[liberationtech] List of Online Risk/Security Resources (was Re: Resignation)

[Jim Youll]

On Sep 14, 2010, at 9:25 PM, David Sasaki wrote:

> Katrin,
> 
> I love the idea of aggregating these resources using a published google spreadsheet. The list looks pretty complete to me, but is missing FlossManuals' Circumvention Tools book, which is also available in Farsi, Russian, Arabic, Chinese ... and newly added, Spanish:
> 
> http://en.flossmanuals.net/CircumventionTools
> 
> Translations available from:
> 
> http://en.flossmanuals.net/
> 
> In other news, get ready, I'm preparing my argument that "circumvention systems" (with the exception of VPNs and Wikileaks) are all over-hyped. Hmm, and come to think of it, Wikileaks is probably over-hyped too. I figure it will help bring some unity to the list as I'm sure just about everyone disagrees. And if I end up being wrong, at least I stand to learn something in the process.

That's a really interesting (if bold and not immediately popular) argument.

Questions is provokes, and perhaps these have been answered already. it's certainly not a fringe topic:

	- is "the need for circumvention" really "the most significant problem" ?

	- how much usage of these tools is for consumption of banned entertainment media, how much for transmission of the illegal thoughts? Of the transmissions of illegal thoughts, how do those messages make the round trip to the internal audiences it must reach in order to effect change? (That's my over-simplified, cartoonish sketch of a popular expression of the "need"). 

After all, it's probably always possible to get a single message to outsiders (" <N> has been imprisoned for ___ and is presently _____. Her condition is ____...") from time to time. That's not a use case for an entire technological infrastructure. 

What about the "dialogue" that these technologies are presumably supposed to support. Can that ever really be achieved or are older means sufficient? Note that outsiders' ability to watch or measure the discussion (as facilitated by networked messaging facilitated by those outsiders) does not make the communication more useful to those engaging in it.
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