February 1 2024 GM

Glitter Meetups What are Glitter Meetups Notes from Past Glitter Meetups Virtual Events Calendar Join the TCU Mattermost

Glitter Meetup is the weekly town hall of the Internet Freedom community at the IF Square on the TCU Mattermost, at 9am EDT / 1pm UTC. Do you need an invite? Learn how to get one here.

• Date: Thursday, February 1
• Time: 9am EST / 2pm UTC
• Who: Mardiya
• Where: On TCU Mattermost "IF Square" Channel.
  • Don't have an account to the TCU Mattermost? you can request one following the directions here.

What Is Happening in Digital Rights Around the World?

Come to share emerging and existing digital rights conversations happening around the world and in your region at this Glitter Meetup! There is something new, specific or special that you would like to bring to the technology and human rights table? Join us and let's talk about it!

Notes

What are the interesting, boring or simply digital rights stuff have you been engaging with throughout the last month?

Internet Security & Far Right in USA

One interesting thing is the dichotomy of types of people who care about internet security: there seem to be people who are very far left and then people who are very far right politically, and in the US at least, there is very little middle ground. For example, a calyx user who doesn't want to pay through paypal because "paypal supports woke" and it's very clear that they have very opposite politics from calyx, but they don't seem to understand that calyx also "supports woke" because digital security isn't necessarily just a far left issue.

In the US there seem to be lots of people who are far right politically but believe in and practice digital security because they don't trust our government (which, to be fair, no american should, but in this case it is different) because they are conspiracy theorists.

How do far right people as you may have observe use digital security?

VPNs, secure operating systems, mostly the same stuff we do, just for vastly different reasons

DRL's Internet Freedom Program

The DRL's internet freedom program: https://devtechsys.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Internet-Freedom_Final-External-Evaluation-Report-2022.11.30-1.pdf

How do you think these evaluations go to determine priority areas for digital rights spaces? if they do at all?

The participant says that they enjoy reading reports on donor grantmaking & feedback from their grantees/partners. They really love this quote so am gonna share: "The Internet freedom community has seen, time and time again, 'cases where a free and open Internet does not always lead to the flourishing of democratic principles” and one’s ability to exercise their human rights.'" pg 22

Are there more interesting and insightful portfolio evaluations you have in your library somewhere ???

It is interesting to compare this recent evaluation with one from one way back and this one from the ISC Project . And one more from Mozilla and another from SAFETAG evaluation

Its a really insightful quote because many people started to look into the concept of meaningful connectivity,. i.e. is the open and 'free' internet meaningful to what they need to do in their lives! Its really cool what one might learn from reading donor reports!