Tactical Technology Collective

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pages: 322 words: 84,752

Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up by Philip N. Howard

Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, Brian Krebs, British Empire, butter production in bangladesh, call centre, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, digital map, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Google Earth, Hacker News, Howard Rheingold, income inequality, informal economy, information security, Internet of things, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kibera, Kickstarter, land reform, M-Pesa, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, mobile money, Mohammed Bouazizi, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, packet switching, pension reform, prediction markets, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Skype, spectrum auction, statistical model, Stuxnet, Tactical Technology Collective, technological determinism, trade route, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, zero day

Digital networks are still relatively decentralized tools: so many different kinds of actors can use the new weaponry. Certainly hackers and technology ideologues such as Anonymous use the internet to attack political leaders and organizations they believe aren’t behaving well. And groups like the Tactical Technology Collective teach civil-society groups and democracy advocates how to fortify themselves with information technology.18 Governments and businesses use the internet to spy on one another, and the United States—and its allies—use the internet to spy on everyone. Still, it’s getting ever harder to control the civilian application of technology.

Now, both militaries and peaceniks can equip their members with digital media. Civilians have access to these tools, and they don’t always act in concert with their militaries.22 Many civic groups have creative digital media projects that inform their members and make policy makers think in new ways about old problems. The aforementioned Tactical Technology Collective helps civic groups and social movements develop sophisticated and secure communications strategies.23 FrontlineSMS, discussed in Chapter 3, is an open-source text messaging service used by nonprofits for distributing information about politics, health, and welfare.24 The Mobilization Lab is used by environmental groups to experiment with new ways of reaching their supporters and coordinating their campaigns.25 The internet of things—and the ability to manipulate devices—is the defining feature of modern political conflict.

But they are all often dedicated to pushing back on onerous government regulations over their internet access, and some participate in, or eagerly read about, technology issues from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, tweet about the latest reports on their country from the Open Society Foundation or Reporters Without Borders, run Tor Project software quietly on their home equipment, and even participate in training sessions from the Tactical Technology Collective. Even the most banal technology standards in the poorest of countries get scrutinized by civic groups emboldened by John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” or Hillary Clinton’s arguments that internet freedoms are a foreign policy priority.18 When I visited Tajikistan a few years ago, the government simply didn’t have an employee who was in charge of public-spectrum allocation.


pages: 390 words: 96,624

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom by Rebecca MacKinnon

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business cycle, business intelligence, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, digital Maoism, don't be evil, Eben Moglen, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, future of journalism, Global Witness, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Julian Assange, Mark Zuckerberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, national security letter, online collectivism, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parag Khanna, pre–internet, race to the bottom, real-name policy, Richard Stallman, Ronald Reagan, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Crocker, Steven Levy, Tactical Technology Collective, technological determinism, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

Still others focus on educating netizens about how they can protect themselves from threats to their freedom. Global Voices Advocacy works with a range of other nonprofit organizations to disseminate information in a range of languages about the threats citizens face to their freedoms and rights online, and what tools and tactics they can use to protect themselves. The Tactical Technology Collective develops training materials for citizen privacy and security, while Mobile Active in turn works with a network of technologists and activists to help people fight censorship and surveillance on mobile phones. EXPANDING THE TECHNICAL COMMONS When the Egyptian government shut down the Internet on January 27, 2011, a worldwide community of activist programmers and engineers—“hacktivists”—sprang into action.

Also see www.knightfoundation.org/staff/rosental-c-alves. 225 Wikipedia: See Andrew Lih, The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia (New York: Hyperion, 2009). 226 Drumbeat: https://www.drumbeat.org. 226 Global Voices Advocacy: http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org. 226 Tactical Technology Collective: www.tacticaltech.org. 226 Mobile Active: www.mobileactive.org. 227 Speak to Tweet: http://twitter.com/#!/speak2tweet. 227 Telecomix: www.telecomix.org. 227 We Rebuild: http://werebuild.eu/wiki/Main_Page 228 New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative: http://oti.newamerica.net. 228 Commotion Wireless: http://oti.newamerica.net/commotion_wireless_0; and http://tech.chambana.net/projects/commotion.

