Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freedom. Show all posts
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
Worldwide: Feb. 23, 2013 - Support whistleblower Bradley Manning, jailed for 1000 days so far
"Events planned across the U.S. and internationally will mark WikiLeaks
whistle-blower Bradley Manning’s 1000th day in prison without trial.
They include protests, vigils, hip-hop performances, concerts, art and
theater."
"Bradley’s trial, which threatens a truth-chilling life sentence, is now expected to start on June 3, 100 days after our Feb 23 International Day of Action."
"There has never been a more important time to broadcast our message of support for exposing war crimes, international justice, and people’s right to know what the government does in our name."
You can learn more and find events near you or organize one, here:
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-21813-nearly-40-events-to-mark-bradley-mannings-1000-day-imprisoned-without-trial
Please spread the word.
"Bradley’s trial, which threatens a truth-chilling life sentence, is now expected to start on June 3, 100 days after our Feb 23 International Day of Action."
"There has never been a more important time to broadcast our message of support for exposing war crimes, international justice, and people’s right to know what the government does in our name."
You can learn more and find events near you or organize one, here:
http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/update-21813-nearly-40-events-to-mark-bradley-mannings-1000-day-imprisoned-without-trial
Please spread the word.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Graffiti and open source - Artist Hacker: From Free Software to Fine Art
Artist Hacker: From Free Software to Fine Art
By Evan Roth 1
While there are many definitions and uses for the term “hack”, I like to think of it as a clever (often playful) small intervention into an existing larger system. Like the judo fighter using his opponent's weight to his own advantage, a hack alters a system’s intended purpose and turns it into something new. In this sense, it can be applied to many things outside the world of software development. When I look at the most interesting artistic developments within my lifetime, I see hacks. In the 1970s, DJs hacked record players and gave birth to sampling, hip-hop and remix. Graffiti writers hacked the subway system to move art around New York City (and later the world). Richard Stallman hacked copyright, releasing a virus (the General Public License 2) intended to free code as it propagates. The genius of a true hack is often judged not only on its effect, but also on the seeming ease with which it was implemented. Spray paint on a wall, scratching a record, and copyleft are all “too lazy to fail” 3. In speaking about Linus Torvold, the creator of Linux, Eric S. Raymond describes his brilliance as the ability “for finding the minimum-effort path from point A to point B” and for being “lazy like a fox” 4.
Torvold's main contribution to Linux was arguably not in programming but in deftly stoking the flames of collaboration. “Release early, release often” 5 was a new and controversial idea in the early 1990s, when the software development model at the time strove for perfect and finalized products. Instead, Torvold and the GNU/Linux community experimented with publishing software updates multiple times per day. Under this new model, the knowledge-sharing and collaborative production of thousands of anonymous users produced one of the most complicated systems of our age: an operating system.
Today, the majority of servers that power the Internet are running on software not built by corporations or governments, but built for free by a group of passionate and idealistic individuals 6. Beyond its technical merits, GNU/Linux is also an inspiring example of the power of the networked masses.
For a growing number of artists, the production philosophy developed by the free software movement serves as an exciting alternative to the traditional notion of the artist as a solitary genius and the art object as polished and bug-free. Torvold believed more frequent releases would create a tighter relationship between the developers (artists) and users (audience), resulting in better software (art). The free software and arts communities are both filled with interesting people motivated not just by money but by the act of creation and a drive to make meaningful, or at least functional, contributions to society. And while few artists have contributed or even read a single line of GNU/Linux source code, there are many that incorporate aspects of its development model into their practice.
For this new generation of artists, where the Internet is an additional platform to exhibit work, and code is an additional medium to create, this notion of the art making process as something fluid and ongoing feels very natural. Artists can now cultivate their own audiences online through a daily stream of creative content via social media, blogs, microblogs, and photo and video sharing sites. Viewers are provided with a closer look at the creative process and can witness a body of work as it develops over time and transforms from idea to creation.
In 2007, inspired in part by open source communities and the hacker mentality, I co-founded the Free Art & Technology Lab (F.A.T. Lab) as a collaborative online space dedicated to open source, art and popular culture. Publicly, the mission was to expand the overlap between free culture and popular culture; privately, it was an opportunity to gently poke friends, collaborators, mentors and personally influential artists into hitting the publish button more often. The motto “release early, often and with rap music” 7 is as much a reference to our public mission statement as it is a subtle cue to F.A.T. Lab members of the informal nature of publication. As informality goes up, so does the rate of publication, since F.A.T. Lab was intended to be a place where people could publish projects that they might not have necessarily posted otherwise.
