Community Updates

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The following are community updates from the weekly Glitter Meetup. If you need to connect to anyone mentioned below, please reach out. We do practice "consensual introductions," meaning we have to check with the person before doing so. No names are associated with the summary notes. Please contact us if you have any questions related to these notes. team@internetfreedomfestival.org

November 29

  • The Prime Minister of Singapore is suing a 65 year old Singaporean (civil rights activist), Leong for civil defamation, for sharing on his Facebook (without any comment) a Facebook posting from thecoverage.my (a news media web site in Malaysia) of an article on the involvement of Singapore and the Prime Minister in the 1MDB scandal in Malaysia. We condemn this action of intimidation to curtail the freedom of expression (for reference and information on a private and confidential basis only) - 9.11.2018 email demand from the InfoComm Media Authority of Singapore (IMDA) to delete the Facebook post within 6 hours (deleted immediately), 12.11.2018 Letter of Demand giving 3 days to publish apology, compensate damages and pay costs.

16.11.2018 Letter to commence legal proceedings and asking for legal counsel's name to receive the writ of summons.

  • Points that we are looking at after the Smash the Brahmical Patriarchy Twitter attack:
  • 1) Twitters lack of reporting mechanisms for the problems of caste. This is really a problem for both facebook and twitter but we feel like if we can push twitter to add it we have greater leverage for facebook of which India is the largest market in the world on the platform
  • 2) We also have linked a feminist approach to the internet as part of the platform accountabilyt because the troll culture itself is feminists and casteist and so its a really greate exmaple of how global feminists solidairty can not only help in fighting back but also putting forth visionary options
  • 3) We are also looking at how to get platforms to stop talking about individual harassment and to start talking about disinformation. They are very reticient to do that and we have to do a lot of politcal education to get that there
  • There is also this really great report from BBC about fake news and casteist troll infrastrucuture here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46146877

  • whats important to keep in mind is that many of our global relationships is what we were able to put into play in order to make this moment really spin to an advocacy moment. Having global internet freedom and wikimedians dedicated to our cause come out was super powerful. It is also a testament to how art is crucial in our movement because the poster was match that set the whole thing off. In India people are exhausted by the troll armies and in the last week alone the BBC, TWITTER and the Swedish embassy have all been attacked
  • Things that the community can do to help with the current situation, besides the call to action:
  • 1) We are not going to stop our ask to have twitter address the issue of caste and the issues of harassment and disinfomration on its platform. So we are going to circulate a letter with an ask for signatories for people to ask twitter to add caste
  • 2) We also are working with colleagues in Viet Tran and Myanmar to launch a colaition of global south groups working on platfrom accountabilty so that we can leveraage global positions in battles like this. Countries from the global south represent 70% of the market and yet are issues are always put to the bottom
  • Caste is on of the oldest systems of oppression in the world. It is a system that separates on the basis of what family your born into and there for caste whcih determins the whole of your life. So the rulling party the BJP in India is hindu fundamentalist party. Its goals are to create an ethno relgious state that consolidates brahminical religious control of India. And uses violence to distract from its larger goals of land and labor explotiaiton
  • The current political party owns the biggest IT cell to spread trolling + fake news.
  • The Indian troll phenomenon comes from the 2014 Prime Minister elections where Narendar Modia and the BJP It cell built one of the largest troll opreations in the world. They did not dismantle it after he won they grew it and it is this troll army that has weaponized all the platforms in india including twitter, facebook, and whatsapp. It is both humans and bots and rich app ecosystem.
  • You can read more here:
  • We should launch a coalition of global south groups working on platform accountabilty so that we can leveraage global positions in battles like this. We really hope everyone reaches out to either support or join this. Standing together as a unit will be very powerful.
  • how twitter and fb is effecting people in their own context and is there away to leverage this conversation into a global accountabilyt convo:it increase in hate speech , health issues and even threats on the lives of people/activists
  • the myanmar and vietnamese folks were reallly pivotal in the activist strategy becuase these SM companies are american companies and they were able to model how have a US plank to the strategy really helps with visibility. Because these companies work like colonial outfits and their local representatives doe not have as much power as silicon valley anchors
  • Some participants are recommending the flexibility of Mastodon as a Twitter replacement
  • transitioning in a platform which let the users more empowered is always good. but trolls are a different kind of issue. It's ok for moving on mastodont and other fediverse protocols... but this is not enough to solve all our issues.
  • we need to hold the accountable to disinformation. SM are allowing it and oftentimes collaborting witht he bad actors
  • right now the onus of safety is on the user. it should be on the platform.
  • a lot of people are trying to live up to what the media expects of them...and it's caused an increased rate of depression
  • Elections are pivotal for misinformation on SM: cause there is a lot of information being shared either to campaign for or against someone which can also be true or false. In our country this year there was an increase of misinformation or fake news to the extent of sharing fake results online using SM platforms of prominent people with a large number of followers
  • there are multiple players working to spread fake news and miss-information for upcoming election in bangladesh using SM
  • in Mexico, some of hte journos in our space were saing that they were being used to discredit and attack journos. (they saw huge increase in that)
  • Troll Busters was created by a black woman journalist in the US who was tired of seeing trolls attack other women journos. Their model? They bring a group of positive voices to where trolls are, to help the person under attack: http://www.troll-busters.com/
  • The needs:
  • 1. We need more talent, investment in tech, advocacy, etc.
  • 2. Invest time to develope leaders who can speak at international levels
  • 3. We should be doing innovation derives to develop more tech from our space
  • capacity building is the key, but unfortunately not many folks willing to do this. Also to allow more capable young people to come out to be the speaker or lead... also sadly not much opportunities for younger folks, sometimes
  • We need to create a hackathon for visionaries from global south. We can build a feminist internet and free ourselves from colonial models of tech
  • Quote of the day: "We have to move out of rapid response to visionary."


