Category Archives: people and projects

Teachable Moments in #CivicMedia

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https://player.vimeo.com/video/100307526

A panel at the MIT-Knight Civic Media conference was about the Open Web’s Second Chance, and the problems we are facing with growing the open web movement.  The panelists were Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation and Seamus Kraft, Executive Director of The OpenGov Foundation.  Mark kicked things off with the story of the open web, how Mozilla was born in 1997 and where he sees the movement today.  Then the conversation turned to Seamus, who was first logging online 17 years ago when Mozilla was founded.

Seamus first went on the Internet in the late ’90’s for two main reasons.  Not as an activist, or as a software developer, but as a young teenage boy both hoping to trade live Grateful Dead and Phish concert recordings…and looking to meet and chat up his preferred gender on AOL Instant Messenger.  Fast forward to today: Seamus became a fighter for the open web in 2011 when he, as a conservative Congressional staffer, saw the impending SOPA and PIPA laws threatening the everyday Internet he had grown to love over the intervening years.  He is someone who dearly loves what the Internet has enabled him to do, exchanging music and knowledge, and connecting with others…and he has dedicated his life to protecting it.  A beautiful story – we need more activists generally, and the more diverse we are in our origins the more vectors we can understand these issues along. So it was pretty rad that he showed up to a conference that is diverse in some ways but not in others to talk about this shared ideal. I love this – it gives us more dimensionality to our ideas when they hold up under different objectives and sources as well as the ones we’re more used to. 

But Seamus’ story of discovering the web wasn’t told that way.  The phrase “going online to get girls” kept cropping up during the panel discussion. Indignation bubbled up on the back channel, and then turned into outrage. When Seamus left the stage, he saw the Twitter Storm, was shocked and aghast at the interpretation, and spent the rest of the day owning up to his mistake and personally apologizing on Twitter…all far away from the conference. I would have done the same. I am amazed and honored that he returned the next day, and even more so that he’s willing to write this with me.

Seamus here:

“As I sat outside the conference, reading every single Tweet and comment, and soaking in how my non-inclusive language made people feel, it was like getting punched in the stomach…by myself.  It was brutal, searing and embarrassing, all at once.  How could I be so blind with my language?  Had I actually become the Idiot Tech Guy?  I should have known better, and used the language we celebrate as open web activists, instead of what you’ll too often find in the darker corners of the Internet.  Reading the civic media hashtag and all the tweets directed at me, I felt like I had irreparably insulted everyone in the room, everyone watching the webcast and everyone fighting for the open Internet.”

“In telling the story of how I logged on as a young teenage boy, I had allowed myself to use the language of a young teenage boy.  And in trying to share my passion for growing the open web movement, I had accomplished precisely the opposite.  Showing up the next day was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I am so thankful for the kind and amazing people who put aside their justifiable anger, sat down with me on the conference sidelines, and literally helped me become a stronger, more aware and – I pray – more linguistically inclusive person moving forward.  You gave me another chance, a lesson in humility, and some sorely needed hugs that I will never, ever forget.”

Now Willow here, with an exercise in empathy:

I’m reminded of being in New Orleans, and trying to make a point about NOT being an expert – the people who live in the area are experts in their own experience. I said “I’m clearly not from around here, look at me.” As in look at how sunburned I am, I don’t spend time outside or know how to take care of myself when I do. But guess how it was perceived, and how I immediately knew it must have been perceived. I was mortified. The best I could think to do in that moment was turn even redder and say “well, that came out wrong.”  

But no one called me out. There was no discussion. And that, I think, sucks even more. What we have in this moment from the Civic Media conference is a chance to learn and teach.

I was more upset about how my community reacted to this than I am at Seamus’ comments. The comments were unwitting, and bumbling, yes. It’s good (I would argue necessary) to call those things out. I honestly feel that if he’d been speaking directly to the audience (not on a panel) he would have seen that immediate feedback from the audience. I’m upset the other panelist and the moderator didn’t call him out on it, gracefully, in the moment. In fact, they may have cued, or at least amplified, it. And I am upset that a community that considers itself open worked itself into a frenzy over such comments — and that I was a part of that.

Uhhh. Someone working on open gov to “get girls.” TOTALLY sounds like something I’d be comfortable participating in. #civicmedia

— Willow Brugh (@willowbl00) June 23, 2014

This is an amazing moment to learn – and certainly not just for Seamus. Here’s the question: If someone well-meaning uses language that triggers response from a community whose norms are not yet widespread, how can we inform them in a way that assumes their good faith and alliance? I don’t know of any discipline or approach (including feminism) where I think “don’t come back until you can meet us at our level” is an appropriate response to people who are trying but might stumble. Especially given intersectionality, and that as feminist values start showing up in new arenas (yay!) the people already there don’t understand those nuances yet. How could they?

I’m reminded of how I trained ballet and gymnastics for the better part of a decade and yet had terrible balance. I had no stabilizing muscles because if a movement wasn’t perfect, I was supposed to bail. With parkour, I practiced to fight to stay on a ledge, by whatever wiggling and arm-waving necessary. The imperfections of maintaining footing trumped perfection of form. The thing was, in doing this, I gained enough minor muscle control to start landing things near-perfectly.

Being an ally is HARD. To me, the important thing is not never messing…which I see as impossible. Even the most linguistically precise shift contexts (intentionally or through context collapse). The important thing is returning to a conversation after a misstep. And it’s on me, as the one being allied with, to make it safe to have those post messup-talks when I think they’ll be useful (and I have the bandwidth, and etc etc). I’m not remotely suggesting not to get mad about something that is horrible, as anger is of course merited a human emotion etc etc. But after anger… then what?