This group is comprised of roughly twenty people with interests that include fine arts, graffiti, hip-hop, activism, free speech, DIY, net art, Internet memes, web startups and colors represented by hexadecimal values. We have a yearly operating budget of 100 euros, which is spent on Internet hosting and a ".at" domain name registration. We have no meetings, no rules, no hierarchy and everyone has all the passwords to everything. F.A.T. Lab is an experiment in a friendly collaboration based on respectful anarchy.
If the free culture movement is a car with GNU/Linux as the engine, then F.A.T. Lab is the rims that keep spinning when the car comes to a stop. Our role is not to make the engine run smoother, but to make the kids more interested in driving it to the club. We are the unsolicited guerrilla marketing division for open source, and we are attempting to interject more fun into art and activism. If you brush the hair out of Justin Bieber's eyes, or look closely through the slits of Kanye's shades, we hope you will see nuggets of something more substantial than the #FF00FF and #FFF000 8 candy coating 9 that glosses the outside of many F.A.T. projects. At the center of the F.A.T. lollipop is a genuine interest in expanding the sphere of influence surrounding free culture and inserting open ideals into mainstream popular culture.
Despite the connection to technology, I do not see members of F.A.T. or other artist hackers cleanly fitting into either the “new media art” or “net art” genres. We identify more with the hack than with the code, and our interests in making work online are in large part due to the impressive ratio of production costs to cultural influence. The most exciting thing about the Internet is not specific to any visual aesthetic or programming language, but relates to the vast number of people it allows us to freely reach. The Internet has allowed more and more individuals to become makers, participants and viewers of art and presents artists with the opportunity to speak to the equivalent of a packed football stadium on a daily basis. Artists have never had such a large and immediate influence on culture, and it would seem a missed opportunity not to recognize, welcome and engage this new online audience. This is not to say that art should be reduced to the level of LOLcats and evaluated based on view counts and “likes”. Rather, I think the challenge to make art that communicates with critics, curators and the "bored at work network" 10 is a new and culturally relevant practice.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved 11.
---------
1 This text has been adapted from an earlier version by the author that appeared in Aram Bartholl: Speed Book by Aram Bartholl (edited by Domenico Quaranta), 2012, Gestalten, Berlin.
2 General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt)
3 The phrase “too lazy to fail” and the notion of “constructive laziness” come from the 1973
book Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein.
4 Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, 1999.
(http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s03.html)
5 Ibid
6 A 2009 survey of 38,549,333 servers reported the Apache/Linux market share at 72.09%
(https://secure1.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200907/index.html)
7 Taken from the chapter title, “Release Early, Release Often” in Eric S. Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar (translations into other languages)
8 The hexadecimal representation of pink and yellow.
9 From Michelle Kasprzak's introduction at Transmediale, Berlin, 2010. “You shouldn't let their candy coated shell bright colors and flash style distract you from their very serious mission of disseminating open source culture and all manner of pop culture pranksterism.”
10 The “bored at work network” is a term developed by Jonah Peretti to describe an online audience potentially larger than many mainstream media outlets. (http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/25/jonah-peretti-interview.html)
11 Free Software Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman 2002.
F.A.T. Lab on FB
Eyebeam
~New York Magazine of Contemporary Art and Theory info.newyorkmagazine@gmail.com
By Evan Roth 1
While there are many definitions and uses for the term “hack”, I like to think of it as a clever (often playful) small intervention into an existing larger system. Like the judo fighter using his opponent's weight to his own advantage, a hack alters a system’s intended purpose and turns it into something new. In this sense, it can be applied to many things outside the world of software development. When I look at the most interesting artistic developments within my lifetime, I see hacks. In the 1970s, DJs hacked record players and gave birth to sampling, hip-hop and remix. Graffiti writers hacked the subway system to move art around New York City (and later the world). Richard Stallman hacked copyright, releasing a virus (the General Public License 2) intended to free code as it propagates. The genius of a true hack is often judged not only on its effect, but also on the seeming ease with which it was implemented. Spray paint on a wall, scratching a record, and copyleft are all “too lazy to fail” 3. In speaking about Linus Torvold, the creator of Linux, Eric S. Raymond describes his brilliance as the ability “for finding the minimum-effort path from point A to point B” and for being “lazy like a fox” 4.
