The bombing in Oslo and the slaughter of more than 80 teenagers at Labour’s youth camp at Utøya broke my heart. How is it possible for one man to execute such atrocity?

I’ve read, seen and listened to everything related to the massacre. Again and again. Not necessarily to understand it because I already know this evil madness cannot find any rational explanation. But rather to understand how we can go on after this.

However, here are some of the details we know about the attacker:

The 32-year old “home grown” Norwegian terrorist was not known by the police in Norway. As far as we know, the authorities were not keeping an eye on him. Anders Behring Breivik managed to create the largest and most horrible atrocity in Norway since the Second World War. However, his views and opinions were not a secret.

Organizations such as the Norwegian Centre against Racism, which monitors Islam/immigration sceptic web sites, had followed him for some time at the web site Document.no. Here, Breivik argued what it means to be a “real” Norwegian (unlike a khat-chewing Somali, as he wrote).

However, his views are not unique. It is striking to read that Knut Olav Åmås, culture editor of Aftenposten, Norway’s largest newspaper, says that he daily recieves debate articles that replicate the writings by Breivik.  You can also read similar, but less articulated arguments on the websites of VG, Dagbladet and Hegnar online – the Norwegian news sites with highest traffic.

Breivik was also a member of the Progressive Party for 10 years, a political party known for its immigration scepticism, although they have never had governmental power. We know less about how much influence he had within the party. Breivik ended his membership in 2007.

What shocks me most about Breivik’s strategy, in addition to the all the human lives he managed to kill, is his manifesto. This killer was not stupid. Rather he was intelligent, structured – but at the same time – totally twisted. Only a few days before the horror started, he released an online manifesto in the name of Andrew Berwick, in addition to sending it to the True Finns, the Finnish right wing party.

In the manifesto, he explains how the atrocities are a marketing device for his manifest, his grand plan for an independent Europe without Muslims. With the manifest or diary, he wants to make it easy for other people to follow in his footsteps. It is a manifest for a European civil war, according the Norwegian blogger Bjørn Stærk (I haven’t read the manifesto myself), where culture conservative “pure” Europeans (the good) fight the alliance of politically correct cultural Marxist and Muslims (the evil).

Apparently, he has worked on this disgusting plan for nine years and spent 300.000 euros planning the massacre.

Softness on immigration seems to be the reason why he attacked the governmental buildings (where his own father and stepbrother used to work) and political youth from the Labour party.

As more and more details about the attacker are uncovered, I’m still convinced his evil ideas will be defeated. He wants us to hate immigrants, but Anders Behring Breivik himself involuntarily demonstrates why immigrants become immigrants in the first place. Why they run away from massacres and bombs in their home countries.

My biggest hope for Norway, the Norwegian public discourse and Norway’s civic society came when I heard the Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg speaking on the same evening as the horrible events took place in Oslo and at Utøya.

“We must never give up our values.
We must show that our open society can pass this test too.
That the answer to violence is even more democracy.
Even more humanity.
But never naivity.
That is something we owe the victims and their families.”

Those are incredibly beautiful words for someone who cherishes and works for openness, transparency, democracy, humanity. We are so used to revengeful international political leaders shouting “We’re gonna hunt you down” after a terrorist attack that it is almost shocking to hear words such as democracy and openness in the same context.

However, we will see certain changes in Norway. We will see more security in public buildings. We can also expect the intelligence service to spend more resources on Norway’s right wing environment. The past years, foreign threats have recieved most of the police’s attention.

But as Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre stated: “Tomorrow’s Norway will be fully recognizable.” The attacker’s political ideas are already available for everyone to read. Yesterday, a young Labour politician said on Twitter: “Bring the attacker’s political ideas to the table, and we will debate them to death”.

Norway is ready to fight terrorism with more democracy, more openness – without being naive.

Jeg er for åpne data, men jeg er ikke en åpenhetsfundamentalist. Jeg er for ytringsfrihet, men jeg mener likevel en viss grad av konfidensialitet er nødvendig for at en del samfunnsprosesser skal fungere. Dessuten har personvern en viktig rolle å spille, noe Wikileaks til tider glemmer. Men jeg mener likevel at myndighetene, også de norske, kan bli MYE åpnere enn de er i dag.

