Freedom Not Fear: the Big Picture unveiled on Parliament Square

Thanks to everyone who came along to Parliament Square this morning and made the ORG/No2ID “Big Picture” event such a success. The sun was shining as we constructed a massive 4m x 5m collage of all the photos you’ve been uploading of UK surveillance state ephemeraover the past couple of weeks.

The result was this huge, Big-Brother-esque photo of Gordon Brown looking over Parliament Square against a background of barbed wire, handcuffs and double helices: an image of the society of total surveillance the UK is rapidly becoming. Our message was clear: although as individuals we only see incremental invasions of our privacy, put together, these creeping changes constitute a wholesale shift towards a society predicated not on freedom, but on fear.

As you can see from the photos of the event, despite the seriousness of our message, we had a lot of fun delivering it to Parliament. Thanks to the ORG and No2ID communities, Action on Rights for Children and Godalming Quakers (and of course to the special envoy sent from the under-twos community to speak out against ContactPoint), for coming along and helping out. Credits to Christopher Scally for artwork, AndreaMosaic for the mosaicing tools, Tom Ackers for Production Coordination and everyone who contributed photos of surveillance state ephemera.

We’ll be making a high quality download of the image available for re-use next week. Until then, you can see more images of the event here.