Torvold's main contribution to Linux was arguably not in programming but in deftly stoking the flames of collaboration. “Release early, release often” 5 was a new and controversial idea in the early 1990s, when the software development model at the time strove for perfect and finalized products. Instead, Torvold and the GNU/Linux community experimented with publishing software updates multiple times per day. Under this new model, the knowledge-sharing and collaborative production of thousands of anonymous users produced one of the most complicated systems of our age: an operating system.
Today, the majority of servers that power the Internet are running on software not built by corporations or governments, but built for free by a group of passionate and idealistic individuals 6. Beyond its technical merits, GNU/Linux is also an inspiring example of the power of the networked masses.
For a growing number of artists, the production philosophy developed by the free software movement serves as an exciting alternative to the traditional notion of the artist as a solitary genius and the art object as polished and bug-free. Torvold believed more frequent releases would create a tighter relationship between the developers (artists) and users (audience), resulting in better software (art). The free software and arts communities are both filled with interesting people motivated not just by money but by the act of creation and a drive to make meaningful, or at least functional, contributions to society. And while few artists have contributed or even read a single line of GNU/Linux source code, there are many that incorporate aspects of its development model into their practice.
For this new generation of artists, where the Internet is an additional platform to exhibit work, and code is an additional medium to create, this notion of the art making process as something fluid and ongoing feels very natural. Artists can now cultivate their own audiences online through a daily stream of creative content via social media, blogs, microblogs, and photo and video sharing sites. Viewers are provided with a closer look at the creative process and can witness a body of work as it develops over time and transforms from idea to creation.
In 2007, inspired in part by open source communities and the hacker mentality, I co-founded the Free Art & Technology Lab (F.A.T. Lab) as a collaborative online space dedicated to open source, art and popular culture. Publicly, the mission was to expand the overlap between free culture and popular culture; privately, it was an opportunity to gently poke friends, collaborators, mentors and personally influential artists into hitting the publish button more often. The motto “release early, often and with rap music” 7 is as much a reference to our public mission statement as it is a subtle cue to F.A.T. Lab members of the informal nature of publication. As informality goes up, so does the rate of publication, since F.A.T. Lab was intended to be a place where people could publish projects that they might not have necessarily posted otherwise.
This group is comprised of roughly twenty people with interests that include fine arts, graffiti, hip-hop, activism, free speech, DIY, net art, Internet memes, web startups and colors represented by hexadecimal values. We have a yearly operating budget of 100 euros, which is spent on Internet hosting and a ".at" domain name registration. We have no meetings, no rules, no hierarchy and everyone has all the passwords to everything. F.A.T. Lab is an experiment in a friendly collaboration based on respectful anarchy.
If the free culture movement is a car with GNU/Linux as the engine, then F.A.T. Lab is the rims that keep spinning when the car comes to a stop. Our role is not to make the engine run smoother, but to make the kids more interested in driving it to the club. We are the unsolicited guerrilla marketing division for open source, and we are attempting to interject more fun into art and activism. If you brush the hair out of Justin Bieber's eyes, or look closely through the slits of Kanye's shades, we hope you will see nuggets of something more substantial than the #FF00FF and #FFF000 8 candy coating 9 that glosses the outside of many F.A.T. projects. At the center of the F.A.T. lollipop is a genuine interest in expanding the sphere of influence surrounding free culture and inserting open ideals into mainstream popular culture.
Despite the connection to technology, I do not see members of F.A.T. or other artist hackers cleanly fitting into either the “new media art” or “net art” genres. We identify more with the hack than with the code, and our interests in making work online are in large part due to the impressive ratio of production costs to cultural influence. The most exciting thing about the Internet is not specific to any visual aesthetic or programming language, but relates to the vast number of people it allows us to freely reach. The Internet has allowed more and more individuals to become makers, participants and viewers of art and presents artists with the opportunity to speak to the equivalent of a packed football stadium on a daily basis. Artists have never had such a large and immediate influence on culture, and it would seem a missed opportunity not to recognize, welcome and engage this new online audience. This is not to say that art should be reduced to the level of LOLcats and evaluated based on view counts and “likes”. Rather, I think the challenge to make art that communicates with critics, curators and the "bored at work network" 10 is a new and culturally relevant practice.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved 11.
---------
1 This text has been adapted from an earlier version by the author that appeared in Aram Bartholl: Speed Book by Aram Bartholl (edited by Domenico Quaranta), 2012, Gestalten, Berlin.
2 General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt)
3 The phrase “too lazy to fail” and the notion of “constructive laziness” come from the 1973
book Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein.
4 Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, 1999.
