Freedom

Use Technology to Mobilize Your Community

- Adam Clare

computer screen
The current federal leadership in the USA has many people concerned about their rights and freedoms. If you’re one of those people you can use these technological tools to help you stand up and fight back. Newsweek, rather surprisingly, compiled a list of tech tools that can be used to mobilize communities or be used to fund campaigns you support. As always, be sure to protect your online privacy and maybe even your in-person privacy. With the recent revelation of the Vault 7 leaks to Wikileaks it’s more important than ever before to speak up and stay safe.

Sleeping Giants

Sleeping Giants aims to take down what it calls “racist” websites by attacking their ad dollars. Since many companies rely on programmatic advertising, they might not be aware of what sites their ads appear on. Thus, Sleeping Giants notifies companies, requesting that they take action and block the offending websites, or risk alienating their customers. So far, they claim over a thousand brands have committed to removing their ads from such sites.

5 Calls
This app aims to get even the most phone-shy people to call their elected representatives daily. 5 Calls automates the process, providing numbers to officials based on the user’s location and offers easy scripts to follow. It’s available on Apple and Android devices. If only there was an app like this for calling one’s parents.

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How a Better World Can Come from Supply Chain Management

- Adam Clare

happy workers in a factory
The Canadian organization Shareholder Association for Research & Education (SHARE) just released a report on how supply chain management can help promote and enforce human rights. Some countries legally require companies to report the status of human rights and any liabilities that may stem from neglect or worse. Canada, however, does not. SHARE has looked at other parts of the world to inform how the Canadian government and companies can better the world while reducing risk for investors.

The report, “The Rise of Supply Chain Transparency Legislation” (PDF link), reviews a range of supply chain transparency legislation from the U.S. and across Europe, including the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act 2010 and the UK Modern Slavery Act, to understand its form and impact and to learn from best practices already adopted in other jurisdictions.

SHARE’s report examines best practices in supply chain reporting from other jurisdictions and makes recommendations for Canada, including that a reporting regime should be consistent, but flexible; that it should be publicly accessible; updated annually and certified by top management; and that there should be mechanisms to ensure compliance.

“A regulatory framework for supply chain transparency reporting ensures consistency and comparability between the information provided by each company in a sector,” says Delaney Greig, an analyst with SHARE and co-author of the report, in a statement. “Reporting requirements should help companies to approach supply chain due diligence in a way that ensures efforts are effective and transparent while allowing companies flexibility to do what is best for their situation.”

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The Quick and Powerful Response by the ACLU

- Adam Clare

via reddit
Image via Reddit.

Over the weekend President Trump enacted what has come to be known as the Muslim Ban. Immediately protestors took to their nearby airports in act of solidarity with the people affected by Trump’s outrageous actions against migration. The protests are continuing today at American consulates and embassies around the world. This is an amazing response by Americans and other citizens to Trump’s ban (which ironically took place on International Holocaust Remembrance Day).

The action that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took over the weekend exemplified the outrage over Trump and the unity of the American people against outright acts of oppression. The ACLU had lawyers ready at nearly every international airport to help migrants and they have publicly spoke out against the Muslim Ban including a seven point action plan to hold the Trump administration to account.

The ACLU received a total of 356,306 donations online, amounting to $24,164,691, which the organization said it would use to fight for the rights of immigrants, as part of a seven-step plan to counter the Trump administration. On Twitter, donation momentum was building as venture capitalists, celebrities and entrepreneurs pledged to match other Twitter users donations.

…

Asked what the money from the weekends donations would go toward, the ACLU pointed to a seven-point plan of action aimed at taking on the policies of the Trump administration.

The first step in the plan is filing Freedom of Information Act petitions asking government agencies for documents related to Trump’s potential conflicts of interest, followed by plans to protect the rights of immigrants, including challenging “unconstitutional” immigration policies and defending “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

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Here’s the ACLU’s letter to President Trump.

What It’s Like to Use the Internet in Cuba

- Adam Clare

The internet is a great resource for connecting people to people and connecting people to services and new ideas. Cuba, like other developing nations, has had a hard time connecting to the internet because of the sheer cost (laying cables underwater isn’t cheap!); and for Cuba the costs are higher since they can’t connect to the internet via nearby Florida. Despite these issues Cubans are getting online.

Over the past couple of years wifi has been made more accessible thanks to chapter technology and lessening of laws. Cubans are getting online in a way that is very unfamiliar to the rest of us and over at Huck Magazine they wrote about the experience.

There, demands overlap out loud like a public protest in which each person calls in their wish for a different future to come true.

The stories of the crowd emerge, each with its own voice, volume and hopes for a life that might some day include them.

From the other side, they are shown rooms, the view from a window, the neighbourhoods where their children or siblings have managed to settle.

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Amnesty International’s Guide to Safe Messaging

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

safe texting

Thanks to the bravery of whistleblowers we know that the Five Eyes are monitoring all internet chatter regardless of who’s talking. This is a big concern for people who care about freedom and rights to have personal communication. As a result, Amnesty International put together a review of messaging apps so you can make an educated decision around what app you use. They cover the basics of what apps are available and what concerns there are around messaging security.

Why is end-to-end encryption important?

End-to-end encryption is important because it protects your personal data even as it passes through the company’s servers. It means that the company is not able to decrypt your messages or see the content. It recently emerged that Yahoo allowed US intelligence officials to scan hundreds of millions of YahooMail accounts. This could easily happen with instant messaging too, if it’s not end-to-end encrypted.

Read more.
Thanks to Delaney!

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