EFF Digital Privacy Workshop: Recap!

Jack Aponte of LOL Collective and Nadia Kayyali of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (upper right) lead a digital privacy workshop as part of  The Dissidents, the Displaced, and the Outliers at Random Parts in Oakland on May 23, 2015.

Privacy was not necessarily on the top of my list of priorities until curating The Dissidents, the Displaced, and the Outliers. As a matter of fact, when asked to curate a show about privacy and surveillance in relationship to housing security in the Bay Area, I felt a serious challenge. But it was a welcome challenge and one that opened up tremendous conversation with writers, thinkers, artists, and activists.

As a part of the public programming for the Bay Area Society for Art & Activism, we planned a digital privacy workshop for the community. Our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Liberating Ourselves Locally (LOL) Makerspace were kind enough to come out to Random Parts gallery on a Saturday afternoon and share knowledge about privacy and surveillance. From threat models to encryption, the workshop covered how we can better protect our data and from whom. Even for skeptics who might believe 1) “I don’t do anything that needs to be hidden” or 2) “The government is going to collect my information anyway,” you may want to think again. EFF team member and activist Nadia Kayyali used the term “privacy nihilism” to describe the point at which we start to believe that our personal information and behavior are not valuable.

Some of the links below provide more information regarding privacy and surveillance. Please peruse and feel free to contact dorothy@artandactivism.org with any additional questions.

1. DO NOT re-use passwords
2. CHANGE passwords every three-six months
3. ENABLE two-factor authentication
4. CREATE secure password/passphrase with 6 distinct elements
5. Use a password manager, such as Keepassx
6. Private search engine options include: Startpage and Duck Duck Go
7. Virtual Private Network (VPN) like: Mulled and Avast
8. EFF project Privacy Badger, which is a browser add-on that blocks spying ads and invisible trackers
9. Off the Record (OTR) Messaging