Annual EFF Awards: Alexandra Elbakyan, Library Freedom Project, and Signal
eff.org
eff.org
In this sense I hope very much that the cyberrights movement is maturing to recognise that technical means of fighting such oppression are, whilst necessary, not sufficient. EFF are showing an increased awareness of this (and to be fair, have been aware of this for a long time).
The explicit recognition of Alexandra Elbakyan, a personal hero to me, is not only richly deserved by a functionally useful step in fighting copyright overreach and publishing monopolies.
Let me shatter that illusion. She's very supportive of Putin, Russian regime, and those who in that regime 'stand strong' to the west.
I'm gonna have whiplash!
Journalists, whistleblowers, protesters and other "freedom fighter" needs are the same as criminals, in fact they may be criminals according to their local laws. You can't have one without the other.
If so this seems like an unfair summary given the piece is very long, the first half sings technical praise, the second half laments the challenges faced, and there's one single small paragraph (that I saw) that mentions some Signal users as possible boogymen:
The company’s aggressive pursuit of growth, coupled with lack of moderation in the app, has already led Signal employees themselves to publicly question whether growth might come from abusive users, such as far-right groups using Signal to organize.
The whole point of the app is that it cant be moderated because nobody knows the contents.
This must be obvious to anyone using Signal and having atleast remote understand of it.
I think that must have been written by some random commenter who think it works like facebook (aka police honeypot).
Full list of past winners: <https://www.eff.org/awards/past-winners>
I'm really struggling to see evidence of any of this on their website.
All I see, from an org that started in 2015, is:
* A handful of cartoonish, mile-high-overview posters and booklets, most of them formatted for printing, not viewing...none of which have been updated in four years. It's like flipping open your car manual to the section on "driver controls" and seeing: "you should use your vehicle's wipers if it is raining" and nothing more on the matter.
* A huge amount of effort put into listing all their many members and their specialties, dwarfing all their other forms of content - but yet, virtually nobody including the founder seems to have the slightest education, work background, published (or otherwise) papers, presentations given at conferences, projects...nothing... in related fields. Correction: Alison has a wikipedia page which explains more, but that's an awfully thin resume for someone heading a digital privacy project these days
* Two courses, which ran once, for which there is little to no information, no materials for others to run the courses, etc?
* No "immediate harm reduction" resources anywhere in sight; no invitation to contact them for help or to volunteer, except for paid engagements for the executive director
* An executive director who hasn't been on social media in two years?
This really looks like a typical "professional organization" that is little more than a resume stuffer. For an org with a hundred plus members their work product is basically nill.
This is a perfect example of how not to be taken even remotely seriously by anyone, with a cartoonishly exaggerated logo, no citations or references or even the most rudimentary details...not to the mention the accessibility issues from the font:
https://github.com/alisonLFP/libraryfreedominstitute/blob/ma...
Who thought that this was useful, practical advice for your average person? https://libraryfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Green-...
How am I supposed to read this? https://github.com/alisonLFP/libraryfreedominstitute/blob/ma...
This "vendor scorecard" is useless paper-pushing that doesn't in any way, shape, or form help someone interpret their vendor's privacy policies and data sharing policies, which are written intentionally to obfuscate: https://libraryfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/LFP-Ve...
https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/library-freedo...
And Elbakyan's actions the past decade are commendable.
I respect Elbakyan a lot and her contributions have benefited hundreds of thousands of people.
And we should not practice cancel culture when recognizing contributions of people.
Support of Putin and Stalin are among a slim majority in Russia, too. You cannot denigrate somebody's achievements because you disagree with what they have to say outside of them. If you want to do that, you may as well deny James Watson's contributions to DNA science.
With that logic you can't denigrate a scientist with other achievements just because they also practiced Eugenics.
...You can, and should be able to. Detestable views SHOULD impact you negatively in life.
Have a look at Zemfira, another Russian who did speak out against Putin. And Zemfira is a lot more popular than Elbakyan is in Russia. That said I have no evidence one way or another what Elbakyans real position is on any of this but I'd be careful to judge, especially for someone who is in the crosshairs of many powerful and wealthy organizations.
As for Stalin: there are no excuses for Stalins wrongs. And yet, you'd be surprised how many Russians to this date revere him. This along the lines of 'he was a bastard, but at least he was our bastard'. He kept Hitler at bay on the Eastern front (at massive cost in lives) and that alone makes him a hero in the eyes of many in Russia. In that sense he has some of the same feelings associated with his person that for instance Churchill in the UK has or Roosevelt and Truman in the United States. From a Western point of view any appreciation for Stalin is likely moderated by what happened during the cold war but from a Russian POV, especially with the massive propaganda machine there you have to contend with a severely distorted image.
This is very complex and Russians (also those in exile) are having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that this time around they are the bad guys. It's obvious to me and to you but patriotism is a weird force that can cause all kinds of cognitive dissonance to be suppressed and for people to stop seeing clearly. Germans are still struggling with this today (to some extent, but hopefully less every year) and I suspect that Russians will have similar problems for many decades to come. Ukraine will be rebuilt but Russia will be a pariah state without a chance of parole and you can expect people inside Russia to be living in a state of denial and confusion for long after this is over.
>Hence even if nobody considered Stalin to be a God, he was a real God - in the truest sense of the word, as we can see from the high level of love people had towards him. Someone may disagree by saying: there was a censorship in the Soviet Union, and it was impossible to say anything against Stalin - therefore everyone loved him. However, we must admit: the censorship was done by the people - there must be someone who sends you to prison if you don't love Stalin...
>Hence Stalin was not just an ancient pagan god - but he was that God christians believe in. In a critical moment for the country and for the whole humanity he came down to Earth, wearing a cool mustache avatar, and restored the order: he revived economics and created the powerful science. He created a communist paradise for righteous people, while bad people were sent to GULAG. He won the war against the evil forces of Hitler, and even restored Israel, as he promised to do long time ago.
Privacy and espionage is not the only reason we Europeans should detach from Silicon Valley as fast as possible. Using services owned by libertarian VC people like David Sachs is akin to willingly handing data out to Putin.