Prakash, Pranesh PROTECT IP (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011) Public Citizen Putin, Vladimir Putin’s Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy (Politkovskaya) QQ Ran Yunfei Rao Jin Reagan, Ronald Recording Industry Association of America RenRen Reporters Without Borders Research in Motion (RIM) Robert, Kirrily (Skud) Roh Moo-hyun Rosenberg, Jonathan Rosenthal, Uri Ruggie, John Runet Rushkoff, Douglas Russia abuse of intellectual property enforcement Internet Microsoft’s protection of human rights activists Said, Khaled Salem Pax Sarkozy, Nicolas Saudi Arabia Schmidt, Eric Schrage, Elliott Searls, Doc Second Treatise of Government (Locke) Serval Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt Shi Tao Shirky, Clay Sierra, Kathy Simon Wiesenthal Center Sina Sisario, Ben Skud (Kirrily Robert) The Slide from “Self Regulation” to Corporate Censorship (European Digital Rights Initiative) Smith, Brad Social Science Research Council Software anticensorship data mining denial-of-service free/open source Soghoian, Christopher Sohu South Korea, legislation to curb anonymity in Sparapani, Tim Splash Stallman, Richard Status Net Stern magazine Students for Free Culture Sunstein, Cass Surveillance circumvention technology copyright enforcement and intermediary liability mobile phones and technology, sales of by Western companies through Internet service providers See also United States, surveillance in Syria, antigovernment protests in Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) T-Mobil Tactical Technology Collective TalkTalk Tamm, Thomas TCP/IP (Transmission-Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) Tea Party Technological determinism Technology companies, responsibilities of Tehrani, Hamid Telecomix Telefonica del Peru Tencent Economist, on lack of competition in Internet access Thunderbird Tian, Edward Tiananmen Square protests (1989) Tocqueville, Alexis de Tor Torbutton Torture in Egypt blog Torvalds, Linus Transparency Report Treaty of Westphalia (1648) Tsui, Lokman Tunileaks Tunisia activism in government censorship regime in government-employed hackers Twitter activism and refusal to provide account information to government Speak to Tweet use of by activists Ultrasurf Ultrareach UN Human Rights Council UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) United Arab Emirates United Kingdom (UK) censorship in intellectual property laws in United States, Internet freedom policy of contradictions in dangers of cyber-utopianism obsession with circumvention State Department funding for treatment of Internet as instrument for regime change United States, surveillance in disclosure laws, necessity for Electronics Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act (2008) government requests for subscriber information National Security Letters (NSL), unconstitutionality of Patriot Act (2001) public accountability whistle-blowers wiretapping of Internet communications Universal Declaration of Human Rights US National Security Agency (NSA) US Senate Judiciary Committee Vahid Online Vaidhyanathan, Siva Vedder, Eddie Vendor Relationship Management Verizon Verizon Wireless Video Hub Vietnam, Yahoo’s human rights decision in Viral Spiral (Bollier) Vodafone Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights von Hippel, Eric Wahab, Nadine Wall Street Journal on censorship software products on Cisco’s sales in China on help for Libyan rebel Internet network Wang Chen Wang Xiaoning Washington Times, on sale of surveillance products We Rebuild The Wealth of Networks (Benkler) Websense Weibo Wen Jiabao Wen Yunchao WikiLeaks denial of service to disclosure of diplomatic cables by implications of release of government list of blocked websites by Twitter refusal to provide account information use of leaked diplomatic cables by Tunileaks web hosting by Pirate Party, Sweden Wikipedia Willner, Dave Windows WITNESS Wong, Nicole WordPress World Economic Forum World Organization for Human Rights USA World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) World Wide Web, invention of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Wu, Harry Wu, Tim Xiao Qiang Yahoo arrest of Shi Tao and Compliance Guide for Law Enforcement Global Network Initiative (GNI) and Yan Xiaoling Yandex Yang, Jerry York, Jillian You Are Not a Gadget (Lanier) YouTube Yu Lin Zaoui, Sami ZDNet Zemlin, Jim Zhao Jing (Michael Anti) Zhou Shuguang (Zola) Zimmermann, Jérémie Zola (Zhou Shuguang) ZTE Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Randi Zuckerman, Ethan Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca MacKinnon Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group All rights reserved.


