From July 27 to yesterday I was on vacation, including 5 days near Amsterdam for the OHM -Observe, Hack, Make- camp.
I attended many talks and workshops. Here is a summary of.. my summaries.

• Digital security is complicated. 

Giving advice to activists whose safety depends on digital security is even more complicated. Only saying “use Free Software / encrypt your data and communications / use strong passwords” is simplistic. One also has to take into account the efficiency parameter, as well as the physical and moral, psycho-social components of security. This is an interesting one: if advising not to use (or scaring activists away from) Skype and Facebook leads to their social isolation, to loneliness, depression, moral fatigue or paranoia, it is clearly not a good solution. To save the future, you may still need to talk on Skype to your parents or lover from time to time, because they give you the strength to keep advocating.Everything depends on risk assessment: is exposing your social network endangering it?

Is seems obvious, but carrying on a political struggle through the internet in Berlin, Lomé or Tunis is very different. Do people have their personal computer there? What do local laws say about activism? What kind of technology are people using around the person who needs help? What kind of activity does this activist actually do? Documenting protests or attacks / writing essays / organising people / blowing the whistle.. those actions rely on different tech and have different purpose. For some, one needs to securely gather information from many external sources. For others one needs to reach an audience as wide as possible.

The various workshops I intended about digital security have enriched and clarified my thoughts, thanks to fairly simple concepts. There isn’t one secure way of using technology. I will remember it next time I talk with my friends about their computers: stay practical, understand the risk, understand your priorities and vulnerabilities.

An other conclusion: we need to care about our digital security BEFORE we face actual danger and repression. I would like to say before we are under surveillance but it’s probably too late for that one.

• KISS

One line of code can cause big vulnerabilities in an operating system. I understand better the KISS principle – for software. After long discussions about life, the universe and everything, I definitely don’t think that it applies to all other areas. We need some fun too 😀

• Whistle blowing

The US already abuses its surveillance powers to harass and destroy the lives of whistle blowers. Less well known that Snowden and Manning, the cases of Jesselyn Radack and Thomas Drake were impressive. Intimidation, sanctions taken without any legal reasons, smear campaigns… New examples showing that surveillance gives disproportionate power to people in power, and that they do, and will abuse it to protect their privileges.

• Make a choice

Simple way to link the pro-privacy and copyright reform actions:
Internet, Privacy, Copyright. You can have two of those, but not three. What do you choose?

• .. as usual..

Of course, the best part of the event wasn’t the talks and workshops. Beloved old friends, great new friends and contacts, discussion, ideas, care and tea. Thanks for being awesome.

<3

People seem to blog when they find a nice tool, so here I am, singing my love to a simple HTML-wiki converter. It just saved me at least one hour of boring manual work <3

With it you can choose several wiki dialects, even our MoinMoin.

No licence information.

From mai 22 to 26, FSFE sent me to the Toulouse Hacker Space Factory, in Toulouse, southern France. It was probably the best hacking event I have been to.
Taking place in Mixart Myrys, a former artists squat, the public was very diverse: from hackers to activists to artists to high school classes.

The booth
The booth itself was quite small (a simple table) but it was at the entrance of the main area, an ideal spot. But for occasional help from friends, I mostly managed it alone.
Fortunately, the two first days’ low attendance allowed me to get to know many hackers, who later helped a lot.
It was probably way less pretty than during other events: I forgot the posters in Berlin Tegel’s toilets. The first day, we made a Free Software Foundation Europe banner by hand and hanged some Tshirts on the wall behind the booth. It fitted perfectly with the do it yourself culture of the event, but I was still disappointed no to have posters.

Thursday-Friday
The first two days were mostly focused on conferences and workshops. I only used FSFE’s political material, to be able to move and go talking to people without letting goodies at the booth. I had the chance to talk about Free Software with a class of teenagers visiting the place and to get introduced to hackers coming from every corner of the country.

The workshops were about some arduino hacking and about building a network. In Toulouse, one can get internet through an association called Tétaneutral. They are part of the federation initiated by FDN (French Data Network). They built their own (neutral) network and are showing and teaching people what is internet and how it physically works. Thanks to the hours we spent discussing and debating at night and thanks to a 2 AM private workshop in Myrys’ basement where we welded optical fibres, I now understand a lot better what internet is, logically and physically.

Week-end
The atmosphere during the week-end was very different. It was badly crowded and there were people coming at the booth all the time. I loved the fact that most people didn’t know anything about FSFE, and quite many didn’t know much about Free Software in general.

Talking to people who are not already convinced is a great pleasure.

I had a binder with most of the important articles on fsfe.org printed. We installed several chairs near the booth, and people came around, sat, had a drink and chatted there. Our booth became the meeting point of several hackers, who often helped me answering technical questions. Their technical knowledge and my understanding of FSFE’s work were a perfect mix. Several times discussions started at the booth kept going on in the improvised café next to it. Our booth became a social place!

Merchandising
For most people it was the first encounter with FSFE, I didn’t want to make them run away by talking about money right away. It still worked quite well.

Following up
Several people took the fellowship leaflet and seemed interested. Five subscribed to the newsletter.
As always, the most satisfying part was all the informal links created! The hacker community is full of awesome people, I am glad that we had the chance to meet. I hope that some of them came a step closer to FSFE!