The Dutch Pirate Party asked me to devise a few stunts for the local elections in Amsterdam. They wanted to advocate more privacy for citizens and more transparency for governmental organizations. How could we make these issues relevant to the local constituency when most of these issues are regulated on a national or European level?
When I started to work on the campaign they had zero budget, no supporters and no local organization to speak of. So I had to rely on free publicity. I devised two stunts: iamsterd.am and #citionscan. To ensure media coverage we forged a partnership with Geenstijl, Holland’s most popular blog.
Under the guise of iamsterd.am we placed 10 signs on the streets of Amsterdam, warning the public where the local government is collecting personal data and where it might end up. We pirated the logo of the Amsterdam Council to make the warnings look official. All signs and stickers were available to the public so that they could join our quest for more privacy awareness and governmental transparency.
With #citionscan we opposed Amsterdam’s parking policy. Every day the scan-cars of the Amsterdam parking authority (Cition) collect the licence plates of all parked cars in Amsterdam. Without anyone’s consent they have shared the licence plate database with the tax authorities (and who else? Big Brother only knows). We decided to fight fire with fire and scan them back. We planted GPS-devices on their scan-cars and shared the live map on Geenstijl, so that the public could see where the parking attendants were driving.
After the campaigns aired on Geenstijl (iamsterd.am, #citionscan) we got free publicity from Parool, Volkskrant, AT5 twice, Flabber, FTM, Bright , Webwereld, VICE and even Cition’s own blog. They were covered on national television by PowNews and RTL Boulevard.
A few days later the Dutch Pirates won their first seat in a local government.
As a final note, I also tried my hand at Art Direction for the election poster. I pirated the logos of the three biggest political parties in Amsterdam to represent them as Big Brother. And I used a purple pencil to symbolize the different kind of democracy as advocated by the Pirates.