If the point is the understanding, and the respect and equality that comes of that understanding, that means learning. And while there are some great resources out there on feminism, equality, behavior, etc, I assume we all know that there’s a difference between reading a book on how to do something and doing it. While it’s not necessarily on us (women) to teach men what’s going on, people are going to have to learn somewhere. If it’s up to men to learn, and we’re (feminine types) not the ones teaching, it’s probably going to be other men. Which is awesome, but I want to be open to questions and check-ins – “are we doing this right?” because we know the vacuum chamber hasn’t exactly worked out well so far. And this sort of exchange means there will be faux-pas. And we need to know how to handle those in a way that encourages the growth of the other person in the process. That is what learning is, after all. It is my prerogative if I want to be a part of those conversations, but I am advocating here that it is worth it and a responsibility, but not an obligation.

So how do we do this? How do we call out information in a way that it cannot be ignored which can be quickly addressed or shown that it won’t be? How do you like to have your social faux-pas pointed out? For me, I’d like people to say “HEY! Seriously?” in the moment, assuming good faith, and I’ll either drop everything for that conversation, or sidebar it for later, depending on level of urgency and transgression.

Seamus here:

“Looking back, I would have loved to have had the panel’s language called out while we were still on stage; and as a result, the opportunity to engage in a meaningful conversation and adjust was was being said in real time.  An ‘Excuse me, but could you elaborate on that last comment?  It comes across as rather sexist.’ would have instantly set me straight, as would the ability to have seen the action on the conference hashtag while we were in front of the room.  

“I’m not sure exactly how we can translate into real life the instant linguistic feedback loops made possible by the open web and social media.  But I do believe it’s possible.  To me, the definition of ‘ally’ should include having the confidence within our community to call out non-inclusive language from the audience, ensure those on stage truly listen and understand, and help the person who stepped in it – like I did – right their wrong words and grow stronger from what can be a positively painful experience for everyone involved.”

link to an amazing, similar article from a different space. Thanks, Sasha!

Everything Wrong With How to Write Things Up In One Entry

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I was just heading back from a week in Dar es Salaam and Iringa District when a bunch of people I <3 filled up my inbox. “Have you seen this thing? Isn’t that what you’re in Tanzania for?” Yes. Which made me sigh, because all the updates about this deployment and the community development have been blogged at the Taarifa and GWOB websites. Sometimes it’s easiest to uphold the very vacuum chamber lamented, rather than do DuckDuckGo searches. Nor did the author reach out to the existing community before complaining about… the lack of community… which is amusing as those two things cover most of what the write-up is about.

But maybe I’m tired from travel. 11 hours in a car to catch a 7 hour flight that was delayed enough that I wrote this while standing in the Istanbul airport sorting out a new route to North America. And all I can think is, “is this blog entry worth my time?” But as it gets to a deeper crux, I’ll go for it. From the article, Everything Wrong in ICT4D Academia in One Research Paper:

  1. Focusing on Westerners: The paper starts with a long detail about a Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon that was the start of the Taarifa software. Nice enough, but they spent 2 whole pages on it – almost 1/3 of the total report.
  2. Focusing on Software Developers: They spend the next 2 pages of the report going into detail around Ushahidi developers and who did or didn’t commit code to github. Okay… interesting to a point, but do we really care about the standard deviation of commits per contributor
  3. Forgetting about Community Members: Remember the title of the paper? Well exactly 1.3 pages of the report, less than 1/3 of the total, was spent talking about the actual community impact. You know, if crowd-sourced location based reporting can improve public service provision? And they didn’t even answer the question!

The three complaints in the write-up are spot on for trends in ICT4D as a whole, and indicative of some of the points that grate at my nerves as well. But these are not new points, especially in the GWOB+Taarifa overlap, nor does it start discussion around how to walk the fine line between tech imperialism and community involvement; discussions I agree are lacking in the field. It’s the same opening cry against tech solutionism. Which Nate and I did a whole site and presentation about recently. However, the going-for-the-face-without-looking-at-what-you’re-going-for manifest in the writeup is even more grating. The comments later show that it’s a sensationalist take on… the sensationalism of the paper’s title. And unless we’re getting into ICT4PoMo (please dear god no) I don’t see how it’s a useful rhetoric. This is a paper taken out of its highly-specific academic context and then critiqued for not being broad enough. It’s extremely short and very targeted. Of course it’s going to focus on the tech, because of the forum for which it was written. But none of that context comes forth in this critique. And if we’re going to get into the analysis-of-the-thing-as-the-thing, then the writeup is spot on, as it missed community involvement in the critique, and completely lacks context. But I digress.

The world is huge, and wonderful, and more complicated than I could ever hope to understand. Projects and people and contexts change. That’s what gives me hope in the world – that all the things that bring me tiny rage (from gender ratios to spirals of conflict to vast wealth differences) can, and will change, over time, so long as we pitch in. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: you are not at fault for where the world is right now. You are, however, responsible for making it suck less.

That the world is so complex and nuanced also means one of my favorite things is meeting people who work on making the world suck less in a way or on a topic that I have no hope of fully understanding. Because how could I possibly understand every angle on the myriad challenges we face? By all of us approaching from different angles, but together, we have better chances of making those improvements. When I have qualms with how someone has approached a topic, I speak up to them about it. I try to understand where things are misunderstood (remember this exchange with Patrick?). So, thanks to the author for doing that. Yes to speaking up, but in order to instigate healthy debate, for the betterment of the whole community. Because people and projects and the world change. The github repos of social good hackathons are paved with good intentions, but healthy debate within the community is based on good faith.

So, as in back in the old day of blogger rings and LiveJournal, what shall we talk about – with an assumption of moving into action – next? The community involvement in Dar es Salaam? How the Iringa District Community Owned Water Source Organizations are really excited about these “innovations,” and how they’re taking lead on it? The work that GWOB does around gender equality in the tech and response space? Or should we discuss how to ensure niche academic papers have easy links to other components of the continuation of those projects? Any extra support and enthusiasm thrown at online annotation platforms is a boon to not only situations like these, but also to the museum and open access communities. Hooray for building knowledge together!

