[HacktionLab] FW: legal support

Michael Reinsborough m.reinsborough at qub.ac.uk
Tue Jan 24 18:00:23 UTC 2012


FYI, I sent this email to gbc/ldmg on the principle that it doesn't hurt to let the people working hard to keep committed activists out of jail know what we are up to.  The legal support number for arrests or activist advice anywhere in the UK is o7946541511
  http://greenandblackcross.org/legal
  http://ldmg.org.uk/


----- Forwarded message -----
     Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:45:04 +0000
  Subject: RE: [HacktionLab] Exciting news from HacktionLab
       To: "ldmgmail at yahoo.co.uk" <ldmgmail at yahoo.co.uk>,
"gbclegal at riseup.net" <gbclegal at riseup.net>

Hello GBC/LDMG,

Hacktionlab met this past weekend in Bradford.  A discussion came up
about legal protection for servers and the system administrators who
run those servers.  I am writing to know if anyone has much knowledge
on these legal issues as a hacktionlab working group is forming to
ensure greater legal protection for the radical nonhierarchical
computer networks that support UK activists.  A new initiative
http://and.nothingtohide.is/policy/ is underway amongst radical
nonhierarchical internet service providers in part to prepare for
existing internet privacy crackdowns on activists such as the possible
new European Law ACTA -Anti-Counterfitting Trade Agreement [
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta ]

As you may already know the hacktivist gathering includes service
providers from http://www.aktivix.org (both individual & list email
provision), https://www.network23.org (anonymous webhosting), and many
others that give significant tech support and training to our UK
social movements.  Feel free to get in touch with myself or directly
with the hacktionlab working group if you have questions, comments,
advice, would like to help out, or are just interested in the legal
status for activist computer networks that refuse to turn over logs of
activities by the service users when requested to do so by courts or
the police.

________________________________
From: M3shrom [m3shrom at riseup.net]
Sent: 22 January 2012 18:54
To: hacktionlab at lists.aktivix.org
Subject: [HacktionLab] Exciting news from HacktionLab

Hi everyone there's only a few of left here and our last job is to
send an email to the list.

We had the 10th Hacktionlab at Bradford this weekend at the legendary
1 in 12 club. http://www.1in12.com/

Here was the agenda -
http://hacktivista.net/hacktionlab/index.php/Winter_2012_Hacklab
and
the minutes
http://hacktivista.net/hacktionlab/index.php/Winter_2012_Hacklab_Minutes

It was an intimate and low key gathering where we didn't really focus
on the tech but more on the strategy of how the projects we are
involved with interact. Also, how can we build on what we've done for
the future.  We took pretty minimal minutes but made some key steps
that are detailed below.

We got feedback from alan on the Social Contract for Communications
Providers<http://and.nothingtohide.is/policy/>
and we agreed that it was a 'good thing' and that we wanted to be
active in this process.

We talked about the tools we offer. There was some blue sky discussion
about consolidating our projects into a more coherent legal entity to
better represent the projects.

We talked about what we really wanted to achieve and came up with some
broad areas including,

* better legal support for those running the services
* finding funding for the resources (ideally membership contributions
but maybe some bigger handouts)
* a more accessible and clearer presentation of the tools/ services we
are promoting
* better interaction with other groups (campaign, advocacy)
* clearer roles for and engagement with to help us out running and
promoting the services.

We agreed that we didn't want to plan an overblown solution to all of
this but wanted to slowly move towards achieving these goals, tweaking
what we do and not breaking things that kind of work.

We came to the conclusion that we would propose a framework to link
existing projects in which the people in the following projects are
involved; aktivix, hacktionlab, network23, indy.im.

We still have more work to do to decide exactly how we organise and
make decisions and criteria for who is involved and how they are
involved. We are going to have an irc meeting about this in three
weeks time more or less.

We are excited to say that we also made the following decisions.

Set up a new website at techtoolsforactivism.org which lists 'Tech
Tools' that we provide. There is a demo of what this would be here -
http://pxr5.hacktivista.net - this is a work in process. This
effectively replaces the proposed new hacktionlab website.

To set up an informal working group to gather information about the
pros and cons of becoming a legal entity with a focus on legal
protection.

We decided to work together to raise money for infrastructure costs,
focusing on a grass-roots approach to fundraising but not excluding
possible hand outs.

When talking about HacktionLab on tour, No-one came forward to
organise a BarnCamp but we are up for doing workshops at other events.

We also thought it was great that LARC may be able to host a
HacktionLab as we can do some workshops there but we don't have the
time to convene and organise the practicalities. Over to you, London! ;)

We are really happy with with the Tech Tools for Activism booklet
cover. It looks great. Some of us also expressed that it would be
great to have a second cover style which we would appeal to fluffier
groups, ngos etc as it is quite hardcore! Maybe some kittens that are
masked-up? I'm up for convening an irc meeting or asking Ben to do it
to take the next step.

Sorry for briefness of this, but some of us need to rush off.

this was jointly written by 5 of us
sorry if it in anyway isn't totally representative of the people that
left early





----- End forwarded message -----


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