US-based tech companies dominate the global technology space, in commercial, government and personal markets (Microsoft, for example, commands approximately 70 percent of the Dutch corporate and government market). For decades, this was accepted, or at least, tolerated, or surrendered to, because the common view was that Silicon Valley firms were politically neutral or even benign.
This tolerance was a mistake, because as the book, ‘Surveillance Valley. by journalist Yasha Levine describes, the US tech industry has, from the start, been a key part of the US’ intelligence, surveillance and military systems and campaigns. It has always been a threat vector.
Under the Trump regime, this has become starkly obvious and undeniable (I discuss this in the essay, ‘State of Exception’).
Because of this, it is important for individuals and organizations and, particularly activist groups, to avoid American tech platforms such as the ‘cloud’ services sold by Google and Microsoft.
These people and groups need guidance and technical assistance. This can be called, computational mutual aid.
Principles
The effort should be guided by the following core ideas:
- American tech platforms, especially ‘cloud’ systems, should be avoided and alternatives should be encouraged
- These alternatives should, ideally, be on-premises (local servers, running Linux, for example)
- If on-premises options are not ideal, non Silicon Valley based online solutions (such as virtual servers hosted on Hetzner, and cloud services provided by Cryptpad) should be recommended instead)
- The mutual aid service should be hands-on, that is, not just technical advice but engineering and deployment and even management of systems
- The mutual aid service should provide technical mentorship to help younger techies and non techies gain necessary skills that have been degraded in the ‘cloud’ era
- The mutual aid service should provide answers and resources to help people understand difficult topics such as what is AI and how to build and manage network systems
Conclusion
The above is the beginning of what I hope will be a document that others will add to with their ideas and resources. Let’s build something good together for the people! If you’d like to participate or need help, you can reach me at compupraxis@proton.me
Resources
Below, a list of resources. More will be added over time. Feel free to suggest more via our Discord.
Getting off US tech: a guide
https://disconnect.blog/getting-off-us-tech-a-guide
KDE for Activists
Surveillance Valley (Book)
http://surveillancevalley.com/
State of Exception
Civert
More to come…
Computational Impacts 