Dar pt 3

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Thursday is a holiday, and so no meetings – we wake up early and head to Mkuranga District – a rural, rather than urban (like Tendale), slum. We run for the ferry, tho thankfully we don’t have to jump for it, new journalist friend Erin in tow. On the other side of the sea, we drive for hours, slipping between staring out the window and talking about interactions and plans. When we finally arrive, Msilikale talks with some women about if they’d be ok to be interviewed. We negotiate money amongst ourselves – in the US and Europe, you get paid for research subject time. Here, there’s an expectation that uzungu will provide money. I offer to buy a meal or drinks1, but it doesn’t go over. Even this is complicated, with potential larger ramifications. What expectations are we setting? Are those ok? Ethical? The lacking infrastructure and predictability isn’t just about drains and tap water, it’s also about social interaction and protocols2

We talk about sewing, and water, and responsibility. There are only wells here, and those only produce salt water, with which they clean, wash, cook, and drink. There was once a community-held water point, but it broke at some point and it wasn’t fixed. The assumption is that the government will install the infrastructure, in the same breath as a complete lack of belief that it will ever happen3. Water can only be gotten when there’s electricity.4, when it can be gotten at all.

reports from the field

Again, there’s no central square, no place for known dissemination of information. Everything is done by word of mouth, neighbors talking to each other. Do they ever update each other with phones? No, there’s too much worry about the cost coming back to them (or to the person they contacted). But they’d be happy to do what’s needed to bring water to their place. If mgunzu like me try to figure out things, how can we avoid being jerks5? So long as the government brings it in, they’ll work with it. Again, this weird relationship to authority.

We hang out by one of the salt-water wells while Msilikale finds a taxi6, watching people bring carts and buckets to fill up. Children throw rocks at a lizard, chase each other, drink water from the bucket used to wash clothes now hung to dry. We stand under the gas station awning during a short but heavy rain, and then pile into a car for the long journey back to Dar es Salaam. Now it’s back to interaction at the scale of organizations, but now as informed as it can be on our short time scale by interactions with humans as humans, not in aggregate for logistics. The UNHCR refugee camp in Northwest Tanzania seems most appropriate for the water sensor innovation test deployment, as it’s a closed loop. Kibaha makes the most logistical sense for the test deployment of Taarifa, as a lot of cultural work around accountability has already been done there by a potential partner organization. Mkuranga doesn’t make sense because it’s too far out, there’s no existing social infrastructure for organizations, and there aren’t plans to put in water infrastructure for awhile yet, so people would quit reporting after awhile of no results. It’s all practical, but not cold. People here feel their responsibilities, just like anywhere else.

The next morning it’s raining as we gain a blessing from the Ministry of Water – we’ll work with their water engineers on updating reports of water points7. We sit in a taxi in traffic and talk, then meet with a potential local partner who will help with social interaction and embedding – managing expectations, closing feedback loops, continual interaction for a more successful launch – or for a better understanding of a failed launch. If it works in Kibaha, we’ll try it out in Mkuranga, with more focus on the sensors than on the reporting, to ease survey fatigue. We get back in the taxi and talk more while we head back to the Ministry of Water to talk to some engineers about what they would want out of a reporting system (yay more talking to people who use Taarifa, not just read the outputs!). As the depth of the water on the road increases, the speed of the traffic decreases. Finally, concerned about even making his flight, we send Mark off in the taxi with his luggage, and I pile into a bajaj with my own suitcase. A meeting to get to, and facilitate, on my own!

Everything goes beautifully. I’ve learned to hold firm when I’m told someone doesn’t have time, or tells me they only have a few minutes. “We’ll talk again on Monday, but right now I do want 15 minutes. That’s it.” Engineer B and I end up sharing frustrations, drawing on pieces of paper, and giving a firm handshake at the end. Msilikale and I meet up, and head to my new lodging – not the fancy hotel anymore, but a friend’s-of-a-friend house. From here, I can still see birds flocking, and the sun setting over the sea, but there are also bugs and the shower is weird and it feels so much more comfortable than the fanciness. We have dinner with one of her Dutch friends, and brave traffic, and bond over growing up in the Midwest. The ensuing days are similar, with one day blissfully off. Plans for Zanzabar are trumped by epic, amazing rains. I read frivolous articles on my iPad and watch the rain roll over the sea.

In all this, the World Bank8’s hammer is money, and so everything looks like a project to fund. What makes this a complicated mess to my anti-capitalistic heart is that, indeed, many projects do need funding in the current environment. I see the “we read as much about about a grassroots thing that works as we could, and this is how we think we should do it…” All the people I’ve met within the org want a way to make the world to suck less. But these are institutions whose tools are people, and funding, and other institutions. And while they try various tactics, and sometimes make headway, in making the world suck less… they’re also held accountable for their actionsIn theory.. The difference is, the people in grassroots initiatives have to live with the reality of the failings and successes of their (and institutional) endeavors. So of course they are who I think of first. And last. And always9.

And Msilikale and I go over the drawings I did, and listen to music, and talk about all sorts of things. The power goes out, and we keep talking, the windows closed against mosquitos and the oppressiveness of the growing heat inside overwhelming. We walk in the dark to a local Indian joint, eating overly peppered food and listening to the calls to prayer out the window. The lights go out there, too, and we eat by the light of cell phones until the generators kick in. “This,” say Msilikale, “is Dar es Salaam.”

1. Worked for Kibera.
2. Scott’s Seeing Like a State is ideologically interesting, but if there’s no way to get clean water but through organized distribution of resources, such ideology gets tempered at least a bit.
3. It’s like breaking up with someone before they break up with you.
4. Mind you, this is a project with the Ministry of Water. Not Ministry of Power. This is with water. So we can only focus on water. *shakes fist at silos*.
5. Again, Msilikale mitigating anything that seems like a promise. Or hope, really.
6. Easier to negotiate price if we’re not there.
7. The hand washing tap in the MoW does not in fact produce water. Oh, the irony.
8. A World Bank innovation fund is what is supporting this initiative.
9. Not saying others don’t, simply that there sure does seem to be a lot of reminding.

