NSA: What is there to be done?

Should we worry. No, we shouldn’t worry. We should be angry, because this is wrong, and it’s rude, and it should not be done. But that’s not going to really change the situation. What’s going to change the situation for the rest of the world is to try to steer away from systems built in the United States. And that’s much easier said than done. How do you do that? A single country, any single country in Europe cannot replace and build replacements for the U.S.-made operating systems and cloud services. But maybe you don’t have to do it alone. Maybe you can do it together with other countries. The solution is open source. By building together open, free, secure systems, we can go around such surveillance, and then one country doesn’t have to solve the problem by itself. It only has to solve one little problem. And to quote a fellow security researcher, Haroon Meer, one country only has to make a small wave, but those small waves together become a tide, and the tide will lift all the boats up at the same time, and the tide we will build with secure, free, open-source systems, will become the tide that will lift all of us up and above the surveillance state.

Watch the complete lecture “How the NSA betrayed the world’s trust — time to act”, given by Mikko Hypponen, dem Forschungsvorstand der finnischen IT-Sicherheitsfirma F-Secure. And Hypponen’s list for further watching – with fish.

Freedom by decentralization

The net needs alternatives to corporate social networks like Facebook because social networking and digital communications technologies are now critical to people fighting to make freedom in their societies or simply trying to preserve their privacy. But corporate services and other parts of the Net are intensively surveilled by profit-seekers and government agencies. Because smartphones, mobile tablets, and other common forms of consumer electronics are being built as “platforms” to control their users and monitor their activity. Freedom Box exists to counter these unfree “platform” technologies that threaten political freedom. Freedom Box exists to provide people with privacy-respecting technology alternatives in normal times – like Facebook alternative diaspora, and to offer ways to collaborate safely and securely with others in building social networks of protest, demonstration, and mobilization for political change in the not-so-normal times. Read more

Facebook alternative Diaspora now online alpha-testing

Diaspora is an open-source Facebook alternative. The idea got so much buzz on the crowdsourced micro-funding site Kickstarter, that they were able to turn a goal of raising $10,000 in 39 days into $200,000 from 6,500 backers in the same timeframe. But with such high expectations, you have to deliver. And many expressed doubts that the small team of college students could do that. Read more

Whopools.net

whopools.netWhopools.net is a open source online tool to share resources, knowledge, experiences, infrastructure and things with others. For instance: Wood to build shelves (or sth. else), a saw, or a sewing machine, drill press, videos, music, books, a car, computers with the possibility of printing, etc. in your local neighbourhood.

At Whopools.net, you can also share skills, talents or special knowledge.
Read more about whopools.net

Feral vs. capitalist trade

Feral Trade is a public experiment trading goods over social networks. The use of the word ‘feral’ describes a process which is wilfully wild (as in pigeon) as opposed to romantically or nature-wild (wolf). The passage of goods can open up wormholes between diverse social settings, routes along which other information, techniques or individuals can potentially travel. Read more