Wikileaks’ mindmap

Før jeg kommer tilbake til det store MEN’et, vil jeg fortelle litt om mine inntrykk av Julian Assange, Wikileaks grunnlegger.

Siden jeg er interessert i teknologi, politikk og media, har jeg fulgt Wikileaks fra sidelinjen i flere år. Den kontroversielle frontfiguren Julian Assange har sørget for å få Wikileaks øverst på den globale dagsorden, men hans dominerende ego har også vært problematisk for organisasjonen. Vi vet i dag at flere tidligere wikileaks’ere har hoppet av og er i ferd med å starte sin egen tjeneste,  Openleaks.

Jeg har sett Assange i aksjon på mange konferanser, sist gang i New York i sommer. Den sølvskinnende halvlange manken på den 39 år gamle mannen gjorde at han lett skilte seg ut på Personal Democracy Forum, den mest innflytelsesrike konferansen for teknopolitikk i verden med base i New York og Barcelona. En opprivende barnefordelingssak og kampen mot et ansiktsløst byråkrati i Australia skal være årsaken til at pigmenten forsvant fra Assanges hår i 1999, kunne vi senere lese i en artikkel i magasinet The New Yorker.

På denne junidagen i 2010 sitter Daniel Ellsberg på scenen, mannen som ble legendarisk for å ha lekket Pentagon-papirene til New York Times i 1971, en av de mest berømte varslerne i vestlig historie. Assange deltar i samtalen via storskjerm og Skype fra Australia.

Skypeforbindelsen hopper og rykker, Assange australske aksent blir enda vanskeligere å forstå enn vanlig. Men det jeg og hundrevis av de andre teknopolitikk-deltakterne får med oss, er at Assange og Ellsberg gjensidige beundrere hverandres prestasjoner.

Et halvt år senere er Assanges hår farget brunt, han sitter i varetekt i London, og hackere fra hele verden (gjennom gruppen Anonymous) har startet motangrep med “Distributed Denial of Service-angrep” mot nettsidene til Visa, Amazon, PayPal og Mastercard og PostService, selskaper som har kuttet forbindelsen til Wikileaks. Og i en av de siste Twitter-oppdateringene fra Pentagon-varsleren Ellsberg er budskapet klart:

Alle hendelsene rundt Wikileaks de siste årene, og særlig de siste ukene, har satt i gang noen av årets mest spennende debatter. Men reaksjonene på ”Cablegate” – lekkasjen av de mer enn 250 000 amerikanske diplomatiske rapportene via Wikileaks – viser at vestlige demokratier har sviktet.

Jakten på Julian Assanges hode, Wikileaks grunnlegger, viser at kritikerne har mistet hodet, og når krig er fred, oppleves informasjonsfrihet som terror, som Jon Wessel-Aas skriver.

Særlig amerikanske politikere og kommersielle selskaper som Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, eBay, PostService, som har kuttet sine forbindelser til Wikileaks, har løpt hodeløst rundt de siste ukene.

Når Sarah Palin krever at  budbringeren Assange  blir “hunted like Osama bin Laden” og senator Joseph Lieberman presser Amazon til kaste Wikileaks ut fra sine tjenester i serverskyen, så blir jeg kvalm på vestlige demokratier og kommersielle selskapers vegne. I en uke da Norge deler ut fredsprisen til en fengslet kinesisk dissident, fremstår noen av de amerikanske reaksjonene på Wikileaks som svært kinesiske.

Men jeg har mange spørsmål om Wikileaks og en ”wikileakable” verden, mange flere spørsmål enn svar. Jeg håper dere kan være med og drodle rundt noen av disse spørsmålene sammen med meg. Teknologien muliggjør at mer og mer av samfunnet blir gjennomsiktige, så hvor bør grensen gå? Teknologisk determinisme handler om at vi ikke har noen valg, teknologien styrer samfunnsutviklingen og vi humper etter. Dersom vi ikke ønsker å la oss styre av teknologien alene, hvordan ønsker vi å håndterer en ”wikileakable” verden – i forhold til ytringsfrihet, personvern, politikk, jus?

