Telecomix
Telecomix is a decentralized cluster of net activists, committed to the freedom of expression and is a name used by both WeRebuild and Telecomix. WeRebuild is a collaborative project used to propose and discuss laws as well as to collect information about politics and politicians. The Telecomix is the operative body that executes schemes and proposals presented by the WeRebuild.[1][2] On September 15, 2011, Telecomix diverted all connections to the Syrian web, and redirected internauts to a page with instructions to bypass censorship.[3]
Formation
Moreover, "Telecomix circulated the ways of using landlines to circumvent state blockages of broadband networks"[4] during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Also in 2011, Telecomix had a large release of Blue Coat surveillance log files, allegedly revealing vast interception in Syria, which was analyzed and made public from the "telecommunist cluster" of Telecomix.[5] The leak had previously been criticized for possibly revealing too much sensitive information about Syrian users by security researcher and hacker Jacob Appelbaum.[6]
Projects and operations[edit]
Streisand[edit]
A project created and hosted by Telecomix was the Streisand project, named after the Streisand effect. The aim is to mirror certain types of content that gets blocked or censored.[19]
Syria Operations[edit]
Similar in approach to the Egypt operations, the organization was intervening in Syrian networks. The most notable event was when Telecomix released log files from Blue Coat Systems surveillance equipment. Blue Coat Systems were eventually forced to admit[23] that their devices were used in Syria, although they had not been directly sold to the country.[24]
search.telecomix.org[edit]
Telecomix hosted a search service based on Seeks Archived 2011-11-01 at the Wayback Machine, an open-source Peer-to-Peer distributed search engine with an emphasis on user privacy. Seeks implements a decentralized peer-to-peer architecture: install Seeks on your machine, server or laptop, and automatically start sharing results. While users share queries over the Peer-to-Peer network, Seeks protects your privacy by sending encrypted query fragments to peers. This scheme makes it difficult for other peers to devise your initial query.[25]