Hello dear trolls,
Here goes a somewhat lengthy email. I kindly ask you to go through it and consider helping with the project. Even if you only help once a year, that's ok.
In short: let's organize workshops for kids (and their parents) to raise awareness about privacy issues in digital communication and to "arm" them with better tools.
Long explanation/motivation/idea:
There is something called "Frauenfrühstück" at the KOM group of the TUD. It happens about once a month or so, and often we have a guest professor there. Today we happened to talk about privacy (ok, I confess I pushed the conversation into that direction).
Usually our conversations go into the direction of "why are there so few women in STEM?" and we talk about what can be done. We all agree that we have to start education from an early age, and now I come to the privacy topic:
Our guest professor, Ruzena, applies techniques of computer vision and image procession to the healthcare field. Other students were researching thinks like car-to-car communication and smart metering and smart cities. These areas will be big soon, and they carry huge privacy risks, especially if not done with privacy protection in mind. And apparently no user seems to care.
When I mentioned my privacy concerns, Ruzena - who grew up in a communist regime, btw - commented that she is shocked about how easily younger people embraced youtube, facebook and other sorts of digital communication without a second thought.
My point of view is that the reason why only few people are concerned and/or voice their concern about privacy issues is a mix of: * lack of awareness * not understanding how communication works * denial (it's so bad that it can't be happening) + powerlessness (I cannot do anything about it) * sheep effect: everyone else is doing it, if i talk against it, I will be made fun of.
It's particularly bad that nowadays little kids (even as young as 1 or 2 years old) happily tap on tablets and smartphones and will take it as a natural daily task to publish on the Internet everything they are doing as soon as they learn how to write. They do not know another reality! They don't even question it. It's as natural as breathing. Everyone around is doing it, their friends, their parents, so why shouldn't they as well?
So now we come to what Chaos Darmstadt can do about it:
We can show them the other side. We can do better than those silly flyers for concerned parents on how to set up browser filters and peeking over the kid's shoulder all the time. We can educate kids to think about their own privacy and explain them how they can be protected. If we start early, we can make a difference: in 10-20 years we will have more adults that care about privacy. Even if they are not sure how to do it in practice, they will care and they will be able to speak about it, and that's an improvement.
Some of the things we could offer - obviously we have to adapt content to different ages and knowledge: * show how communication works, in a way that kids can digest * show real risks for privacy - we must convince them that these things can happen * compare several popular services against more secure ones * workshop / install party for more secure alternatives (operating systems, chat apps, whatever...) * how to effectively delete a Facebook account * <your idea here>
When: 1) We organize workshops regularly or when there is enough demand 2) We should have slides and workshops and tasks always prepared, in case e.g. a school or a group of parents is interested in having us there. Anyone with a minimum of knowledge and good speaking capabilities should be able to grab that material and hold the event. Bonus: we could give this material to school teachers, if they have the knowledge and are interested in organizing it at their school.
Where: We could either go to local schools or organise events in some university room, since the trollcave is not the safest place for kids right now.
Before we can start, we should contact schools if there is interest and maybe make a questionnaire for kids, another for older school students, and another for parents regarding their digital communication habits and interest in such workshops.
I cannot this alone, and please do not make me explain things in German to a classroom of impatient and resteless kids. I can handle some planning and data evaluation, help with ideas and slides, but someone must do the translation to German and hold the workshops ;)
So... who is in? Please come forward. The more we are, the less work it will be. Reply to this email or add content on the respective wiki page [1].
If you want to integrate this with the 1yr-after-Snowden initiative, by all means do it. That would be great!
Cheers, spiky
[1] https://wiki.chaos-darmstadt.de/wiki/Workshops_on_privacy_protection