April 2008 Newsletter from riseup.net

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contents
April 2008

1. If your social movement has nothing to hide...
2. Riseup story time.
3. Reminder about phishing and spam.
4. We are looking for a few good geeks.
5. Riseup Labs is a 501c3!


1. If your social movement has nothing to hide...
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In the waning days of Babylon and empire, what will the US government
think up next? According to numerous leaks from the intelligence
bureaucracy to the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Wall Street
Journal, the government’s new fun toy is the ability to monitor our
social networks by tracking, in real time, the patterns of email, phone
calls, text messages, and financial transactions. This program is top
secret, so you can’t take legal action because you can’t prove the
program exists (according to the catch-22 logic of a February 19th US
Supreme Court decision).

The Clinton and Bush administrations have said the program is entirely
constitutional because it does not involve eavesdropping on the content
of our communication. Instead, it focuses on the pattern of our
relationships. In this way, individuals are not under surveillance, all
of society is. If your social movement has nothing to hide, then what
are you worried about? Plenty. This kind of map of our social networks
creates a ready made blueprint for disrupting any social movement deemed
to be a threat. In many ways, the government knows more about how we
organize than we do. This issue is important to all organizers, because
much of the world's email is routed through the US.

So, what can we do about it? For starters, get everyone you know to
start using an email provider that uses StartTLS. For email, this is the
only thing that can protect against the surveillance of our social
networks. For a list of StartTLS providers besides riseup see:

http://help.riseup.net/security/measures/#use_secure_email_providers

What about phone calls, internet chat, and social networking sites?
Riseup birds don't have all the answers, but we are working on it. One
thing we know, privacy and security are not solved by personal
solutions. If we want security, it will take a collective response and a
collective commitment to building alternative communication infrastructure.

For more information, see:

http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB120511973377523845.html
"NSA's Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data" by Siobhan Gorman.
The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2008.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/29/060529ta_talk_hersh
"Listening In" by Seymour Hersh. The New Yorker, May 29, 2006.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
"NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls" by Leslie Cauley.
USA Today, May 10, 2006.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jyusZ2V1ACKGV2iJuGVmuPUERi_QD8UTICG00
"Court Rejects ACLU Challenge to Wiretaps." Associated Press, February
19, 2008.


2. Riseup story time.
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Last month we asked people to send in stories about their organizing and
Riseup. Your stories gave us big smiles, and here is one of them from Stafe:

Four years ago I created a mailing list for the inhabitants of Bon
Pastor district in peripheral Barcelona; a neighborhood violently struck
by real estate price increases to the point that the 784 single-story
single family houses built in 1929 are being torn down by the City
Council, and inhabitants are forced to move to modern buildings.

A group of old, mostly retired factory workers with low incomes, poor
education, and a strong sense of justice organized the seed of
resistance. They didn’t have the means to respond to the assault that
the “progressive” City Council were moving on their houses, way of life,
and historical memory.

Four years later we have a small group of activists supporting the
struggle of the inhabitants of the district. All the city knows there is
a problem in that part of town. Though mainstream media is stronger than
us, we used indymedia, riseup and noblogs to build counter information.
We couldn’t stop the demolition of the first 145 houses, but we are
still fighting though we have faced police violence and threats. The
battle for the next 600 houses will be hard, but we are not afraid.

The image of retired old workers getting on the internet and subscribing
to a riseup mailing list is amazing. In our own way, we are fighting
against real estate owners and the digital divide!

If you have your own Riseup story, please send it to pigeon [at] riseup.net.
Thanks!


3. Reminder about phishing and spam.
---------------------------------------------
Lately we've had some people asking if we have contacted them about
giving us their passwords. No! Never! Riseup will never ask you for your
password. If you get an email that claims to be from Riseup and asks for
your password, it is someone trying to scam you. Do not ever give us
your password. Never reply to an email requesting personal information.
Avoid clicking on links in emails. It is easy for phishers to spoof
website addresses. If you have any questions regarding the validity of
an email sent to you, contact the organization that it purports to be
from via their support system or web page to confirm it is really them
before you provide any information.


4. We are looking for a few good geeks.
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Do you dream in CSS? Riseup will soon be adding a new webmail program
and we need a sweet CSS theme! If you have the skills and the time, give
us a ring: collective [at] riseup.net.


5. Riseup Labs is a 501c3!
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After months, nay, years of labor, the riseup birds have received
federal tax-exempt status under section 501c3 for Riseup Labs,
http://riseuplabs.org. Riseup Labs develops free software to support
social justice. As a stroke of fun, the letter granting us tax-exempt
status arrived in our mailbox on April 1st, but it's no joke! What this
means for you is that your donation to Riseup Labs is now
tax-deductible. If you have a pile of cash sitting in the corner that
you have wanted to give to Riseup, but you were waiting for a
tax-write-off, now is the time! (please note: tax deductible
information is only for US tax payers)

If a tax deduction is not important to you, please consider continuing
to support the work of Riseup Networks. For more ways to help sustain
Riseup, please go to:

http://help.riseup.net/about-us/donate/