November 28

  • Last week, this happened in India: https://pad.riseup.net/p/indiacall A Dalit woman triggered massive backlash in India for meeting with Twitter global head and demanding that the platform address hate speech on the platform.
  • In India, marginalized communities, like Dalit, are experiencing tremendous amount of hate speech on Twitter. However, from Twitter's side there is no understanding of caste, local culture, languages, slag etc.
  • There has been a real increase in hate speech/disinformation in the Zimbabwean context for the past two years mainly because they were going into elections and the president was over thrown. Difference in opinions has triggered a lot of hate speech
  • For Facebook there's a massive problem for countries in Southeast Asia and in East Africa, Latam...Basically any place that Facebook is used as both a tool to organize or to publish. Irreparable violence has stemmed from misinfo, hate speech in India & Myanmar. Facebook and the platform itself has been slow to counter, to the point of negligence. it's now become the standard for twitter as well.. both platforms are having a hard time dealing with fake news, bots. One of the issues is that these platforms seeks to be an international force but does not hire local talent that can help the company understand local context, leading to shitty policies crafted...leading to deaftone responses when harm has been done
  • Internet companies need to support the underrepresented more than others. if they are going to get into markets where there is inequality, they need to try to educate, or provide access to education for people to challenge incorrect or discriminatory views.
  • The Internet Freedom community thinks:

- The Community needs to find alternatives to twitter - Social media companies should hire more local talent that understand the problem, have better policies to deal with hate speech, and craft better technical solutions to counter things like phishing, fake news, bots.

  • Facebook are testing and slowly rolling out ways to counter fake news, but that process should be informed by the folks who are most affected by fake news.
  • It seems that the government of Egypt force Twitter accounts with more than 5000 followers to register as a media company
  • Re the Training and Best Practices theme, it would be awesome to get a session or sessions that people share and critic the vast number of training methodologies that trainers use from our different regions or contexts . Also, some folks wanted more focus on understanding the role trainers play in serving as "voice" of bugs, UX improvements etc to tools

November 15

  • The most difficult thing about working with other trainers is to get all team members focused on the result. We all are stuck to our practices and experience to some extent. Some trainers just cannot choose a different perspective. It's not easy to say: "Allright, there's a presentation (an exercise, a RPG, a quiz, etc.), let's make it as good as we can using all our resources"
  • One of my big reasons to go to IFF is to discuss what are good ways to make the most collaborative teams. We don't have a single brilliant receipt for a cool collaborative team. A participant suggested several sessions for IFF. One of them will be about team building for holistic security trainers. To share the positive experiences: Did you manage to involve “other” experts into this work effectively? If yes, how did you get them out of their nutshells? Did you have any positive experience with organizers of events and donors so they supported your holistic approach?
  • Holistic security approach involves different aspects: digital, psycho-social, physical, legal. It can be rather difficult to join efforts of experts who used to work in their narrow fields, mostly because they see little perspective. “I’m a legal consultant, please keep all that computer tricks away from me”. Or: "We want a digital security training on how to protect our social network accounts, we don't need a psychologist, we are OK".
  • Other participant pointed that we should talk more to each other - from their experience, we all do our homework before a training, we go and make sure we have the most updated info on things... They think we should share this with one another, and also,They think we get the same questions... so sharing that too should become a thhing we do.
  • There is a big gap between tech skills and basic dig sec training skills.
  • There's a gap between tech skills and training skills
  • We need to build more programs and talk more with funders to not rely on unicorns who can do both, but support teams
  • The participants conclued that it should be a combination of things: Security audit (safetag) + security development plans + trainings plus general enlightment
  • Trainers need resources and financial support but there are tons of things that we need to do and that are not being done or being done unsufficiently. For example, people who produce various sorts of educational products such as guidelines, online courses, interactive exercises and even articles are able to get feedback before they come out with final versions of their products. This could help to fix bugs, reach audiences in different regions/cultures, strengthen our working contacts.
  • some groups are generating so grerat materials super segmented to certain groups that outside that group the material is impossible to adapt, and the the knowledge isn't applicable to other audeinces and get lost.
  • does it also include more people moving out of google mail and google docs because that might be secure but does not support privacy and is still the most used solution by our kind of organisations and donors
  • Manuals are the best resource but it depends on the trainer.
  • IMHO content should always be written starting from the needs. Ideally a good training content is a content that has been elaborated with the people the training is aimed at. Check for instance the very good manual against online and offline harassment created by tactical tech for women and trans* persons. It has been created in collaboration with those communities. The content and the creation process of this manual are excellent.
  • there's value in shared core materials, tools, and approaches, but to actually provide a good service, you really have to tailor it to the needs of who you're working with.
  • all such recommendations survive only if they are updated regularly and in time. Also, it's super important that they are constructed in a way that make them easy to be adapted for different contexts (cultural, political, social)
  • There isn't a space where conversations between trainers happen.
  • On participant said that they feel there are core components of Holistic-Security and Level-Up that are useful for a very long time; but anything that starts talking about specific tools or technology gets outdated (often dangerously!) quickly. It would be nice if they not wait until the upcoming event but do some development (more beta testing if needed) before it, there's much time ahead.
  • sometimes even "basic" explanations are not good enough. For example, 2FA by SMS is not advised by many authords because the technology itselt. However, there's another argument which work better in our local audiences - a threat of SMS duplication. for anything to last and be flexible, it has to be super high-level, and then be adapted as the threats and tech changes, as well as respecting different contexts (2fa using an app or hardware device my be financially unfeasible)
  • There's one gap that trainers/experts can easily fall in: believing that their audience / country / context / particular group / etc. is way too special so other experience isn't much applicable