Dar part 2

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People don’t lean out of vehicles to ask for directions here, as they did in Nairobi. The security guards, when they exist, lounge in chairs and ask questions rather than standing, mostly silent, with automatic weapons. But like Nairobi, meetings can start (and end) hours late due to traffic, to tardy risers, to rain that causes traffic, to conversations running long, to torn-up infrastructure (that causes traffic), to slow service for your lunch meeting. Tardiness is sometimes used as a sort of posturing card to play – whether or not someone gives you a meeting, and how prompt they are, as sorts of indicators of status.

Everything we’ve done here has required status strutting in order to gain speed. Those plates I told you about? Only people with yellow plates get pulled at traffic stops, because they won’t be diplomats, or military, or donors, or government. If you get stopped, it’s easier for everyone if you just hand the officer money rather than pay the huge fine for driving illegally. Which most are. And because we don’t want to slow down our project, nearly every introduction is “and this is Willow, from MIT.” Which is great and all1, but as someone who prefers to be affiliated with institutions for access to incredible brains and the space to consider at length, rather than constructed legitimacy, it makes me feel like I’d be prettier if I just smiled2.

Those same posturings and rerouting the system means there’s a fear of transparency here. Entire systems here are built up around being opaque. People across all walks of life ignore the floods for fear of being blamed for what happened, being put out of a job. This means any transition into transparency will require safe space. No “we’re coming after you” attitude, but a “we have been operating to the best of our abilities within the structure we have. Now that the structure is changing, we get to change as well!” But it seems enough people into open data and transparency have done it with a vindictive streak that everyone balks these days, and it’s a slow, gentle process.

Two and a half days into an 8 day trip, we’d chatted with NGOs, World Bank3 employees, the Ministry of Water, UNHCR, and no people who actually live the experience this technology would change. And as much as I trust all of those people (and my hosts) to know what the status of their work is, I needed to go see things. Establish ground truth. Everyone gets caught up in paperwork, rhetoric, image, and email, and so seeing it for oneself is always imperative. Mark, an amazing guide and cohort as always, got us out to Tandale a full day early for the sake of my patience and sanity.

On the way there, Msilikale leaned forward to ask the bajaj driver to drive like he does, not like we’re tourists. The roads had washed out from the recent floods, full of pot holes and rubble to negotiate and lurch over. Tandale is a slum in Dar es Salaam, and is a place to live, just like anywhere else. We walk with a man who has lived there, him taking us past houses with water lines up to our mid-thigh, insides still covered in silt, to the river running by the open defication area (ODA here). Kids run by with make-shift toys, and young women peep out to ogle my hair (or Mark’s size)4. As we stand by a washed-out bridge, our guide explains context.

The river divides two areas, one has most of the markets and the other is mostly houses. There’s no grid system (it’s an informal settlement), and so paths are highly reliant upon available bridges, and new structures are based on those paths. IE, functionally ad hoc labyrinthine. And when the floods came, the bridge washed out, and there are still people learning about that and figuring out new routes home. No one is responsible for the bridge – the government won’t come fix it, and the man who built it and had lived nearby died awhile back. No one takes responsibility, either.
It’s not just the bridge getting washed out – it’s the height at which the water rose, and that the ODA is not much higher than the river on a regular basis anyway, and it’s certainly lower than the water marks. So all the trash and bodily functions and such from the ODA get caught up in the river, which means it gets clogged up (as do the drains in the area), which means standing water, which means more mosquitos, and mosquitos are bad news bears. That’s besides all the things in the ODA also flooding into the houses with the rest of the river water.
Flooded or not, the water from the river (and the wells around it) is used to wash, cook, and sometimes drink. This is only for people who can’t afford the water out of the water points – which can be salt or fresh. For half price, you can get jugs of salt water to wash with, and sometimes for cooking. For full price, you can get fresh water. The water is delivered out of water points – giant containers, raised up off the ground, from which people purchase water. These are privately owned, though installed and supplied by the government, and few enough are stocked and working at any given point that there are queues for the resource.

I ask questions. How do people know that one is broken? I wonder about where knowledge of what is going on would be hosted and shared. Is there a town center where things are posted, or is it all word of mouth? No center, just neighbors telling neighbors. No bulletin board system. I saw a vanishingly small number of feature phones while we were out. Only government and donor officials and contractors smart phones. Which, to me, makes me wonder how to get maps built of the water system back to the people in the area5. And given the level of corruption in the country, that data being only accessible to groups already in power is fraught with peril. Mark, aware to not ask questions about anything that won’t have a guaranteed resource response, waves me off asking more specific questions of how points break, and how to track response, what would next challenges and steps be, etc6.

Night threatening and malaria mosquitos7 lazing about, we walk back towards the main road. At a bodaboda station, we negotiate with the fliers. I feel like I’m choosing who to be auctioned off to, having to dismiss the enthusiastic and be wary of the most aloof. Msilikale shoos off the most invasive, and I’m glad of a native Swahili speaker friend and a friend who’s 6’6”. That negotiated, we take a rather epic dive-bomb through traffic route home8, avoiding jams and vehicles traversing the median to gain a clearer route. Only one or two of the passing bike riders make kissy faces and eyebrows at me. Mosquitos die on my visor, and mud splashes on my boots.

And I stare at the bathtub in the hotel room, and think about not finishing my dinner when I was young and knowing most parents referred to starving children in Africa. But the issue then, and with this, is in supply chains and politics around them.

1. Waves MIT flag.
2. Institutional objectification. Which is at least different from institutionalized -isms.
3. Yes, of course I wore my “/capitalism” pin, why do you ask?
4. Please forgive my tense-shifting.
5. A core ethic when obtaining data. See also this blog entry.
6. DEMAND EQUITABLE ETC9
7. Dhengi for day, malaria for night.
8. Sorry, mom.
9. Inside joke.

