It should not surprise people that whenever there is a new technology the government seeks to restrict its use and in cases where this technology can be used to facilitate dissent the laws and its agents often over step their own rules. We all know that what is in fact legal and how the law is enforced during protests or crises often at odds. The state seeks to disrupt organizing by digging deep in their bag of dirty (and illegal) tricks including illegal warrants or raids; mass arrests of lawful protestors; warrantless surveillance; and so on. This article looks at the US attempts to criminalize political wireless communications.

Weighing Security
I want to look at the thorny questions of security and privacy not from a technological perspective (which I believe is forth coming) but from a user’s point of view. Security/privacy seems to be continuum at best, where there is no such thing as a purely safe/private mode of communication. Some people may argue that, but I feel confident any deployment of a model like March-Hare incurs some considerations around these issues especially in repressive regimes or in environments that can put people in jeopardy.

This short article seeks to identify the issues that make a map useful for users. There is a ton of well researched literature looking at the problem of cartographic communications. As radicals we are interested in designing mapping tools (whether paper or digital) that meet the unspoken needs of the users. Better maps create better opportunities for individuals to make decisions and explore the feasibility of various tactics.

Frontline SMS is a tool for tethering a phone to a computer to act as a data dispatcher and collector via SMS. There is a lot of nice features provided by this tool, one of which is the ability to easily distribute a java application with a custom form, called Frontline Forms, to phones in the field to assist in data collection.

In 2010, Al Jazeera used Ushahidi (www.ushahidi.com) to expand their coverage of Gaza during the recent tensions there. Israel was blocking many reporters and especially camera-personnel so they needed to rely on the few journalists they had plus a group of anonymous “citizen journalists”. In a sense Al Jazeera successfully used both “bounded” and “unbounded” information sources to provide a fuller portrait of what was going on during a crisis. This has implications for how we can organize information gathering at protests.

This project represents a set of work to prepare the March-Hare Collective to deploy a communications solution at 'the drop of a hat'.

There is a lot of movement around the March Hare collective as of late. We are in the process of getting non profit status and advertising video to help with grant writing for the project. We are preparing a final revision of the tapatio drupal module that is intended to enhance a few of the successes of the Pittsburgh G20 deployment and make up for the failures in an easily deployable fashion.

Members of the March Hare Collective, the Aftershock Alliance Collective, and the Hackbloc Collective discussed the history and future of tech in natural disasters and demonstrations for a presentation titled "Hackers without Borders: Disaster Relief and Technology". Audio of the talk is available in ok and better qualities.

Can't Stop the Signal is an article written for Hack This Zine issue #9 covering the successes and failures of communications systems during large mobilizations. As well as the requirements for successful communication systems that march-hare will be developing and deploying.