November 1


October 18

  • Ranking Digital Rights (or RDR) is a research project that sets global standards for how companies in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector should respect human rights. They focus on privacy and freedom of expression, and last year they analyzed 22 different internet and telecommunications companies around the world (https://rankingdigitalrights.org/index2018/). Basically, none of these companies give users enough information to understand how their freedom of expression and privacy are affected by using the companies' products
  • The companies in governing privacy and freedom of expression have a huge role at least as important as many governments.
  • In 2012, Rebecca MacKinnon, director for RDR, puplished Consent of the Networked, that explains how tech companies and internet service providers collect massive amounts of data on nearly everyone on the planet, and have incredible power to censor, filter, and otherwise control the content that people read and post online https://consentofthenetworked.com/
  • RDR can't measure what actually goes on inside companies, so instead they measure what companies SAY they do -- what kinds of commitments they make to their users and they look at 3 main kinds of disclosure: 1) governance (how the company makes decisions related to human rights) 2) freedom of expression (rules for what people can say and do online, and how they're enforced) and 3) privacy (data collection, data sharing with governments, technical security, etc)
  • for Nigeria, a lot of service providers do not handle data privacy so well and they are usually exchanged with third party org. a lot
  • As a result of RDR work, the companies are making small changes. The biggest change from 2017 to 2018 was Apple: thanks to RDR efforts, they now call privacy A FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT on their website, startup screens for Macs and iOS devices, and more. And, they just released a database where anyone can see ALL the different kinds of info that Apple has about them -- it's only available in the EU and US right now (i think) but they're in the process of rolling it out worldwide.
  • Other people can use RDR methologogy in their own countries. All of their material is creative commons, and their team is super happy to help people figure out how to build on their work. There's a list of RDR adaptations here, so you can get an idea: https://rankingdigitalrights.org/adaptations/
  • Russian legislators often say "it's only the international experience of the most advanced democratic societies we rely on" when they propose yet another repressive draft law. For example, they say, it's FARA that we followed when we labeled the most active Russian human rights NGOs as foreign agents. It's good to have more people from abroad speaking that what's going on here is actually NOT any "international experience", at least not the best one. I wonder if arguments of this sort are used by legislators (and those who implement such repressive laws too) in other countries and whether investigations made by teams like RDR help you in any way when you oppose such practices.
  • Google get the highest score in our ranking (but it's still only 63% so i wouldn't call it "good") they make most of their money from tracking what people do online and offline and then selling targeted advertising -- scholars call this "surveillance capitalism" or "data capitalism" and they have good data security overall. https://rankingdigitalrights.org/index2018/companies/google/
  • In Russia, Google is the very first candidate for people who switch from Russian companies to something "more reliable". The vast majority of HRDs and independent journallists whom I have worked with are somehow connected to Google: mail, docs, calendar, etc.
  • Whether Google will eventually return to China remains unclear, but Google is clearly working on it