Hva skjer når dataene som blir lekket via Wikileaks ikke tilhører en stat, et stort kommersielt selskap eller en organisasjon? Når alle data kan lekke, betyr det også at private eposter, telefonsamtaler eller helseopplysninger kan offentliggjøres via Wikileaks, slik det skjedde med Sarah Palins epost.

I flere saker har Wikileaks ofret personvernet på vei mot målet om mer åpne samfunn -og styringsformer. Særlig gjelder det lekkasjene fra Afghanistan, der enorme mengder dokumenter ble offentliggjort uten å anonymisere afghanske kilder.  Det foruroliget meg også lese karakteristikker som dette, fra en artikkel om Julian Assange i the New Yorker i juni i år:

”I asked Assange if he would refrain from releasing information that he knew might get someone killed. He said that he had instituted a “harm-minimization policy,” whereby people named in certain documents were contacted before publication, to warn them, but that there were also instances where the members of WikiLeaks might get “blood on our hands.”

Vi har alltid hatt varslere, det er ikke noe nytt med Wikileaks. Det nye er at Wikileaks har gjort det enklere enn noen gang å distribuere og spre informasjonen, hurtig og globalt – i dette tilfellet hemmelig informasjon.

Grunnen til at Wikileaks provoserer mange, og særlig myndighetene så enormt, er at spillereglene nå er snudd fullstendig på hodet. Overvåkning og innsyn har historisk vært noe Staten driver med, det har jo østtyske DDR, sovjetiske KGB, norske POT og George Orwells bok ”1984” lært oss grundig.

Kampen mot Datalagringsdirektivet i Norge handler nettopp om at vi ikke ønsker at staten skal lagre trafikkdata om våre telefonsamtaler, sms’er, eposter, og nettrafikk over lengre tid. Men med Wikileaks og ”Cablegate” er rollene byttet, da er det borgere og ikke minst hackere som kikker myndighetene etter i kortet, noe også Umberto Eco skriver om i artikkelen ”Not such wicked leaks”.

Med andre ord; lillebror ser deg, Hillary Clinton!

Men hva har egentlig myndigheten å frykte, kan man spørre litt flåsete, som i denne  Twittermeldingen som har sirkulert;  ”Dear Government:  as you keep telling us, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear”.

Betyr det så at ”resultatet av slike lekkasjer kan jo bli at diplomater må rapportere muntlig”, som utenriksminster Jonas Gahr Støre først uttalte til Dagbladet?

Senere har Støre moderert seg, heldigvis, til Aftenposten:

Norges utenriksminister Jonas Gahr Støre kommer imidlertid ikke til å fortelle sine diplomater at de må bli mer forsiktige med hva de skriver.

”Nei, norske diplomater er nøkterne og saklige i sine rapportinger. Jeg synes det ville være synd om de nå skulle legge bånd seg selv i måten de skriver av frykt for lekkasjer.”

En annen mulighet er jo å gi en del av rapportene lavere hemmelighetsgradering. Eller så må en bare gjøre som John Naughton foreslår i Guardian: ” Our rulers have a choice to make: either they learn to live in a WikiLeakable world, with all that implies in terms of their future behaviour; or they shut down the internet. Over to them.”

Et siste spørsmål som melder seg er hvem skal få bestemme hva som er åpent nok – varslerne, hackerne eller myndighetene? Eller noen helt andre?

Andre bloggposter om Wikileaks dere børe lese:

TechPresident – A PdF reader on Wikileaks and Internet freedom

Clay Shirky – WikiLeaks and the long haul

New Yorker (artikkel fra juni om Julian Assange) – No secrets

John Naughton – WikiLeaks and challenges for journalism

Bård Vegar Solhjell – Eit forsvar for WikiLeaks

Heidi Lunde Nordby, aka Vampus – WikiLeaks – en hær av Davider

Jon Wessel Aas – “Når krig er fred”, oppleves informasjonsfrihet som terror*

Anders Waage Nilsen: Kampen om nettkontrollen

Eirik Bergesen: Derfor spiser diplomater kanapeer

Photo: Jon Worth, Flickr, CC

Last year, we came to Barcelona to learn about the tech magic that carried Barack Obama all the way into the Oval Office. One year later, we knew that Obama had not brought “the online movement” into the White House. This year, I came to Barcelona to learn more about the European civic use of technology, not primarily the American, and I got what I hoped for, and once again got overwhelmed to be part of such a fun and engaging community. I also came to deliver this presentation:

I’ve written about some of the speakers that especially grabbed my attention in Origo-bloggen (Norwegian), here I would like to focus on what the PdF community actually can achieve in Europe:

• Bring people together aka idea sharing
• Building bridges between countries, language barrier, institutions
• Speed up the culture change
• Inspire and define new policy
• Raise the threshold for what is possible with We-Gov
• Improve political participation  and political processes through new tools (in the long run, improve people’s lives)
• Create new businesses

This will not happen tomorrow, not the next month. It will take time, it is a process. That was also the message from several of the speakers, especially Paul Johnston, Executive Advisor at Cisco System, who was one of my favorites.

“We’re in a transition phase. eDemocracy is maturing, but it is still in a teenage phase. ” So true.

He also said that we need to change policy making from being in a black box. And first step on its way is TRANSPARENCY, then can we start thinking about (mass) participation with the new tools. He used the British Spending Challenge to illustrate his example. The UK government got more than 44.000 suggestions for how they could cut spending, but Johnston argued that none of them were taken into account when the government actually made their policy behind closed doors.

Johnston called for more open political processes, better tools for contributing to policy work and organizing mass participation and last, but not least, a CULTURE CHANGE within the political environment, but also media.

PdF, with Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej as the insightful and inspiring community builders, has already started the culture change in Europe. All the blog post in the aftermath of the conference are clear proofs (Writing for (y)EU, Vilfredo, Public Affairs 2.0, Sylwia Presley, Curious Cathrine, Guide Star International blog, among other).

Next year, I would like to see more of this on the PdF Europe program:

More women, more conversation between the keynotes, a small hack camp within the conference, maybe a new location (I love Barcelona, but London is where the European PdF wheel is turning fastest) – and to be really demanding -  political promises given on stage:-)

What do you want to see more (or less of) at the next PdF Europe?

He’s been checking the web traffic of the ten largest American environmental organizations, and to his surprise, he finds that the traffic is hardly increasing:

If you total the raw numbers up, the overall change in unique visitors to the Group of Ten’s websites between April and May is a paltry 3.3% increase, from 2.19 million to 2.27 million.

How can this be the case, in the middle of the  biggest American  environmental disaster since the Exxon Valdez? Sifry has several theories and explanations himself which I recommend you to read. He also explains that he has not included social media activities (particularly Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr have been used heavily by the environmental organizations) in his analysis. But he is raising a bigger question that also applies to other organizations: How do you measure success/impact/attention in 2010?

• Fundraising
• Legal changes
• Political attention
• Media attention
• New members
• Volunteers
• Social media engagement
• Web traffic
• Number of signatures/emails sent
• Number of fans/followers/likes

I particularly like this paragraph by Sifry:

While this shift in tactics is real, I still find it surprising that any enviro group would be seeing a decline in its organic web traffic during this crisis. Part of the reason may be tactical: None of these groups appear to be buying AdWords placements against searches for “BP” on Google. Nor do any of them show up on the first page of search results for BP. The same is true for searches or placements around “oil spill.” Compete’s data also shows that the top referring terms to all ten of these groups’ sites have nothing to do with the spill. Is it possible that the digital strategists at all ten of these organizations have no budget for online advertising and no interest in organic search?

Are we seeing organizations moving their tactics away from organic search and over to social media engagement? Any views?

You can dive into an ocean of impressive and entertaining animation by RSA Animate on fairly complicated topics. Here is another good one:

Do you have some animated favorites you would like to share?

I got that question from EUobserver reporter Leigh Phillips on Twitter today.

The question came after we had a short discussion about EUobserver TV vs. podcast – eh, to be correct, there is no such thing as an EUobserver podcast, but I wished there was. I haven’t been a huge podcast fan previously, but lately, I spend more time listening to podcasts. Especially when I do such incredible boring house work such as folding clothes and washing floors.

