Greetings privacy hackers, Noisebridgers, and Sudo Roomers,
At this Saturday privacy hackathon we have a number of special things happening!
Lisa Rein + New Projects
Firstly, we have a special guest, Lisa Rein (Co-Founder, Creative Commons & Aaron Swartz Day, Chelsea Manning's Archivist), who will be speaking briefly at 5pm. She will be announcing the continuation of Aaron Swartz Day projects through Cypherpunks Write Code(!!), and introducing 2 new, awesome projects she would love our help with. One is an RSS Revival Project (which has both research and development components). The other is a Metadata Blow Out Tool to enable folks up wipe out the location data on their phone images before uploading them to social media (so your location can't be so easily tracked by the photo's easy-to-grab geolocation data). Both will of course be open source. If you are interested in avoiding real fake news or defending user privacy, you will want to check them out! Tech stack: TBD.
Hackers of the World -- Unite!
Secondly, we are calling out to all the international privacy hackers who were following remotely, watching the webcast online, and generally following our Aaron Swartz Day developments (where I spoke about Pursuance not-1-not-2-but-3 times this year!)
If you would like to participate in Pursuance User Testing remotely, one way you could do it would be to register on Pursuance's Mattermost chat server, so we will be able to collaborate with you there. Until Pursuance builds out a bit more of its functionality, we will be using Mattermost to connect. This goes for all existing Aaron Swartz Day projects, the projects Lisa is announcing, and any projects of your own that you are looking to collaborate on with other members of the Aaron Swartz Day community. Exciting indeed to have people coming together from many parts of the globe. So that's 4pm-10pm PST - on Saturday December 9th.
Pursuance
Thirdly, we are officially beginning user testing of Pursuance, an ambitious project intended to amplify the efforts of activists, journalists, and non-profits around the world, and that was started by formerly-imprisoned journalist and activist Barrett Brown. About half of all CWC participants are working on Pursuance (which I am the project manager and lead developer of), and I deeply appreciate all of your efforts!
Task management and chat work great, and we are working on polishing things up to start using internally within the next couple weeks. If any of you would like to be one of the first to try out Pursuance and give us your feedback to help make this project as awesome as possible for the world's activists, journalists, and non-profits, let me know either in person or via email (steve@tryingtobeawesome.com). Tech stack: React + Go + Postgres + PostgREST + Bootstrap + WebSockets.
With Pursuance, we aim to confront and correct, via an energetic, global network of forward-thinking individuals, the injustices imposed on society by criminalized institutions the world over.
Event Details
- 5pm: Aaron Swartz Day Project Updates with Special Guest Lisa Rein
- Email lisa-at-lisarein.com with your project update info, and she will include it on the above page :-)
Exciting times :-D. See you all there!
--Steve (Phillips)
Project Manager and Lead Developer of Pursuance