October 11

  • Malaysian gov is passing a bill to abolish mandatory death penalty in the country. All the inmate in death row will be pardoned with life imprisonment.
  • Taiwan has upcoming local level elections (mayors) in November, so now candidates are campaigning. In the Taipei city they also have 2 city representative from the local civic tech community (g0v) running for election. And thy've just celebrated the national day (Oct 10), their president mentioned "fake news" multiple times, and said that the government will have some measures against it. OCF will support community initiatives focusing on combatting fake news/misinformation. The biggest misinformation initiative in the g0v civic tech community is "Cofacts" https://cofacts.g0v.tw/en , it's a chatbot, designed to reply balancing opinions when forwarded a message.
  • The Iranian Gov is expanding its capacity of internet censorship to the outside of Iran. In some cases if the website is hosted in Iran and they blocked it, more than likely that website is going to be blocked for the entire world. The method that they use for this kind of blocking is so simple. They inject an Iframe to the website (Which according to the Iranian cyber crime law is illegal) However, if the website is secure with SSL, they cannot block them. Recommending that Iranian websites use SSL certificate such as let's encrypt. Here is a link to this research https://www.iranhumanrights.org/2018/08/one-year-under-irans-telecommunications-minister-mohammad-javad-azari-jahromi/ this is a new move.
  • In the last 18 months, Vietnam has seen dozens of activists jailed for simple things like posting on facebook. The govt has sentenced activists to 15-20 years in jail for organizing or being part of networks/movements working for change. It's had a chilling effect on the entire space. The Vietnamese govt just passed a law making it illegal to post on FB "offensive" content. They are also dealing with govt-sponsored trolls on FB, a lot of fake news. The Vietnamese community is facing real fatigue because they are constantly advocating for so many people in jail.
  • In Germany, during the reunification holiday, a spokesman for the AfD (new Nazi party) pointed to anti-fascist protestors and said that when the AfD gets in power, they'll use all the surveillance being gathered now to come get people.
  • In Latin America there is a lot of information disorders /fake news/ misinformation and we see that many different motivations can lead certain groups to do this kind of activities, we want to build a research about that but we have seen from criptocurrency mining to trolling.
  • In Venezuela they just had the first formal case of a jailed politician killed by state forces while in custody. This sets a precedent for activists and politicians. This suggest the risk level are even higher than before
  • This spring, a bunch of civil society organizations from countries experiencing acute problems with the Facebook platform (fake news, hate speech, censored post) started to write a letter to Mark Zuckberberg, on the many problems with Facebook. They continue working towards a collective solution. Today, the coalition is researching the response time that Facebook has to take down hate speech or content that violates community standards. They have a growing list of countries contributing to this research. If you would like to get involved, email team@internetfreedomfestival.org
  • http://fatabyyano.net is a nice initiative that is countering fake news in Arabic on Facebook. A team of volunteers basically takes every viral fake news and debunks it.
  • In Mexico, they are still dealing with the problem of having thousands of disappearances and feminicides in a lot of regions
  • OCF's hosted a "Combatting misinformation workshop" in June, and it went very well. Can advise others on how to do this.
  • Tunisia, they have been through a lot of political instability episodes since the revolution of 2011 and are suffering from the excessive presence of hate speech on social media and fake news.

October 4

  • One participant pointed that she has a v narrow focus when it comes to cell phone security right now, and she primarily works on studying the latest generations of imsi catchers which work on 4g/LTE. There is not much information available about them (since our main source of info is leaked documents, FOIAs, etc ...). She's also working on building an LTE imsi catcher catcher, so that we can try to detect this newer generation of surveillance equipment. The main thing She's noticed is that more and more law enforcement agencies are buying these devices, and getting away with refusing to respond to requests for information about them (e.g. refusing court orders to give up info about them). Currently they're trying to implement it in Facebook messenger (previously it only supported LINE)
  • E2E encryption (or just setting one's phone to only use LTE tbh) makes you much less vulnerable if you're worried about communication interception. but there's little you can do to avoid location tracking if an imsi catcher is being operated nearby.
  • For next IFF, participant would love to learn who to build their own infrastructures and get less dependent on google, facebook and others (they noticed that Github, used by a lot of us, was bought by Microsoft and they have to find a way to protect the things they use to be taken over by those companies). They'd like too to discuss handling harassment on federated/otherwise independent platforms.
  • They noticed that there has been of craze of Holistic Security over the years which several people across the globe have been implementing and incorporating in their trainings. It would be nice to have feedback on lessons learnt on this & some shortcomings that they might have noticed.
  • Also there are several methodologies which are being used or tested or experimented by community members doing security audits, it would be nice to have a conversation around that too. In terms of tools being showcased, I feel there should be a way next IFF where participants are practically taken through different apps/tools and they have a full appreciation of the tool ie have a tool/app show room.
  • Other thing that would be nice to see in the next IFF is advices on how to communicate to the general public the importance of the internet governance, digital privacy, equal access, etc
  • there should be something for upcoming tech and the risk factors (AI, etc)
  • More sessions on building our own infrastructures and get less dependent on google, facebook or others. For example, Microsoft just bought GitHub, what does this mean for us?
  • We've gotten to the point where people recognize that psychosocial care is a vital part of security training - are there best practices about cultural sensitivity, and ideally "nothing about us without us" (to borrow from the disability activism community) as a pillar of this work? (mainly thinking of how funders approach these projects - no more putting people on planes to lecture for a day or two)
  • Talking about the "Training and Best Practices" theme, it would be great to have some trainer gatherings at different experience levels (and one large combined one) to actually have that discussion in person!
  • With a general view, our participants would love to see, talk and discuss during the next IFF:

Emerging threats related to AI Building infastructures that respect femenist principles and provide "safer" experiences How to better do outreach/advocacy Alternatives to "private" corporate services we all depend on. How to better address different skillset in the community.

September 27

  • What is the point of revolution if we can't dance

English: https://urgentactionfund.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/06/WTPR-Final-Book.pdf

Spanish: http://40.86.183.137:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/77/WTPR-in-Spanish1.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