My top favorite is the American programme On the Media (NPR).

Next on my list:

• Guardian’s Tech Weekly
• New York Times’ Tech Talk
• BBC’s Digital Planet
• and sometimes I listen to the Economist’s audio edition as well as the Norwegian media programme Kurer.

And the reason for the whole Twitter conversation was that I the EUobserver had a good podcast about the hottest EU matters.  It could be featured with one profiled EU reporter and new guest each week, also good bloggers – maybe someone from the Bloggingportal?

Here are Phillips’ favorites:

What are your favorites? What have I missed? Do you listen to podcasts at all?

Updated: My readers’s favorites:

• Guardian’s Media Talk USA (Jeff Jarvis)
• EconTalk with Russ Roberts
• RSA public lectures
• This Week in Google
• This American Life
• Radiolab
• To the Point
• The Moth
• The News from Lake Wobegon
• Excess Baggage (BBC Radio 4)
• In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)
• Car Talk (NPR)
• Behind the News
• Democracy Now
• Little Atoms
• PRI’s The World
• The Rachel Maddow’s Show
• Friday Night Comedy (BBC Radio 4)

The best examples of European techPolitics is the topic of the panel I’m going to participate in at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York, June 3 – 4, my favorite conference on technology, politics, and media!

Photo: Optical, Flickr, CC

Jon Worth and I have already started the work and gathered several examples at this new web site, but we would love to get feedback from you on this topic. Basically, we are looking for smart ways politicians, government, organizations and activists are using technology to discuss, start campaigns, solve problems, create new services, develope ideas and new policy, interact with users/voters, etc.

Take a look at our examples at bestof.techpolitics.eu and if you have any suggestions, there are several ways to contact us; use the comment section here, on the web site bestof.techpolitics.eu, in Jon’s blog or contact us on Twitter (Bente, Jon). I’ve also written about the project in Norwegian at Origo-bloggen.

We will use the hashtag  #besttechpol on Twitter if you want to follow the discussion there.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (Labour) called for smarter government back in December when he presented the reform of public sector, assisted by the legendary WWW-father Tim Berners-Lee. Brown talkes about what he calls “third generation of public service”:

The next stage of public service reform will be characterised by a radical shift of power to the users of public services, all users, not just those who are wealthy and powerful, not just those who have the resources to make the best of what government offers them. Power will shift to everyone who needs to use our public services.

In shorter and clearer words; Berners-Lee is leading the work to ‘make public data public’, and the data.gov.uk (inspired by the American data.gov) is supposed to be an “single easy to use online access point” to public data. The site is not released, but it is supposed to look like this.

David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party, is also demanding to set data free, as he said in this speech in June last year;

“We’re going to set this data free.  In the first year of the next Conservative Government, we will find the most useful information in twenty different areas ranging from information about the NHS to information about schools and road traffic and publish it so people can use it.

This information will be published proactively and regularly – and in a standardised format so that it can be ‘mashed up’ and interacted with.”

Boris Johnson (Conservative), Mayor of London, has recently launched a prototype version of  London’s datastore (it will formally launch at January 29), and more than 200 data sets will be released. This is how Johnson explains the rational behind the datastore:

The US has led the way on this idea of setting their data free for anyone – students, campaigners, software developers – to use. Now it’s time for Britain to get up to speed and I want London, as the greatest city in the UK, to be at the forefront of this revolution, that will not only increase democracy, but also provide a potential money-spinner for the city’s hugely important software development sector. (via Vox Pubica)

Basically, they are all saying the same. So how can they win votes (when you exclude all other political topics) on their identical open data policy?

(To my international readers, this is an article I’ve written for the Norwegian weekly Morgenbladet about technology surprises from 2009, inspired by Nassim Nicholas Taled’s book The Black Swan. In my opinion, Google’s new collaborative tool, Google Wave represents such a black swan.)

De færreste spådde Sovjetunionens fall, Hitlers maktovertagelse og påfølgende verdenskrig, internettets spredning, den siste finanskrisen eller 11. september. Dette er hendelser som kan kalles svarte svaner. Det vil si at de er sjeldne og uforutsigbare, men likevel svært viktige.