Topic: Revolution and Technology

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Livebloggers: Sasha, Nathan, Erhardt

Today, we’re joined by Stephan “tomate” Urbach from the activist group & think tank Telecomix, which works to circumvent surveillance, and to promote internet freedom and human rights. During the 2011 uprisings in North Africa, Telecomix activists helped to bypass technologies of censorship and communication-interruption. They currently work to shuttle videos and other information safely out of Syria. Urbach is a Telecomix member, and has acted as their de facto spokesperson. He was a member of the Pirate Party in Germany, and worked for the Berlin Pirate Parliamentary group from 2011 until February 2014.

http://prezi.com/embed/kzyc1pmrynri/?bgcolor=ffffff&lock_to_path=0&autoplay=0&autohide_ctrls=0&features=undefined&disabled_features=undefined

Vizthink by Willow Brugh

Tomate joined telecomix in 2010, during the uprisings in Egypt and Syria. He worked in parliament for 2 years. He begins with an overview of Telecomix:
Telecomix (read about them here) isn’t a formal organization, it’s a network of activists who convene and disperse as needed. They’ve done this several times over the last few years. In 2006 in Sweden, there was a telecommunications bill, people gathered and formed Telecomix. After the telecom package was stopped in Sweden, they fought the data retention directive across the EU. At this stage, many people joined to do research and activism work. When the Egyptian uprising kicked off, Telecomix was galvanized into action: specifically, when Mubarak shut off the internet. They decided to figure out how to get access to folks in Egypt even in that context. They set up phone lines that people could use for dial up access. They set up around 300 lines for people to connect to the Internet. Weeks after the net went back up, tomate got an email from a young man in Egypt thanking them for providing access to be able to share their thoughts. This is the kind of thing Telecomix loves.

They see censorship, and internet blocking, as a crime.

Some people have asked them whether the regime might have used their lines. That’s possible, but they don’t know that. Back at the time, Telecomix talked about technology as neutral, although today tomate doesn’t believe that anymore. Then Syria happened. They found that internet surveillance in Syria was planned since 1999. They also found that Blue Coat, Siemens, and other companies were involved in providing surveillance technology. When they released this information, Western countries were publicly enraged. Telecomix suggested export controls, but no one was willing to go that far. The US department of commerce did investigate Blue Coat and their affiliates for selling to Syria after the trade embargo. ComputerLink a middleman company was fined $2.8 million by the department of commerce.

Telecomix found that every message, on every network, was monitored, and every phone call was recorded, both mobile and land line. They also found that people went missing after writing posts on SNS. Telecomix was in touch with Syrian activists on the ground. At the time, they felt clear about who was ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ now it is much less clear. They provided secure networks, software, and servers for activists on the ground. They made comms “as secure as possible,” but never promised 100% security: “whoever says this is a jerk,” tomate tells us. Some Anonymous people apparently promised full security, and local activists believed them. That’s a problem. Phone lines were then blocked in Syria. Calls to tomate’s personal number were blocked (listed online), calls to other Telecomix numbers were also blocked. When Telecomix released the Blue Coat files, revealing how it worked, the blockade system became better: Iranian telcos joined the Syrian telcos.

Around this time, Tomate received a call from German intelligence warning him to watch out for Syrian activities in Berlin. They found that the surveillance toolbox was installed in Syria, Egypt, Beirut, and Kazakhstan. But it was not always correctly configured. Telecomix has evidence, although not enough to publish, that Western companies are selling to dictatorships. They think that’s wrong, and want to generate a public outcry.

Throughout this process, Telecomix has learned a lot. Access blocking, traffic monitoring, deep packet inspection, laws that forbid certain kinds of speech on the internet. These are things that dictatorships are known for doing, not “free” countries. They also learned that hacking the backbone in Syria was great and everyone loved it. But if someone from Africa hacks the EU backbone they’re a ‘terrorist.’ So it depends on your point of view.

Telecomix also learned that the surveillance methods used in the West are the same tools dictators use. Everything from everyone is monitored. In Germany, they started to scan mail at the post office: front and back side. Started to scan postcards, and not sure what they’re doing with the scans. In EU, there’s a fight against data retention, and we won, since a court said data retention can’t be performed like that. It’s not a full victory: the court said data retention is OK, just has to be bounded in certain ways. In Europe, public is not ‘public.’ For example, Tomate thinks if he posts on his FB wall, it’s public. But many think that publicity is platform bounded.

Germany has one of the hardest privacy and data laws, the EU is potentially adopting this. It may be good for users, but not so much for companies providing services. For example, when Google did Street View, many houses are blurred based on people saying ‘not mmy house!’ But the same houses are available on Bing, and on other services. So Google now isn’t updating street view Germany, and the images are several years old. So Europeans think about data as ‘mine,’ even when it’s been posted publicly. We have a database of people’s personal information including salary, and we deleted it because of privacy concerns.

Snowden documents revealed that the ‘conspiracy’ of surveillance was actually true. For example, in 1998 we knew that the Echelon program might exist. Hackers knew it existed, but were called conspiracy theorists. Now there’s a public outcry for EU action against the NSA. tomate doesn’t think it makes sense: what should we do? Embargo trade with the USA? There’s an initiative to ban intelligence services from. In Germany this was specificaly because of an national intelligence failure to capture (neo)Nazis.

German intelligence, The exterior intelligence, supports the NSA, then gets internal surveillance on Germany, which they are not allowed to collect domestically. These exchange programs exist all over the world in contravenience with privacy laws. The only proposal they can think of against surveillance is to make it more expensive. The more encryption people use, the more expensive it will be, for example. One idea is to create as much spoof data as possible, such that intelligence agencies will spend all their time processing the spoofs. Another idea is to rebuild networks with new hardware and new protocols that will be less amenable to surveillance.

But as in all places, no one wants to pay for something. If you get paid as an activist, no one will consider you a proper activist, which means that activists have to work for free. If you look at what the NSA, Brits, French, Germans, and everyone else are doing, it’s the same as what the dictatorships are doing. What makes a democracy? People can say they don’t want this surveillance, but the government does not listen. Tomate is focused on the European debate about surveillance, not so much the NSA debates in the US. But he hopes that some day we can ban intelligence surveillance in democracies.