(http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s03.html)
5 Ibid
6 A 2009 survey of 38,549,333 servers reported the Apache/Linux market share at 72.09%
(https://secure1.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200907/index.html)
7 Taken from the chapter title, “Release Early, Release Often” in Eric S. Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar (translations into other languages)
8 The hexadecimal representation of pink and yellow.
9 From Michelle Kasprzak's introduction at Transmediale, Berlin, 2010. “You shouldn't let their candy coated shell bright colors and flash style distract you from their very serious mission of disseminating open source culture and all manner of pop culture pranksterism.”
10 The “bored at work network” is a term developed by Jonah Peretti to describe an online audience potentially larger than many mainstream media outlets. (http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/25/jonah-peretti-interview.html)
11 Free Software Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman 2002.
F.A.T. Lab on FB
Eyebeam
~New York Magazine of Contemporary Art and Theory info.newyorkmagazine@gmail.com
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
NYC, Los Angeles: Oct 19-25, 2012: We Are Legions opens in theaters
We Are Legion
After a long wait, WE ARE LEGION: The Story of the Hacktivists will be OPENING IN THEATRES THIS WEEK! If you're in New York or Los Angeles, please come out & support the film. And, no matter where you are, please help us get the word out.
Independent films made outside the system often face an uphill battle. Here are a few things that you can do to help:
Independent films made outside the system often face an uphill battle. Here are a few things that you can do to help:
1. WATCH AND SHARE THE TRAILER
2. GO OUT AND SEE THE FILM
New York
The Quad Cinema
34 W. 13th St., New York, NY 10011
Dates
Friday, October 19th - Thursday, October 25th
Showtimes
1:00pm, 5:15pm, 9:40pm daily
FRIDAY & SATURDAY @ 9:40
Filmmaker Brian Knappenberger & doc subjects Gregg Housh, PokeAnon, Sethdood, & (schedule-permitting) Vendetta will be on-hand for a panel discussion following the screening.
Los Angeles
Laemmle's Playhouse 7
673 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91101
Dates
Friday, October 19th - Thursday, October 25th
Showtimes
1:30pm, 4:00pm daily
SUNDAY @ 4:00
Filmmaker Brian Knappenberger will be on-hand for a Q&A following the screening.
3. VISIT OUR STORE
http://wearelegionthedocumentary-shop.myshopify.com/
Independent films wedged between a largely corporatized national news media and a blockbuster-driven SOPA-supporting Hollywood often face an uphill battle making their budget back. Due to a huge number of requests for the incredible Michael Byzewski designed poster from the film, we've decided to do a print run and sell some here to help with the costs.
We are also very excited to start offering preorders on the DVD and BluRay. The DVD and BluRay will be available after our theatrical run on November 23rd and in addition to the full film (with 5.1 surround sound) the DVD and BluRay will include an additional 22 minutes of material. The extras will have extended in depth interviews with some of our film's subjects, some prominent hackers not featured in the documentary, more analysis and thoughts on Wikileaks, further discussion about Anonymous member-turned-FBI informant Sabu, and thoughts from tech author and speaker Richard Thieme on how technology is re-wiring our brains and why we need to nurture our "dark side."
Proceeds from sales are going to the finishing, print costs, theater costs and further distribution of We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists. In the spirit of the film should we make back our costs, we are donating ten percent of profits to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We are also donating another portion to Free Anons and to other human rights, or technology groups we think are behaving well defending human rights or freedom of speech in a digital age and we will continue to make disruptive documentaries about compelling stories and people we think are re-shaping our world. Thank you for supporting independent film!
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Internet surveillance and safety tips - You are not paranoid enough
Why Duck-Duck Go is better than Google: no tracking, better results. Plugins and extensions let you add it to your browsers.
http://dontbubble.us/
Surveillance news in Australia:
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/youre-being-more-closely-watched-20120916-260ko.html
Surveillance news in the UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/15/new-totalitarianism-surveillance-technology
Apple wants to kill your iPhone camera on demand by governments:
http://myscienceacademy.org/2012/09/17/apple-granted-patent-to-disable-iphone-recordings-near-government-buildings-or-political-events
http://www.petapixel.com/2012/08/30/apple-moves-a-step-closer-to-location-based-camera-disabling/
Encouragement from Occupy Wall Street:
http://kasamaproject.org/2012/09/17/ows-it-is-five-minutes-to-dawn-the-wind-smells-like-freedom/
#Cryptoparty: info on how to protect yourself. It's from the Australian event, but the info is good for everyone, so you can understand your risks and how to get software that makes you safer.
