Increasingly, the UK has become a surveillance society: one in which we aren't allowed to see the workings of government, nor governmental information relating to our towns and cities, yet are captured on camera more often than citizens of any other country in the world. At the same time, commercial services capture detailed information about our lives and sell it for commercial gain, without letting us decide who gets to see it. The ethics of social media remain relatively unexplored while the technology develops at breakneck speed.

At BarCamp Transparency we'll be talking about ways to improve transparency in government, social media ethics and cyber activism. If you're interested in a more open and democractic society, we'd love to have you there. Attendance is free: just bring your ideas and a willingness to discuss.

Go to following sites for more info:

http://www.barcamptransparency-uk.org/

http://www.barcamp.org/barcamptransparencyuk

VIRTUAL EVENT:

We have incorporated a virtual event too -  for those who are unable to attend our main offline event on the 26th.

Our main avenue is the event friendfeed account here:

http://friendfeed.com/barcamptransparency

We have prepared three virtual rooms for you to discuss issues related to:

1. open government - http://friendfeed.com/ff-bct09opengoverment
2. cyber-activism - http://friendfeed.com/ff-bct09cyberactivism
3. social media ethics - http://friendfeed.com/ff-bct09socialmediaethics

We will be there and hoping you will join us on Friday, 24th of July from 19:00 London/GMT time. We hope for a lively discussion hence we have not set an end time;)

We are using #bct09 for all conversation on all platforms.

SPONSORS:

Big thank you to

Google

for MAIN sponsorship  - covering the costs of our venue! We really appreciate that!

Also thank you to other sponsors for support:

1000heads

ProActive

OutMap

Moo Cards

And thanks to our media sponsors for covering the event:

Global Voices

Mashable

JackFM