  • Therapy is a process. It is not a quick shot. You have to work hard to improve yourself. Mostly therapy is a way to restructure how you think and how you interact with your environment.
  • There is a misconception because associate therapy with being mentally ill, but you don't have to be mentally ill to go to therapy. Many of your thoughts can cause damage, and you may not be aware until its too late. However, therapy is also like going to the gym - its a long term process. You can't expect to repair the damage done for years in just a couple of hours. The more you wait to ask for you help, the more you will need to work on your problems, because the main problem you had may have affected other areas.
  • In places like sub-saharan Africa, going to therapy is associated with rich people, or folks that are not mature enough mentally.
  • PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder) is when your body is experiencing a fear of being damaged when there is no real danger. Take for example, a solider that comes from war. They can relive their traumatic event(s) in dreams, or feel bad, or develop unhealthy beliefs.
  • You can try to encourage people to go to therapy by explaining that intelligence is has flaws. Just like I wouldn't do my own plumbing, and hire a plumber...Its okay to hire someone who specializes in understanding how to correct assumptions or unhealthy thoughts we may have. This does not make you weak or unhealthy. This makes you human.
  • Many people in the space feel that many times their efforts are worthless. Every other week there is yet another threat to our digital freedom that we must think about, and that is a continuous pattern. The feeling of never doing enough combined with the fact that things are not getting better. Also, for many people in the community that are "social interaction" nodes, sometimes the work can be very hard. For example, in trainings or risk assessments activities, some activists can turn emotional. For example, individuals may break their silence about certain experiences and this could be hard to manage for some facilitators. Usually it ends being a good place to do catharsis and the people feel better after this kind of processes. However, those that are placed as facilitators don't always feel 100% comfortable with this role because they don't know if they are doing the right thing. These folks really need trainings, books, courses etc, so they understand how to deal with these situations in a better way.
  • Some folks in the space mention that its super difficult to identify a model of assistance that works. Services are too pricey for activists to priortize therapy, and there is a lack of resources for this. This is horrible, because small local groups are more at risk.
  • How to remain sane in digital rights? Remember that you only can do your best. If it's not enough, it's ok. You can ask for help! The important thing is to "do your best" in an optimal level. If you are burnt out, this will effect your work or impact. So its okay to tap out from time to time, and do only the amount you can handle. If you feel more and more sad over the time, a therapist sure can guide your thoughts. Maybe you need to reconnect with yourself on a personal level; maybe you are passing through a bad time, and that affects the perception of your job. Maybe if you are always feeling that you don't do enough, you are carrying with too much weight. Also, it may help to lower our expectations. In other words, understand that maybe you can't personally and individually can't change the global society structures, but I can be really helpful to the people that I am helping.
  • There are different types of therapy and you should do research before you pick a therapists. Some therapies focus on feelings and understanding how that determines our actions; Some focus on learning new skills (more practical) that change our bad behaviors. So what type of therapist you need is going to depend on your situation. It’s not going to be the same if we are dealing with emotional situations or dealing with a problem like fear of flight.
  • On-line sessions are as sucessfull as face-to-face sessions.
  • However, therapists working with activists in on-line sessions have to make sure the data is protected. We may have to create a document for therapists that has privacy.security guidelines and characteristics of the space.
  • Questions about whether there is a way to do a psychology audit/assesment when working with groups.

September 20

  • Burnout and emotional toll on people that are the "listening" ear in activists groups. They need more training from therapists to help create better boundaries. This includes trainers. There is a need for training of folks who are handling alot of the emotional labor by therapists who can help create processes and systems. For example, in some organizations they are dealing with deaths which is very traumatic.
  • In addition, people with mental health issues rarely seek counseling/support - until probably it's too late. Majority of these include women & youth
  • Psychologist without Borders may be a good starting place.
  • it's really hard to find a therapist who understands online threats
  • One idea is to write up a "fact sheet" for people just starting with therapists that explain the community and context to them. So it serves a premier.
  • SAFIGI (Safety First for Girls) we did a comprehensive research on safety - with the understanding that safety is internal and external. Internal safety being peace of mind, heart, and emotions. External safety being protection of the body,other person and environment). Of 327 people surveyed in 6 countries, we found only 12% girls had learned about mental health in high school and below. This affects every aspect of their life. https://www.dropbox.com/s/a8u8ladyjcncfrl/Data%20Analysis%20Safety%20Report.pdf?dl=0
  • We can't give people the impression that they can self-care really hard at systemic oppression. More research needed in this area.
  • Someone looking for organization that can help doing self-care for human rights activists/defenders for SEA region. Also noting that mental health awareness is extremely low here and, people often asking us to STOP WORKING in activist spaces if they feel stressed.
  • Participants noted that at the point where people most need therapy, they're either pushed out of organizations after the organization fosters an abusive environment, or have burned out because activism is stressful
  • Also noted that the look how cool I am, everything is broken and the NSA is in my living room right now!" training method can make people more scared than they were before
  • One in every four Kenyans may suffer from mental illness at one point in their lives. That is 11.5 million people (out of the 48 million people). US Latinas has the highest suicide rate than in any group in the US.
  • Some of the communities of color in the US communities seem to a) bring in cultural spirituality So for example, some latino groups they may bring in elements of caribbean spirituality. b) they understand and remind each other they have a strong connection with their ancestors c) they opently talk about the mental stress d) they are focused on having exercises that are meant to strenghthen your moral and understand you are part of a bigger family.
  • In some countries, there is a huge lack of therapists so they go to places like church.
  • the disability subreddits are supportive. The moderators remove any "yoga will cure you!" posts and there are a lot of people who post about being newly diagnosed and the mourning process afterwards
  • Some self-care activities: Reading fiction, volunteering, spend time with family that is quality, allow yourself to take breaks, exercise, find life outside of your work, go to nature, massage, meditation, do art.

