has helped inspire terrorist attacks in Britain. In response, the government has dismantled long-standing laws that were designed to protect individual freedom...
Hacking Democracy
1.15K views
Filmed over three years, Hacking Democracy documents a group of American citizens investigating anomalies and irregularities with the electronic voting systems used during the 2000 and 2004 U.S. Presidential elections. The investigation revolves around the flawed integrity and security of the machines, particularly those made by the Diebold corporation. Could the elections have been rigged?
The Virtual Revolution
2.11K views
20 years on from the invention of the World Wide Web, The Virtual Revolution explores how the Internet is reshaping almost every aspect of our lives. But what is really going on behind this reshaping? The founding father of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, believed his invention would remain an open frontier that nobody could own, and that it would take power from the few and give it to the many. So how do these utopian claims stand today? Have the possibilities of the technology been constrained purposefully by corporations and distorted by government?
Taking Liberties Since 1997
933 views
Teenage sisters detained for 36 hours for a peaceful protest; an RAF war veteran arrested for wearing an anti-Bush and Blair T-shirt; an innocent man shot in a police raid; and a man is held under house arrest for two years, after being found innocent in court. Ordinary law-abiding citizens being punished for exercising their rights--right to protest, right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, right to privacy, to be detained without charge, to be innocent until proven guilty, prohibition from torture...
Suspect Nation
985 views
New surveillance technologies are penetrating every aspect of our lives and we don’t even know it. All across the world, millions of cameras are watching us. The police are able to record almost every journey and operate on ever expanding powers of search and arrest; governments collect our DNA, fingerprints and iris scans while colluding with corporations to profile us and analyse our behaviour. All of these measures, it is said by the state, is to protect our freedom...
Spying On The Home Front
645 views
September 11 has indelibly altered the world in ways that people are now starting to earnestly question: not only perpetual orange alerts, barricades and body frisks at the airport, but greater government scrutiny of people's records and electronic surveillance of their communications. The US National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in wiretapping and the sifting of Internet communications of millions of people worldwide, including their own...
For Your Eyes Only?
295 views
For Your Eyes Only? reports on the existence of a secret government program that intercepts millions of e-mails each day in the name of 'terrorist surveillance'. News about the program came to light when a former AT&T employee, Mark Klein, blew the whistle on a large-scale installation of secret Internet monitoring equipment deep inside AT&T's San Francisco office. The equipment was installed at the request of the United States government to spy on all e-mail traffic across the entire Internet. Though the government and AT&T refuse to address the issue directly, Klein backs up his charges with internal company documents and personal photos...
Pandora’s Box
12.83K views
Pandora's Box -- A fable from the age of science, is a six part series examining the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism, tying together communism in the Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah's leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s and the history of nuclear power.