Slides: http://files.herrurbach.de/doc/framing.pdf

Q&A

Ethan: Tell us about how Telecomix thinks of itself differently than other organizations in the space. During the blackout in Tahrir Square, lots of organizations got involved like Tactical Tech, also based in Berlin. Telecomix has always had a certain amount of secrecy around it. How did this come about and how does Telecomix see itself fitting amongst other organizations in the space?

tomate: Telecomix does not see itself fitting into anything. This is important. It is a space for exploring things. At the point, people can join Telecomix. The aura of secrecy is wrong; it’s one of the most open/transparent groups I’ve worked with. The problem is that many journalists struggle to understand Telecomix—they group us in with Anonymous, which is wrong. They builders and rebuilders, rather than attackers—they don’t take sites down using DDOS. One characterizing is the Yin to Anonymous’ Yang. We also do a lot of theoretical work in the space, differing us from other activist organizations. We are also not people that work in public wearing masks. We do try to secure our members who are not in a position to go into the public because of the work they do, and others take the role of the public face of the organization.

Sasha: How do you make decisions as an organization? Like who represents the organization to the public?

Tomate: We do not use formal consensus-building processes because they don’t work. We run an IRC do-ocracy. Admins do have too much power.

Willow: Can you tell us about Cameron?

Tomate: We have a bot named Cameron. We can ask her questions and get responses. We sometimes make her the public face for interviews, including a few that were published in Swedish newspapers. They asked for a photo and we sent a picture of the old mac that she was running on. She is crypto-sleep because we forgot the password to the harddisk. But now we have no one to ask what we should do. She was a symbol for us for a long time.

Cameron Kerry :http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Kerry (former General Counsel, US Dept f Commerce) I was encouraged by the data of a “Data Schengen” but over a month ago, the EU parliament voted that the European Commission should come up with a protocol for keeping EU data within national borders? How do you change that strong sentiment?

Tomate: Currently, Deutsche Telecom markets itself as keeping your data in Germany, which is false, it doesn’t. The idea of keeping the data national is nice, but it doesn’t solve the problem anyway. The privacy activists in Germany and Europe believe that if a law says something like this then it works, but that’s not right. They always ask the state to handle it, but they can’t. We are working on new protocols and projects ourselves to handle privacy. We rely on infrastructure form the 70s and we can’t rely on it much longer. We hear in Europe that the US created the internet and they can control it.

Ethan: In response to surveillance people are looking for many paths. But HTTPS (Heartbleed) was broken for years, and it was open source code. Tell me why you are optimistic that we are going to solve this problem with better network design.

Tomate: People in Germany are being paid to do open source code audits. They are funded through donations right now to work on this issue. We need to do more audits and pay people to do them, multiple audits for software are needed.

Sasha:

Tomate: We need export controls on technology that can be used as a weapon. We also need to rebuild our networks with the state. But these are two different things, building the network and sending out products to dangerous people.

Ethan: Who would you want to enforce those export controls? I think the export sanctions push is a really messy one. We’ve seen a lot of cases for export controls are taking really useful tools out of people’s hands.

Tomate: I don’t have solution for that question. For instance, my country is selling tanks to dictators. So I wouldn’t trust them to sell any hardware to countries.

Eleanor: The only reason we have strong crypto is because we regulate code as speech and thus it can’t be sanctioned under export controls. The only way we got PGP out there was a loophole in ITAR rules using a free speech definition. I would rather use a limited liability laws rather than export controls.

Sands: Is there a lot of discussion at Telecomix about mesh networks for activists?

Tomate: As I said, Telecomix is not really active right now. I live in Berlin, which is the main city for mesh networks. There are discussions for how to activate local networks and then bring them online later.

Dalia: I think the public is missing in this discussion. What I’m not hearing is how we can have people change things. I’m hearing that it’s happening in IRC channels. But many people aren’t adopting the necessary technology or talking about it.

Tomate: In Europe, we have many crypto parties currently. It’s amazing how many people are coming. People get the tool as well as the explanation for why we need to do this right now. We show them how they affected by the surveillance. It helps that we now have the evidence of this, so people are listening.

Yu: After hearing about the decision-making process, how do you manage your brand?

Tomate: Don’t break anything. If you break down communications it is not a Telecomix thing. We don’t try to manage it, but we explain what we do to new people in the IRC channel, explain it is we try to do, the same we respond to the media. Anyone can use the logo, and people do, but it hasn’t failed yet.

Serious Games with International Red Cross Climate Group

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Pablo is a force to be reckoned with. That crazy energy that seeps possibility into the most jaded of souls. He doesn’t just pull you out of yourself – he gives you somewhere to go. And even more incredibly is that he seeks to make the things he has made possible thrive beyond himself – how can he support others in making change? How can the things he’s instigated be documented and live on? A reminder of how much good facilitation matters in events and life.

We played a game of being Red Cross employees, responsibile for entire areas (my quandrants were dubbed after Lord of the Rings. The other was simply CMYK) and you “win” with the most resources put into long-term endeavors (HIV/AIDS education, infrastructure, education, etc) and with the fewest catastrophies (when you didn’t have the resources to respond to flooding in time). I could go on and on about the mechanics of the game, but really you should just play a round yourself. What matters are that we suddenly had a much better understanding of probability and consequence based on tangible interaction. I encourage you to read more at the multitudes of documentation on their specific branch fo the topic, often with recent MIT Conversation guest Colleen.

The main takeaway specfic to my tech-in-response-space and facilitator double-heart (+10 geek points if you get the reference) was the unapologetic conviction with which Pablo addressed uncertainty and unfairness in the game setup. Don’t understand? Oh well! 5.. 4.. 3.. Just like life. As someone who is constantly struggling to find balance between building capacity in dealing with chaos, and the ease of interaction that clear guidelines bring, this was beautifully blunt. Because the point of the game isn’t just optimizing for resource management, it’s in dealing with the unclear rules, political agendas, donor whims, and the other players that you have to worry about. The math can be gamed, graphed. The social interaction is far more fascinating and flexible.

