Week 3 (2011.09.21)

We viewed a video on the pre-Twitter TxtMob service that was used mostly in 2004 to enable SMS coordination during protests:
http://www.appliedautonomy.com/txtmob.html

We held a ~ 1 hour of “Speed Geek” presentations of the SMS service/campaign concept of four members of the class.

We then discussed how networks in general, and how the Internet works, specifically related to the OSI Layer Model:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model http://www.novell.com/info/primer/prim05.html

We discussed “How to Bypass Internet Censorship” and how something like Tor works:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/bypassing-censorship/

We wached some PSA-type videos: Ono Robot video – short, fun videos on online security
https://onorobot.org/en/episode_1
https://onorobot.org/en/episode_3
https://onorobot.org/en/episode_4

We talked about how the typical model of App/Mobile to Internet is easier to attack or shutdown, then a Mobile<->Mobile “mesh” type network, with no central control

 

 

 

Finally, we talked through the CANVAS Core Curriculum PDF manual you were to review (download full PDF here: http://www.canvasopedia.org/legacy/content/special/core.htm), and the concept of Loyalty and Obedience, as a way to better understand the people you are trying to connect to in a social activist campaign. This relates to the previous discussion of Pillars of Support, but instead helps you think about a single person (student, parent, worker, executive, police officer, etc), and consider where their loyalties lie: family, job, society, school, environment, community. Then you can create a pie chart of sorts which helps consider how strong each loyalty is. The outcome is that you can best consider the area to target when you are trying to reach someone with a message. This topic is more fully discussed in the CANVAS manual, so please review there.

 

Homework:

The gist of the assignment was to first understand how Internet and mobile censorship is occuring today. Review the links above, watch the videos, think about recent examples from Egypt, Tunisia, China and even the BART train mobile network shutdown in San Francisco.

Then you can choose to either design a scheme to bypass mobile internet censorship and surveillence, or design a way to attack, block or otherwise interfere with mobile internet communications. It can be technical, social, psychological or physical even. Ultimately, you should consider how the networks we use our quite fragile and can be controlled by those who run them, whether it be at school, work, your ISP, or the country.

So again – choose to be a defender of free mobile communications, or an attacker of them, and write a narrative, design an app or tool, or write some code that demonstrates your solution.

 

Leave a comment