September 13

  • The Intersection of Things is a feminist podcast about the internet and everything it touches. Every other week we take a topic –like health, or pride, or consent–, contextualize with the internet and tech, and try to approach it from an intersectional feminist perspective.
  • The wish or goal to improve a space always has to start with empathy. So a simple first thing to kickstart the improvement of spaces is to listen to communities we want to make these spaces better for –be them our own communities, or communities we are not a part of. Consuming media (podcasts, videos, books, blogs, etc) produced by and for these communities is a fantastic first step.
  • Intersectional Feminist Perspective: We borrow the term “intersectionality” from scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who initially coined the term to describe how an individual's experience is not only affected by factors like their race, socioeconomic class, abilty, gender, orientation, etc. But rather it is how all of these elements mix (or "intersect") what informs how someone navigates and experiences the world –and how the world treats THEM. So we take this lens of intersectionality and want to look at the internet through it by asking questions like: how does privacy affect people like me, who are not only queer but queer, and women, and of colour, etc etc etc
  • A key part for any person or organization doing outreach is to know what –ideally– outreach should be. For example, outreach should be a thing that is not just added at the end of a project. Outreach is the act of including people or organizations in the building of the project itself. Outreach is usually done at the end, as a dissemination piece. A key thing that would differentiate tokenism from collaboration is at what point in the project do you bring in people from different perspectives, and how much we listen to these perspectives. It is not enough to have people in the room just to have us all there.
  • The beauty of communities that reflect the rich spectrum of humanity is that one is, or should be, constantly aware of how different each of us might experience the world. For example, something that might be very "progressive" for me, might be something that is in conflict with someone's traditions. So the challenge is, how do we see each other, how do we share space in a way that celebrates and respects each other. So, one of the biggest challenges is listening to one another –and it is hard! But it is very rewarding, and you leave these spaces a different person (in a good way).
  • Related to how to be a good allie: Listening is very important. We are all going to make a mistake at some point —how could we not, the world is messy. What I find fascinating is that a lot of the impact of when things go wrong comes from how we react to our mistakes. Often, there is an element of defensiveness (we "lose face"). But I think practicing slowing down, apologizing, and owning up to the the thing that went wrong is important. Also important: if we ever unintentionally cross the line (for example, an off handed comment in the workplace), we must apologize but not let the other person do the emotional work of making us feel "ok".
  • Many folks commenting on the rate of burnout people are experiencing. In addition, marginalized groups are affected psychologically when they are in an environment that doesn't support them.
  • There is a test people do in some trainings to see how stressed they are.
  • Participants noted that disabilities don't really get talked about alot.
  • There is always alot of emotional labor being done by people of color on team that isn't paid. they become the diversity recruits.
  • RECOMENDATIONS

- Code Switch is a great podcast about race and the world today. - Note to Self is "the tech podcast about being human" is a fantastic listen too. - Third Wave Urbanism and The Black Urbanist podcast is another good one. I love when someone takes an area (like urbanism) and looks at it through a different lens. These pods do this. - Books: "the poverty of privacy rights" by Khiara M. Bridges. Such a fascinating read (example: how much surveillance do you think pregnant women in social assistance are subject to? A classic of code switching and double labour is Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks. Algorithms of Oppression by Zeynep Tufekci, and Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil are both fantastic.

  • UPDATES

In this piece by UNHCR's innovation team for refugees, they analyzed all their public posts, and found that there is a huge imbalance in quoting men versus quoting women. And when they analyzed who wrote the article, they found that shockingly out of all the men who wrote the posts, only one woman was quoted. In any article they wrote, ever. http://www.unhcr.org/innovation/gender-imbalance-innovation/

September 6

  • For IFF, people want to see more sessions that integrate with the Academia as there is a feeling that there is a widening gap between academic researchers done in terms of risk threats etc around HRDs and activists and professional trainers. Academics need to better appreciate the work being done by professionals in the digital physical security spaces.
  • More sessions that focus on intersectional feminism, and past "white feminism" and white/cisgender/straight fragility to get things done without tokenism or exclusion.
  • More sessions geared towards new people and smaller sessions for skill building for folks that have some basis.
  • Remembering how far the community has come in regards to collaboration..when it was super competitive before.
  • Have to have an honest conversation about collaboration. People brought up things like LevelUp and Safetag, that galvanized a responsible community of trainers, brought a lot of new faces in, and built a largely evergreen curricula which people still use today, but hard to sell because of the community-owned model. Also, hard to track numbers because a) website didn't track users so no stats on usage, and b) a community who for lots of really solid reasons doesn't report back about how many trainings and where they took place. he orgs who put out this stuff are constantly strained to both maintain it, but also to keep moving forward with new programs, as they don't get to "own" these things they created. Again, this is a long term responsible thing to do, and benefits the community much more effectively, but it means a lot of hard work above and beyond daily fixing things. Another problem is training...it takes an organization time to learn how to do it properly and create proper structures. Collaboration means being motivated by different things, and valuing other things more highly
  • At the same time, gay sex was just decriminalized in india

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/06/asia/india-gay-sex-ruling-intl/index.html

  • In Bangladesh, to increase female participation, what was effective was 1:1 participant for male and female. after few training session the participants spread the word about the importance. now a days most of the female participants willingly attend at training or meetups.
  • GAMES FOR TRAINERS:

- https://openinternet.github.io/copilot/

- Yoshi Kohno at the Univ. of Washington has developed some games https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~yoshi/

- netalert.me

- From Kseniia @ CitizenLab, a great game she developed:

The following is from someone from your area of the world. This person is willing to talk to you via email, if you wish: I'm not doing any 'games' but what I often do is drawings. That worked very well on trainings I did for feminist collectives.