This clearly wasn’t just about me – we were joined by an incredible group of people. For examples, Jason and Matt. Jason, from the Game Lab and a cohort of mine at the Media Lab, brought his long experience in improv, facilitation, and gaming to the.. table (I couldn’t help it! Pun!). From him, we had an examination of game structure regardless of content, of technical levels, and of on- versus offline-games. We were also joined by Matt from MetaLab and the MaleriaAction game – using human pattern-recognition abilities to cut down massively on computational modeling time. From him, we examined the continuum between what great work for people to play, to understand their systems, and what is great for modeling, and how that better understanding might feed back into tabletop games.

We also explored the brain-overloading awesome that somehow lets me into its structure on a regular basis : the MIT Media Lab. Specfically, we visited CityScope in Changing Places, LuminAR in Fluid Interfaces, and Paula Dawson‘s holograms in Object-Based Media. With City Scope, we examined how using city and environmental models in play – moving LEGOs around to try out different plans and structures – can lead to a similar base understanding as the tactile interaction the games brought. With LuminAR, how can we display the probability functions we had gotten a solid sense for via the games (rather than numbers or an undeciferable graph, a set of dice – one covered and one exposed) to people who actually need to know there are ways of optimizing their response and funding structures? How about projecting calculations based on the beans and dice they’ve laid out? And from the holograms, how can we see one aspect of a problem from one side of a table, but a very different perspective from the other side?

And always, for me, the Center for Civic Media idea of how this brings voice and understanding and storytelling to more people. And this is where game structure becomes so intersting. By having a clear game infrastructure with modules, you can build whatever game you like co-creatively. What are the major things to pay attention to? What would the costs and risks and win conditions be? By working with a group to discover what is important to them, you also understand what the complications are. AND it shows that systems are malleable. My favorite.

Epic thanks to everyone who made the day possible. I’m excited to see where we can take the enthusiasm, intentions, and heart as we forge ahead into a future that might just suck less. In no small part because we don’t just have scientific and mathematical inputs – but we understand what they mean, and how to use them.

Happy Birthday Debcha!

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I’m about to get on a plane to the West Coast. Three incredible guitar players practice so adeptly nearby that the desk folk have turned the overhead music off – think Triplets of Belleville soundtrack. This morning I kicked off SpaceApps Boston, and then I got to sit for awhile to listen to a great lineup of my friend Deb‘s friends give talks for her birthday. My talk was to draw everyone else’s talk, and then show them at the end. I’d usually post this over on bl00viz, but it’s more personal, and I do try to not cross the streams too much.

Deb was/is a core part of why I now feel so at home in the Boston area. She reminded me that part of having a history with people was building that history with them, inviting me out to dinner parties, talking on Twitter, checking in on text. And always amazing music, Zoe Sighting, Emergency Leroy. Thanks for being persistent proof that people can be amazing, intelligent, kind, calm, and stimulating. Happy Birthday.

Value-Based Design Workshop

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Bex and I put together a Value-Based Design workshop for the Codesign Studio at MIT Media Lab. Originally posted on the Codesign site (and then to the Civic blog and Bex’s blog). Here’s how we did it:

link to the hackpad version of this post

When you are designing a project for social justice, where do you start?

In this workshop, we practice value-based design, a method that helps us to design for large scale social impact and to relate this directly to how we plan and implement projects. We envision the impacts we’d like to contribute to in the world and the values we bring with us into our work as the first steps in this design process. As individuals, this method helps us to express our connection to our projects on a personal level and to prevent burnout as we are able to identify work that resonates with our values and to set aside work that doesn’t. As a team, this method helps us to identify shared values and to make design decisions based on our shared vision instead of personal preferences.

At the last Codesign Studio, Bex and Willow took the class through an hour-long workshop toidentify our individual values and to design our projects and approach around shared values.

This workshop is inspired by Monica Sharma’s work in transformational leadership for large scale system shift. In this article, she describes the framework of the methods she shares for this kind of work. Connecting with our personal values and designing based on values is a key component. [Sharma, Monica. “Contemporary Leaders of Courage and Compassion: Competencies and Inner Capacities.” Kosmos Summer 2012.]

Individual Values

Purpose
Uncovering our core values gives us better understanding of our own purpose and desire in the world. Doing this exercise with teammates is a great way to connect to each other’s inspiration.

Process
(3 min) Select one person in the room to work these questions with:

Share something you’ve worked on that you had some role in designing.

Ask the following questions:

  • What did you envision as success for that project? Often people will dissemble, and say it wasn’t a success. People will also commonly talk about the activities of the project, things they did, instead of what the vision was of the project. So:
  • Ask them to imagine that it WAS a success. What is happening in the world then? How are people living? What is the quality of life?
  • Drill to one word. That’s the value you were working from. The value you represent. The word should not be an action or process (manifestation, collaboration, interaction, etc), but what people feel like if they can act or work in that way (joy, justice, inclusion, health, etc).

(12 min) Now, break into pairs. If there are project teams in the room, ask people to work with someone in the same team and ask each other the questions above.

(at 6 min) Remind people to switch

Reportback
Have each person say their value when you reconvene. If you can, write these somewhere that will be visible for your team as you continue to work together.

Value-Based Design

Purpose
Designing a project with the larger purpose in mind helps to think big and understand that your actions connect to your visions of social justice. It also helps your team to recognize shared values, a great starting place for connecting when you have to make difficult design decisions.

Overview (5 minutes)
In this method, we design with our teams first by developing shared understanding of the impacts we want to see as a result of the work we do together. These will be large-scale and will likely relate to values we identified in the Individual Values exercise. In this exercise, Impacts, longterm sustained state change.

Because we can’t implement impacts directly, we continue to design our work into pieces of work that we can implement. We divide these pieces into three categories: Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes.