pages: 223 words: 60,909

Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech by Sara Wachter-Boettcher

"Susan Fowler" uber, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, AltaVista, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Trump, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, Grace Hopper, Greyball, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, independent contractor, job automation, Kickstarter, lifelogging, lolcat, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, microaggression, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, real-name policy, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Tactical Technology Collective, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, upwardly mobile, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce, work culture , zero-sum game

Often, enough to pinpoint where a person was and what they were doing at any given time. As you’ve likely guessed, this wasn’t a store at all. This was the Glass Room: an immersive installation that encouraged visitors to “consider how you use technology and how those behind technology use you.” Curated by the nonprofit Tactical Technology Collective and funded by Mozilla, makers of the Firefox internet browser, the Glass Room painted a bleak picture of just how much personal information can be gleaned from our daily technology use—from the links we click to the posts we like to the real-life places we go while our phones are simply sitting in our pockets—and how that data gets transformed from individual strings into massive tomes.

See tech industry Silicon Valley (TV show), 8–9 Singhal, Amit, 178 Siri failure to understand crises, 6–7, 7 female voice of, 36 teasing humor of, 88–89 Sister Roma, 55 Slack app, 2, 189–191 Slate, 5, 61, 168 smartphones and gender bias, 6–7, 7, 36–37 screen size limitations of, 42 and Uber’s location tracking, 105–108 use of by marginalized populations, 116–117 Snapchat, 7–8, 8, 37 South by Southwest Interactive conference, 155 Sparapani, Grace, 8 Spotify, 62 Srebro, Nathan, 127 startups, 16–17, 27, 98, 107, 174–175, 192 Steinem, Gloria, 66 Sterling, Alton, 81 stress cases, 38, 40–44, 90, 96 subreddits, 149, 160–164 suicide, 6–7, 197–198 Sweeney, Miriam E., 142 Tactical Technology Collective, 102 Talla, 139 tech industry. See also specific companies acquisition value of user data, 96–98 backlash against, 191–193, 199 companies’ efforts to improve diversity, 22–26, 182–184 and culture fit, 24–25, 189 and democracy, 9–10, 149, 154, 165–166 desire to avoid oversight, 187–189, 199 educational pipeline for, 21–26, 181–184 failure to serve people, 4, 8–9, 11–12, 18 and gender bias, 6–7, 7, 13–21 growth of, 2–3, 9 importance to marginalized populations, 195–197 lack of diversity in, 9, 11, 14, 16, 18–20, 116, 135–136, 150, 157–158, 169, 171–176, 182, 196 as meritocracy, 173–177, 180 mystification and exceptionalism of, 9, 11–12, 26, 143, 188, 191–193, 199 prioritization of programming skill, 172, 176 and racial bias, 13, 17–18, 20, 200 responsibility for collected personal data, 146 techno-paternalism, 176 text strings, to personalize online content, 86–87 Theranos, 187 Thiel, Peter, 199 Thomas, Kaya, 22–24, 26, 191 Thune, John, 165 Timehop, 79–80, 83 Times New Roman font, 37 titles and nobility, 66–67, 71 Tolia, Nirav, 68, 73–74 training data, 145–146, 171 transgender people.