We do 2 sets of drawings. 1 drawing in the beginning of the training: I ask them to draw how they send a message to their contact, and if there's something weird going on, please represent it on the drawing as well.

Usually I give 5-10 minutes for that, after first round of "oh my, I am a don't know how to draw" and so on and a round of encouragements Then when everyone is done I collect drawings, and quickly look at them. Usually there are "trends" in the group: there are some common ways in which people tend to represent how they see networking and transfer of data, and also some common ways in depicting the "adversary"/"adversaries" (e.g. the danger being on the server side, or the danger being between client and server, or in the client, or in the "physical world" (physical threat) and so on). So I give myself some 3 minutes to group these drawings according to these representations, and give short comments on these groups, encouraging every time the person for their effort and good intuitions (because very often they do have very good intuitive understanding of both transfer protocols / networking and threats), but also explaining if some things are represented in a technically wrong way.

Then I ask people if I understood them right and ask them to comment on their drawings if they wish. People like to defend their visions, and often the comments are interesting to hear - as a trainer I understand where some of the misunderstandings hide (underestimation or overestimation of risk for example...). But it's also a good point to start the discussion.

After this first debrief is done, I usually use a whiteboard / blackboard to list the different kinds of "adversaries" or failures people have drawn. Then I comment on each of them and ask people if they know how to defend from that. Again, in a feminist perspective I was trying to always let people suggest their own ideas of self-defense, and let others correct / criticize their fellows. Only in case of a very wrong intuition that can be dangerous, would I interrupt that process. However, after listening to all these comments, I would wrap up and write good tips down, and give some more advice as well as - for every kind of threat - some sources to go look into (online guides, videos...) and some tools if they have not been mentioned.

After that, in the end of the training, I would ask people to draw me a second round of drawings - how would you like the Internet to be? Draw me a perfect communication. This second round of drawings is very important for several reasons: first, it helps to cope with the stress of the training (because a lot of these women had hard time talking about threats they had experienced, and in general, security trainings give you a lot of stress to cope with).

Second, it breaks the dystopian technological visions that somehow dominate our space, and sets the imagination free to draw collective visions for better tech but also for better communities (kind of speculative fiction approach). In the end, I collect drawings and look if people dream of similar things. Surprisingly very often we see that somehow people project very similar ideas (for example in case of Russian feminist workshops, there were a lot of visions that looked like p2p distributed networks without any centralized servers or anything that would look like central points of failure). I would ask people to briefly comment on what they wanted to say, and in case when people's "dream technology" had a real correlate, I would give them tips to go check this or that tool or project (for example, Mastodon for or Briar...).

  • Here are two examples of games and activities for digisec training (in Spanish)

1) Amiga cifrada: how to organize an exchange of GPG keys (by @ciberseguras) https://ciberseguras.org/como-organizar-un-intercambio-de/ … 2) A las calles sin miedo: manuals and a board game https://infoactivismo.org/a-las-calles-sin-miedo-herramienta-ludica-para-la/ 3) http://www.sulabatsu.com/blog/sula-batsu/mediacion-descarga-libre-del-juego-huells-mi-rastro-en-internet/



August 30

  • The Police Department of Bangladesh Government opens a tender. The tender notice is to procure IMSI mobile monitoring/tracking systems, including its ultra-portable backpack version. “IMSI” stands for “international mobile subscriber identity” and the devices in question are basically eavesdropping gadgets used for intercepting mobile phone and its data traffic, as well as tracking location data of mobile users. If I’m not wrong, they essentially create a "fake" mobile tower acting between the target mobile phone and the service provider's real towers to intercept communication related data. http://bangla.cptu.gov.bd/advertisement-goods/details-60402.html
  • The SecureDrop project is going to have 0.9.0 release on September 5th. If anyone wants to help in translation, they can help by joining the localization-lab-chat channel.
  • Woman group in Zimbabwe is looking to start their own radio channel. If you have resources or good educational materials, let them know
  • Someone in Lisbon is starting a privacy meetup.

* Notes from talk from Nathaly on Cyber Feminist Radio and networks:

- When conducting an interview, if the person you are interviewing has to be extra careful about their privacy and/or security, someone from the radio crew will talk as them, recreating their voice. (ie, so at no time do they use the person's voice)

- Always use safe channels online and offline to talk to your interviewers

- They do have some channels like a cyberfeminist mail list and one of the rules is to have a secure mail like rise up, and we use PGP all the time to share information.

Tools that can be used to create your own radio:

Software: Audio editing: Audacity or arduor

streaming: Radiolibre.co https://liberaturadio.org/ or https://kefir.red/


Educational Manuals in Spanish: Curso virtual: feminicidio y periodismo https://radioslibres.net/curso-virtual-feminicidio-y-periodismo/

Despatriarcalizar la Comunicación: periodismo inclusivo https://radioslibres.net/despatriarcalizar-comunicacion-periodismo-inclusiv/

Escuela ciberfeminista https://escuelafeminista.red/


Recommended Feminist Radio Channels

In English:

https://soundcloud.com/icalondon/black-feminism-and-post-cyber

In Spanish:

Enchufadas: https://radiocut.fm/audiocut/enchufadas-autodefensa-digital-1/

Encuentro de ciberfeminismo Ecuador https://soundcloud.com/tristanaproducciones/encuentro-ciberfeminismo