Process
Share the above graphic.

Go through an example, here is an example of how we might have used this methodology in developing Codesign:

Ask what desired impacts of Codesign are:

  • Impacts – sustained state change. – What do you think the intended impacts of codesign as a method are? Empowered and equal engagement.

Ask what some inputs, outputs and outcomes are of Codesign:

  • Outputs – collaborative workshops
  • Inputs – YOU! Partners, us, this room, MOUs, etc
  • Outcomes – A change, but requires continued effort to maintain – Such as social relationships, people try it and don’t keep it up

We tend to fill these three categories with information in a nonlinear way — recognizing an Outputmay surface desired Outcomes and Inputs. Broadly, we design right to left and implement left to right.

Project Design (25 min)
Now practice the value-based design methodology with project with your team. If you are at an early stage in your work together and you haven’t yet identified or selected a project you will work on, you can begin by taking the various partner’s organizational values into consideration. Broadly, what are the impacts that your team’s members envision?

Before completing the exercise, have each group fill in at least 2 points under each section.

Wrap It Up
Reportback (15 min)
Ask people to share their process. Try using the Green/Yellow/Red method and ask each group to share one Green – a thing that was easy or clear; Yellow – one thing that was challenging or that they learned something from; and Red – something that was difficult or a block.

If the teams went to different parts of the room, have everyone tour around. Document the work of each group.

10 Years Later, My Soul Still Flinches

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I was recently triggered by a dear friend. He had no way of knowing – I don’t talk about these things, and on the rare occurrence that it comes up in any context, I take care of it myself. But we’ve been close for awhile now, and he deserved some sort of understanding as to why I nearly walked out, no reasons, to clear my head and calm my breathing.

My tendency is to not talk about things until I have both a clear understanding and a clear action to take. If understanding is all that is needed, I sometimes keep that to myself, unless it benefits everyone to express it. Mind you, with a high emotional metabolism, these processes can take from minutes to hours – rarely on the scale of a full or multiple days. But I suppose it’s important to talk about abuse, especially as someone who apparently seems functional.

Corey used to leave me places. We lived in a bad neighborhood in Suffolk, and I was new to the area, and I worked doubles at an Applebees a few miles from home. The one time I tried to walk home late at night, a car stopped to proposition me, and became quite angry when I didn’t accede. I was 19 at the time. I didn’t have a phone – we only had one, and Corey had taken it, but wasn’t answering. Being that poor also meant I didn’t have cab fare, there were no buses, and my new coworkers were uncaring. I didn’t have my car – he had taken that, too. To do… something.. while I worked and he didn’t. After that, even when I couldn’t get ahold of him, I would wait at the restaurant, sometimes for a couple hours, until he would come to get me. He would then “tease” me for how often I had called or texted him.

When I would insist on taking my car with me, it became an argument about trust. Why didn’t I trust him to have the car? It was just going to sit in the parking lot all day, whereas he could use it. Didn’t I trust him to come get me? Did that mean I didn’t trust him at all in anything else? I was a horrible person! He was simply absent minded. My lack of trust was undermining the relationship.

Later, things slowly escalated. We would get into regular yelling matches. He broke his hand from punching the floor when I stated my intentions of leaving, permanently and immediately. I drove him to the hospital instead of driving myself to my cousin’s, crying because I knew the ensuing hospital bills would threaten the move back to Indiana so I could return to school (my parents’ sneaky trick to get me back into a social safety net). I still don’t know the laws about physical abuse if you hit back. It wasn’t pretty. And always the underlying thread of distrust. Any fight always came back down to my not trusting him. I finally left him after 2 and a half years, discovering that the problem was not my lack of trust but his untrustworthiness. We still had to live together for awhile, again from his financial insolvency. There was a final morning with him not letting me leave the house, my finally calling the cops as he slammed doors back shut and then stood in front of my car.

Recovery takes time, and I’m still not done with it. I reflect less often, but more publicly. But it’s important to know that even badasses like me have baggage. So do others.

  • 2007 : http://willowperson.livejournal.com/129303.html
  • 2008 : http://willowperson.livejournal.com/167449.html
    • http://willowperson.livejournal.com/186020.html
  • 2009 : http://willowperson.livejournal.com/197463.html
  • 2010 : https://blog.bl00cyb.org/2010/09/diaf/
  • 2013 : http://brainmeats.net/ep8-social-scripts-for-abuse

When an ex-lover in Seattle had pulled my motorcycle battery to get his own going, I lost my shit. In his  excitement over mechanical triumph, he tossed his feature phone towards me to gain my attention while stopped on the curb. He had just removed both the ability to communicate and my transportation. Of course he had no idea why this would be so bad. Nor could he, until I expressed it.

The thing that makes emotional abuse difficult to overcome is that erosion in the baseline of trust. The initial giving of trust is still pretty easy to me, it’s the response to being in an iffy situation and determining how to navigate it. My attempts to vocalize about being uncomfortable in the past meant all the structure of the relationship was torn away (not by me, I know that now). So my knee-jerk response to situations now is that of having to choose to quietly deal with the feelings that I’m having, or having trust itself questioned. My heart doesn’t understand there can be an third option between stoicism and complete tear down. And I like the trust established with the Boston Sweetie (who I’ll note wanted to be called the Boston Strangler here, that is how awesome he is).

But now I have space again to ask questions and think through things safely, I don’t have to have a rational reason for feeling the way I feel. Maybe someday I get to be rational about all this again. Maybe. In the meantime, I just have to accept that the people around me might actually want to help, not take my need for help as a personal affront. All I have to do is be brave enough to explain what’s going on in the tumult of feels, even if it doesn’t yet make sense. Especially if it doesn’t yet make sense.

It’s important to know that even the ability to speaking about the abuse is what is ripped away. This is why it is difficult to speak out. The podcast, listed above, has some pretty heart-felt conversation from a variety of people in it. Worth checking out. And speak out. It helps. Even a decade later.