pages: 277 words: 70,506

We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News by Eliot Higgins

4chan, active measures, Andy Carvin, anti-communist, anti-globalists, barriers to entry, belling the cat, Bellingcat, bitcoin, blockchain, citizen journalism, Columbine, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deepfake, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, failed state, fake news, false flag, gamification, George Floyd, Google Earth, hive mind, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, off-the-grid, OpenAI, pattern recognition, post-truth, rolodex, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, Tactical Technology Collective, the scientific method, WikiLeaks

Now, Brown Moses page views soared again, reaching 245,000 in September 2013, up from the 10,000 that had delighted me a year and a half earlier. I had to make the most of this momentum; this needed to become more than a blog. That same year I found myself in the wooded hills of northern Italy for a retreat of the Tactical Technology Collective, a Berlin non-profit that brought together rights campaigners and hackers to a complex overlooking Lake Orta. They had designated me one of five teachers of the investigation group,117 alongside an award-winning journalist who had reported on human trafficking;118 a technologist who fought for government transparency;119 a campaigner previously involved in UN meetings on fighting corruption;120 and a Tunisian activist whose blog had leaked US diplomatic cables that helped spark the Arab Spring.121 When it was my turn to deliver a lecture, I did so with trepidation: my audience included those who risked their lives at the front lines of wars, whereas my work took place before a laptop at home.

A. here Something Awful here, here, here, here, here Soros, George here Spain here spear-phishing attacks here Speiz laboratory here Spencer, Richard here Spetsnaz soldiers here, here, here, here, here SputnikNews here, here, here, here Spyro the Dragon here Stalin, Josef here, here Stamboliyska, Rayna here Starbird, Kate here Stary Oskol here, here Stasi here State Experimental Institute for Scientific Research in Military Medicine here Storyful here, here, here, here, here Stover, Eric here Strelkov, Igor here, here SunCalc here, here, here Susli, Maram here Sweden here Syria here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here arms-smuggling here, here, here, here barrel bombs here, here ‘Caesar’ pictures here chemical attacks here, here, here, here, here, here, here cluster munitions here disinformation here, here, here documentation here, here, here, here, here, here, here pipe bombs here Syria Civil Defence (White Helmets) here, here, here Syrian Air Force here, here, here Syrian Archive here, here, here, here, here Syrian Network for Human Rights here, here Syrian Sentry here Tactical Technology Collective here, here Tahrir Square here Technical University of Delft here ThreatConnect here Tice, Austin here Tiji here Tkachev, Nikolai Fedorovish here Toler, Aric here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Torez here, here, here, here, here Tottenham here Trace an Object here Traditionalist Worker Party here Triebert, Christiaan here, here, here TrueCaller here Trump, Donald here, here, here, here, here, here, here Turkish military coup here, here 21stCenturyWire here Ugail, Hassan here, here Ukraine here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS572 here, here Ukraine@War blog here, here Ukrainian Air Force here, here, here, here Ukrainian neo-Nazis here Unicorn Riot here Unite the Right here, here US Defense Intelligence Agency here US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency here US presidential elections here, here Utrecht terrorist attack here Uxoinfo here van Ess, Henk here van Huis, Pieter here Vanguard America here Venezuela here Vietnam War here virtual reality here VKontakte here, here, here, here Wall Street Journal here Waters, Nick here, here Watson, Tom here al-Werfalli, Mahmoud here Which Face Is Real here White Helmets, see Syria Civil Defence white supremacy here WikiLeaks here, here, here, here Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media here World Anti-Doping Agency here World Health Organization here World Wildlife Fund here Yanukovych, Viktor here, here Yekaterinburg cadet school here Yemen here, here, here, here, here Yemeni Archive here Yugoslavia, former here Zakharova, Maria here Zappa, Frank here Zaroschinskoe here Zello app here Zuhres here BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING Bloomsbury Publishing Inc. 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in 2021 in Great Britain First published in the United States 2021 Copyright © Eliot Higgins, 2021 All rights reserved.