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AQvNeBGHrxYbZGhoY3gzdHJfNDMyNzNycnF4Z3M&pli=1
How hackers and freedom fighters get caught (some lessons here for writers):
http://www.slideshare.net/grugq/opsec-for-hackers (tl;dr: running their mouths, not being paranoid enough)
Encouragement from Anonymous:
#copwatch
We Are Legion: The story of the hacktivists:
http://wearelegionthedocumentary.com
http://dontbubble.us/
Surveillance news in Australia:
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/youre-being-more-closely-watched-20120916-260ko.html
Surveillance news in the UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/15/new-totalitarianism-surveillance-technology
Apple wants to kill your iPhone camera on demand by governments:
http://myscienceacademy.org/2012/09/17/apple-granted-patent-to-disable-iphone-recordings-near-government-buildings-or-political-events
http://www.petapixel.com/2012/08/30/apple-moves-a-step-closer-to-location-based-camera-disabling/
Encouragement from Occupy Wall Street:
http://kasamaproject.org/2012/09/17/ows-it-is-five-minutes-to-dawn-the-wind-smells-like-freedom/
#Cryptoparty: info on how to protect yourself. It's from the Australian event, but the info is good for everyone, so you can understand your risks and how to get software that makes you safer.
https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AQvNeBGHrxYbZGhoY3gzdHJfNDMyNzNycnF4Z3M&pli=1
How hackers and freedom fighters get caught (some lessons here for writers):
http://www.slideshare.net/grugq/opsec-for-hackers (tl;dr: running their mouths, not being paranoid enough)
Encouragement from Anonymous:
#copwatch
We Are Legion: The story of the hacktivists:
http://wearelegionthedocumentary.com
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Saturday, September 1, 2012
London, Oakland, Palo Alto announced: We Are Legion, the story of the hacktivists
http://wearelegionthedocumentary.com/about-the-film/
About the film [It's great! Go see it.]
http://wearelegionthedocumentary.com/category/film-news/
Watch this link or sign up for email notification for screening locations. See it while you can.
About the film [It's great! Go see it.]
http://wearelegionthedocumentary.com/category/film-news/
Watch this link or sign up for email notification for screening locations. See it while you can.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Surveillance: How Big Brother is watching you - and things to do about it
Watch this Anonymous explainer on Trapwire, the artificial intelligence system peering at you through CC TV cameras, which are installed almost everywhere that Wikileaks uncovered and published info on this week.
It will be most dangerous to young, minority youth, for example graffiti writers, who will be more "suspicious" naturally than others, but it threatens us all. Anonymous will soon publish a how-to guide on taking out the cameras, but you probably already know how. Pro Tip: wear masks.
Anonymous Releases Video On How To Defeat Facial Recognition [these techniques will not last forever, however]
http://www.biometricupdate.com/201208/the-trouble-with-trapwire/
More Trapwire info. Note that the secret system is so heinous that officials deny using it, but it's already been deployed in Seattle and Washington DC. It uses cameras that are already in place, owned by various companies and governments.
http://www.cryptoparty.org/wiki/CryptoParty
CryptoParty, an event taking place worldwide where geeks explain the tools you need to be safer and how to use them. This movement is a response to Australia's (and other countries') new laws that mandate companies retain all your internet data to use against you whenever it's convenient.
http://www.cryptoparty.org/wiki/Berlin
Berlin CryptoParty will soon publish a software guide to help people inform their own CryptoParties, so watch this space.
Tip: iMessage isn't one of the tools you should use.
http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/08/dear-apple-please-set-imessage-free.html
http://mathbabe.org/2012/08/25/nsa-mathematicians/
A mathematician who said no to the NSA explains some of the dangers we all face in the totalitarian surveillance state that's forming. Some good links are there too. All the social media are monitored, especially FaceBook.
Please spread this information widely. Preserving liberty will take all of us working together, and the first step is to inform people of the threat. This is science, not science fiction. The second step is to object loudly to your government representatives while those who can work to disable the systems.
More reading:
Giving In to the Surveillance State
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/whos-watching-the-nsa-watchers.html?_r=1
Building a better Anonymous, part 0
http://blog.cognitivedissidents.com/2011/12/20/building-a-better-anonymous-series-part-0/
A Tor of the Dark Web
http://slifty.com/2012/08/a-tor-of-the-dark-web/
The Tor project
https://www.torproject.org/download/download.html
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Stop Cyber Spying - a week of action against CISPA
https://cyberspying.eff.org/
Please participate. CISPA is worse than SOPA/ACTA and it already passed the House of Representatives in the US. It affects everyone whose internet traffic crosses US servers. Basically everyone. It's a Big Brother move to remove due process and allow spying on anyone's internet traffic anytime, for any alleged reason.