El desarmador https://eldesarmador.org/

Cyborg feminista radio https://cyborgfeminista.tedic.org/tag/radio/

Wambra radio: http://ciberfeminismo.elchuro.org/cobertura/

tropica media http://tropicamedia.org/

La Radio q genero http://www.laqradiogenero.com/

August 23

  • Someone is trying to apply SAFETAG for LGBTQ communities in South Asia.
  • Totem project is an online platform helping journalists and activists use digital security & privacy tools and tactics more effectively in their work by Greenhost and FreePressUnlimited. https://totem-project.org/
  • Malaysian Parliament passes bill to repeal Anti-Fake News Act last week
  • IFF Fellowship deadline has been extended to August 27.
  • In Zimbabwe, there was a constitutional court hearing yesterday for the just ended elections where the opposition party is challenging the results that were announced. Judgement will be announced tomorrow at 1400hrs UTC+2
  • Someone is working on a due process (appeals) campaign targeting social media platforms (primarily Facebook) and would love to chat off-list with anyone interested or working on similar things.
  • The Tor meeting will be happening in Mexico end of September.

About Safetag:

  • SAFETAG is an assessment framework to work with organizations and help them build informed decisions about the risks they face. It provides a wide variety of different activities: some very research focused, like understanding the context the organization is working within -- each organization has a totally different set of risks depending on their context; Some are very technical, such as scanning office networks to understand what systems and traffic are on the network; and many are "interpersonal" -- simply talking to staff members, interviewing management, and running exercises to help the organization build a cohesive and shared understanding of their risks and which of them they accept, and which they want to prioritize to mitigate.
  • In the best case, you should have a few people helping out -- one person who has a more digisec training background, and another who's happier sitting in the back room hacking around on things. Often funding and scheduling mean that one person has to do all three, so careful planning and preparation are important -- you do NOT want to be researching how to nmap an organization without crashing their computers in the middle of an assessment. In addition, there is value and more impact if the audit is done by more people with different skills other than a single person.
  • SAFETAG scoping questions are really good to help people understand their risks.
  • Some folks have it customized for working with LGTBQ in West Africa.
  • SAFETAG wants to be community owned, but depends on people taking ownership/participating.
  • Even though someone might be from a different parts of the world, so many common problems come up that are similar. So you may think your approach only applies to some super specific situation, but almost guaranteed someone else is facing the same problem
  • Best tips, for network scanning - (a) be careful and (b) keep it balanced. A lot of the tools, even "simple" nmap, have a lot of super dangerous options, and you really never know if a computer is going to be vulnerable to a 10-year-old bug. Start super lightweight, and super low-impact, even flooding a system that may be a few years out of date can cause it to fail, and then you're suddenly halfway through an audit and have to stop to fix something you broke. Look at software versions, and peek via nmap on weird ports being open before doing anything more intense
  • The other big tip is to not get trapped in any one approach. People with hacking/pentesting backgrounds tend to ignore the interactive parts, and people with training backgrounds tend to shy away from the technical pieces. It takes both, plus a solid base of research, to really understand an organization. Also, and super important, you can also spend a LOT of time digging in to some really obscure tech things, and lose the opportunity to ensure you have a holistic view of the org.
  • The SAFETAG translation in Spanish is out of date. Ping them if you can help identify chunks to prioritize for funding.
  • Re: network scanning, a super fun thing to do (but requires a system with a decent chunk of RAM and a few hours of access to a lot of bandwidth) is to download some vm images. vulnhub is a good repository, and MS has some testing images for old versions of windows (see the safetag reference file here for links: https://github.com/SAFETAG/SAFETAG/blob/master/en/references/network_env.adids.md). Use virtualbox to run them locally and have them all on your local network, and then you can use nmap and such locally (do this at home, you can even have it set up to truly be a "fake" network on your computer only -- do NOT do it on a shared or work network!!) This is a great way to get started exploring and using different scanning options


August 16

  • New org in latin america in the works ( Con-nexo). They will be developing projects on capacity building on security, research, security support to organizations, tool development and community generation around communities at risk and security in general.
  • Lots of love happening for SAFETAG fellowship
  • Zimbabwe still doesnt' have a president even after voting
  • Found out Digital Society of Zimbabwe was born in the IFF :)
  • Folks working on security investigation framework in tails. Prototype coming soon! Github here: https://gitlab.com/scif/whiskers
  • Blog posts coming out taimed at helping new auditors get in the SAFETAG mindset; as it can be very overwhelming to try and tackle the guide as it exists now
  • Someone who did research on digital censorship in post-soviet states and how each country's approach differs (about a third have very free internet and about a third have internet censorship in place), is currently talking to a publisher about turning it into a book on the history of censorship in the region.
  • Someone is cultivating digital security trainers to assist HRDs in Southeast Asia as many trainers are still flown in.
  • Past DIF Folks asking that a community is created so they can further connect.
  • Various games made by people in the community such as BLOOG: how formal and informal groups interact in crisis. we called it ENCAPE http://blog.bl00cyb.org/2017/08/interfaces-between-formal-and-informal-crisis-response/, Malicious Content, the infosec card game like Cards against humanit, and the depressing, Cards against Humanitarians" -- now JadedAid -- http://jadedaid.com/).
  • First alpha version Tor Browser coming out soon!
  • Maybe a hackathon with artist, process oriented.
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