Før 1790 var det ingen som klarte å forestille seg at det fantes svarte svaner, for alle observerte svaner var jo hvite. Helt til oppdagere rundt 1790 fant Cygnus atratus – svarte svaner – i Australia. Nassim Nicholas Taled skriver om dette i boken The Black Swan. Svarte svaner handler altså om vår manglende evne til å forutse overraskelser; de gjemmer seg i blindsonen vår, for så plutselig å se oss i hvitøyet.

Hvor mange ganger har vi ikke hørt at «vi må lære av våre feil» og at «historien gjentar seg»? Ifølge Taled hjelper det ikke så mye å kunne historien på rams når den svarte svanen lander i dammen vår. For historien åler seg ikke fremover – den hopper, uforutsigbart.

Når jeg ser tilbake på teknologiåret 2009, er det da mulig å se en svart svane eller en sjelden overraskelse blant alle hendelsene vi snakket og tastet om? Og er det mulig at en svart svane kan komme snikende – at vi ikke oppdager den med en gang?

I 2009 kjøpte enkelte av oss lesebrett for første gang (inkludert meg selv, som har gledet og irritert meg over Kindle). Enda flere har betalt for å «streame» musikk på den svenske tjenesten Spotify, både på nett og på mobil. Spørsmålet om datalagringsdirektivet, den svenske Pirate Bay-saken og de svenske FRA- og Ipred-lovene har satt datalagring, overvåkning og opphavsrett på dagsordenen, særlig blant bloggere.

Stortingsvalget i september lokket flere politikere ut i sosiale medier enn noen gang før, de sendte ut hele 117 000 twittermeldinger i månedene før valget, og «alle» var på Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, blogg og Origo.

I 2009 er en sky blitt mer enn et objekt på himmelen; nå handler det om å ha innholdet sitt tilgjengelig i nettskyen på internett (eksempelvis Google Documents, Flickr for bilder eller sikkerhetskopier på Dropbox). Slik kan vi jobbe hvor som helst, uavhengig av den lokale harddisken, såkalt cloud computing. Motstanden mot å offentliggjøre skattelistene ble enda større da flere store norske medieselskaper laget applikasjoner som gjorde at du kunne se hva Facebook-vennene dine tjente.

Er noe av dette svarte svaner? Trolig ikke. For meg er den svarteste svanen en arbeidsform, representert ved et program, nemlig Google Wave. Det var ekstremt opphausset og omringet av mye mystikk under beta-lanseringen i høst. Mange har prøvd verktøyet, som er en blanding av e-post, chat og wiki – altså dokument og samtale – og skuffelsen har vært stor blant de fleste. Google Wave er ennå uferdig, og kommer til å bli mye bedre, men samarbeids- og samhandlingstanken som ligger bak verktøyet fra de to ingeniørene Lars og Jens Rasmussen er grandios. Nøyaktig 20 år etter World Wide Webs spede begynnelse på Cern i 1989 kan bølgen til de to danskene få verden til å hoppe i en annen retning enn ventet.

Have you ever wondered how it is to live in a modern-day “1984″ society?

Canadian-French cartoonist Guy Delisle tells you all about it in this wonderful little book, Pyongyang about the sad and fucked-up country North Korea, what he calls a “hermit country”. I gave it to my husband this Christmas, and ended up reading it myself as well. Delisle’s work for different Asian animation studios are basis for this book, as well as his other book, Shenzhen, in addition to a book he has animated about Burma.

As Delisle says, George Orwell’s “1984″ is “the book that comes to mind for a stay in North Korea”. He stayed there for two months, and has drawn his everyday experiences with neat details, such as this observation: “In the 1990s, at the height of a famine that claimed some 2 million lives, North Korea was the world’s biggest client for Henessy Cognag”. Here’s another quote:

“Burried 90 meters underground, the Pyongyang subway can double as a bomb shelter in case of a nuclear attack. What better way to cultivate a constant sense of threat?”

Here are some other of my political cartoon favorites:

• Everything by Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis.
• Joe Sacco , especially Safe area Gorazde
• Alan Moore/David Lloyd, V for Vendetta
• Art Spiegelman, Maus

Do you have any other political cartoons to recommend?