what would hackers use.notes

stef

September 5, 2010

Background

I The disruptive nature of the Internet produced a set ofcon�icts between society, governments and business. Normallygovernments and business would have sorted these con�ictsout, if there weren't these shiny new and e�cient tools andmethods for organization of civil defense. Despite low budgetsthese NGOs operate with a couple of dozen activists are ableto cause serious trouble to corrupt or misguided politicians andbusiness interests harming fundamental freedoms.

I The Internet is a mighty weapon when it comes totransparency, self-organization, communication, activism. Thishas been discovered by politicians and business, which feelthreathened by this and want to change this to their bene�t. Iam one of the volunteers trying to defend the freedom on theinternet, so that you guys can do your job better. Today i'lltry to give you some insights what we use in to amplify ouractivities.

Roots

The roots of these tools and methods come from the Free Softwaremovement, where for the last 20�25 years huge amounts ofunbeatable quality software has been developed in such adecentralized and bottom-up manner.

Industry e�ciency

In the industry having a traditional top-down project with morethan 100 developers is almost impossible, adding one new employeeto a project only increases productivity by 30%, because of thecommunication and project management overhead.

Free software e�ciency

Whereas a new version the Linux kernel is released every 3 monthsand is being developped by more than 1000 developers andcompanies involved. Bottom-up scales, top-down does not.

- So what are these tools. - The most important advice is beOPEN!!!!1!eleven!!1! If there is a barrier to contribute to yourcause - eliminate it ASAP!

In bottom-up organizations merit is everything, members that haveaccomplished things get credit and in�uence, the rest of the teamchances to accomplish. This ensures action instead of talking.Always concentrate on the 'how yes' instead of the 'why not!' Alsokeep in mind that it's better to apologize than to ask for permission.

- The development of free software is generally distributed, thismade it necessary to develop an infrastructure that enables highlye�ective communication among people that never meet in their life.Similar infrastructures are being used by tech-savvy organizations: -If possible always use your own infrastructure, if you do not haveyour own hardware then rent a Virtual Private Server (VPS)somewhere in Europe, cheap ones start at 10EUR/month. If theprovider is sold or bust you can loose your data that is still lockedin, also you're trusting 3rd parties who can be intimidated orotherwise compromised.

- It is ok to use VoIP conferencing for rapid small group 2�4communication.

- Blogs for the general public - communication is low with rarespikes, audience is big.

- IRC the communication platform that precedes and surpasses anymodern IM solution, use it! having an IRC channel with 100members is very useful. The Telecomix team is able to transcribe asecret leaked 50�60 pages document within a few hours afterrequesting the transcription in their IRC channel. Communication isusually ad-hoc, with rare pre-scheduled irc meetings, the number ofparticipants is usually not more than 100.

- Some communities use video streaming services like ustream forvirtual connecting of o�ces, streaming events, conferences andlectures. Audiences can be up to 1 million with ustream, less withbambuser, usually only a couple hundred.

- mailing-lists if possible host your own, use mailman or ezmlm. Ifthat is not possible use googlegroups. Combined with nabble thiscan also be accessed like a forum. Usually you need 2�3mailinglists, one lively for general discussion, one low-tra�c forannouncements and press-releases and possibly one restricted foradministration/management tasks - but the necessity of latter isdebatable.

- wikis/collaboriative text creation. Everyone uses them

Wikileaks

LQDN

euwiki

FFII

Telecomix/Werebuild

If you want to embrace crowdsourcing you must give full writeaccess to anyone, even anonymous users - yes that means somemoderation and hard work. I know mediawiki and wikipedia is ahuge success, but time has passed on and there are much moree�ective tools now, for rapid development of text use Etherpads,when the text is more-or-less ready you can migrate it to a morestatic wiki.

I During the draft of the 3rd revision of the GNU PublicLicense, the copyleft license enabling free software a new toolhas been introduced. This enabled thousands of reviewers tore�ect upon the draft, without overwhelming a handful ofcore-authors. Of course this can also (and is) used foranalyzing laws, contracts, or any other kind of text document.

Stet has been abandoned, but fortunately there is co-ment.com. Ifyou have many documents to analyze or re�ect on, then having aco-ment service is invaluable.

I twitter and facebook are closed systems, use them cautiouslyonly for campaings. If possible avoid Facebook or closedproducts from companies like Apple or Microsoft, these arefundamentally top-down and despised for their disrespect offundamental freedoms of the users. Although Facebook mightbe used to reach a huge audience, it makes sometimes sense touse it for campaigns. It is better to replace twitter withstatus.net - which is completely libre.

I an exciting innovation comes from the german pirate party,they use delegated voting and liquidfeedback as a tool forgoverning their party in a transparent and empowering way.

I for �nancial support Moneybookers (cheaper and european)and Paypal can be used e�ectively. But my real hope isBitCoin a decentralized anonymous payment system.

Ok, these are general tools, but of course di�erent specialized toolshave appeared as well. The European Union is an excellent breedingground for such, the PSI and FOI directives provide lot's of data toprocess and react upon. There is lot's of data on europa.eu.

During the Software Patents �ght a couple of years back (which wewon - until the next round starts) gave rise to the �rst batch ofsuch tools. The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructureestablished a highly informative swpatent wiki . . .

. . . and tools like Tratten. Tratten tracks all the issues in thelegislative pipeline of the EU - from the �rst mentioning of an issueto the rati�cation of it. If anything changes related to an issue andthis is (as it is mandated) published on the o�cial EU websites,noti�cations are sent to anyone interested in an issue.

A very exciting tool is politicalmemory.eu, where votingrecommendations to MEPs are compared to actual votes and aranking is produced according to these. This helps identifyingopponents and allies across the political spectrum.

Also interesting are special interest groups dedicated to developingtools that enable citizens to engage in policymaking. SeeData.gov(.uk) by the Open Knowledge Foundation, also the USbased Sunlight Foundation and the UK based mysociety.org areexcellent examples of tools developed for bottom-up in�uence ontraditional top-down structures and processes. My favorite isLittlesis.org from the US.

Currently there is a �erce �ght going on for the freedom of the newworld brought upon us bye these technologies. This time TradeAgreements are the threat, these are being negotiated in secret . . .

. . . so we must rely on leaks and laborous work to analyze them.(PDFs are the tools of the evil and printing companies)