Related: Find out if your representatives voted for it and complain to them and the corporate sponsors named. They deserve your contempt.
The Senate and those companies need to hear the noise we make about this online and on their phones, in the next few days. We can't depend on the President to veto it, because his track record on civil liberties is very poor so far.
News: Microsoft just withdrew their support.
Please participate. CISPA is worse than SOPA/ACTA and it already passed the House of Representatives in the US. It affects everyone whose internet traffic crosses US servers. Basically everyone. It's a Big Brother move to remove due process and allow spying on anyone's internet traffic anytime, for any alleged reason.
Related: Find out if your representatives voted for it and complain to them and the corporate sponsors named. They deserve your contempt.
The Senate and those companies need to hear the noise we make about this online and on their phones, in the next few days. We can't depend on the President to veto it, because his track record on civil liberties is very poor so far.
News: Microsoft just withdrew their support.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Why all the non-graffiti posts?
I've been posting a lot about freedom, liberty, privacy, and censorship because if we don't act to save the internet and our countries from corporate and authoritarian control now, we might not get the chance to do it again.
The laws that corporations are paying lawmakers to enact threaten networked civilization, globally. Anything that criminalizes painting and showing cartoon characters and other popular culture themes in art threatens graffiti, and it threatens Art Crimes.
Please educate yourselves about these issues because your future depends on you doing smart things now to protect yourselves and all of us, through taking positive action to raise some hell while you still can.
The laws that corporations are paying lawmakers to enact threaten networked civilization, globally. Anything that criminalizes painting and showing cartoon characters and other popular culture themes in art threatens graffiti, and it threatens Art Crimes.
Please educate yourselves about these issues because your future depends on you doing smart things now to protect yourselves and all of us, through taking positive action to raise some hell while you still can.
Trouble signs in the US for authoritarianism and censorship - proxies
Twitter took on a Saudi investor and now they are censoring tweets in certain countries. Twitter users plan to stay off Twitter Saturday Feb 28 in protest. But you know, money talks. http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2012/0127/Twitter-censorship-Posts-now-yanked-country-by-country
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399465,00.asp
Twitter Faces Backlash Over Censorship Plan
http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/01/27/worried-about-possible-restrictions-on-twitter-heres-how-to-get-around-them/
How to get around Twitter censorship
The US press freedom rating has plummeted this year with the arrest of journalists over Occupy Wall Street protests:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/26/2315249/us-plummets-on-world-press-freedom-ranking
http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html
And, as I blogged earlier, Google has decided it's more profitable to be Evil(TM)
How to manage your Google info a bit:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/what-google-knows-about-you-and-how-to-tweak-it.ars
How to get around country blocking and have a bit of privacy on the web, using proxy servers:
http://whatismyipaddress.com/using-proxies
Some configuration info (a bit old but probably works) with a search for proxies (you have to change them from time to time when yours is blocked).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server
Some info about proxies
http://url.sc/
Clickable web proxies. You can start surfing from here. It's a bit busy so if you don't get it right away, try back. The links above probably list more of these. Here's a dump of today's list on url.sc in case it's unavailable:
http://www.infoanarchy.org/en/Anonymous_Communications
A bit dated but lots of good education to be had here, from the anarchist community.
This year's guide, from Anonymous:
http://www.sectechno.com/2011/06/30/the-opnewblood-super-secret-security-handbook-by-anonymous/
Read it and download the PDF guide
(Tip: Beware of using the LOIC if you don't know what you're doing. People are in jail today because they didn't know how to hide their location while attacking websites with Anonymous. If you just want to cobble together a better online security setup for yourself, that's not illegal in most countries yet, though.)
Remember: Self incrimination is the worst kind. Be careful what you say on the net, in email, on phones, in texts, because all of that is being collected now and it will be used against you whenever it's convenient to do so. This is not paranoia, this is fact.
The 28th Chaos Communication Congress (hacker camp) took place recently, and you can watch some amazing talks from it here:
http://ondemand.28c3.fem-net.de/
(English and German) I think you'll find these particularly interesting:
4848 (Must see - Cory Doctorow explains. I blogged this before.)
Thes are all on YouTube also, on the 28c3 channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/28c3 which seem to be more available for the moment than that streaming server. You can also download them here: http://mirror.fem-net.de/CCC/28C3/
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